The Supreme Freedom of Retirement

April 14, 2017November 6, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / 8 Comments

Retirement hasn’t been at all like I pictured it. In fact, I never even pictured it until I met Mike thirteen years ago. The fact is, I couldn’t afford it back then, instead I was busy looking for a new job…

At that time, good fortune visited me big time! I decided I needed to change careers, and Mike decided he wanted to support me in this new endeavor. Thus emerged my “Midlife Crisis Queen” blog (now defunct) and my three books about winning the midlife challenges war by changing everything at age 50.

Recently Mike and I moved to rural Colorado, which required more major mental adjustments (at least for me!) For the first year we worked full-time to produce a passive solar retirement home. It was only after that major achievement that we began to officially “retire.”

Now, a couple years later, I recently realized that retirement may be my first chance to observe my true nature. For the first time in my life nobody is telling me what to do, no parents, no boss, no need to be nice to make money, no need to prove myself to anyone. Basically no pressure and very little stress of any kind.

For the first time I get to decide how much self-discipline I want to have. At first we both had very little. We were both exhausted from over a year of home building. Mike and I both felt numb. We loved to sit and look at our view and just feel glad to be alive.

The meaning of life is having a spectacular view…

But after a while we began to wonder who we are beyond all the rules and self-discipline that has filled our lives up until now. Do we like who you are now?

Retirement means: How will you fill your life now?

These are the kinds of questions that keep some from ever retiring, fear that they may disappear with no more job to go to, no rules and little life structure. I enjoy this phase of life so much more than I ever imagined! I love the lack of rules or structure to my days. I change my mind all of the time. One minute I’m taking off for yoga in town, and the next I’m doing it on the floor at home.

I don’t need very much to give my life meaning, because my meaning is in the enjoyment of every moment, every day.

I appreciate the fact that I have a better life than just about anyone else on planet earth right now, and I’m going to enjoy the hell out of that until I draw my last breathe…

To learn more about how my midlife questioning led to a whole new lifestyle for me in a passive solar home in the Colorado outback, check out: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado

Nature versus Numbness

April 12, 2017January 23, 2019 / Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

This past week I spent some time with my father, Jack Carter, a botanist and naturalist. He was a professor of biology at numerous universities and colleges, and is now a professor emeritus at Colorado College. He chose, much like Mike and I, to leave the city behind as he retired, and lived in rural New Mexico until recently. I feel like my father understands the importance of developing special connections with nature, so I enjoy discussing with him how my own feelings have changed in the past few years just by moving away from the many distractions of city life.

I enjoyed my time up north in the city, because spring has already arrived there.

Just outside my parents’ door is a marvelous Crab Apple Tree in full bloom. What a beauty! The cities have so many introduced trees and plants that make it more colorful in the spring. I experienced a small amount of spring-envy, but on the other hand, as I walked around the lovely grounds near their home, all I could hear was traffic in the distance. This is a sound I am completely familiar with. Every city I have ever lived in has this distant roar of people in cars going somewhere, or at least trying to, with an occasional siren thrown in.

When I spoke with my Dad about this, he observed that everything in cities is about getting in your car to go somewhere. The distractions are constant and everywhere. They don’t allow us to become fully aware of our surroundings or even the people we meet. I sat outside, listened and understood why I haven’t connected well with nature for most of my life. There was just too much else going on.

Then I started explaining to my Dad how much I finally appreciate nature. I love the morning silence, something I have heard so rarely in my life. I love the sound of birds as they get louder, welcoming another bountiful spring. I feel so in touch with each new change in the trees, the plants, the birds, and the weather. It is like a new awakening in my own soul.

Look deep into nature, and you will understand everything better. Albert Einstein

My Dad understands these things. These are the reasons he chose to live outside cities until his health required moving closer to his doctors. There is something so reassuring about how the cycle of life and death continues regardless of anything we do to change it. This seems like cause for celebration for me, and I celebrate it every morning as the sun comes up.

I’m a newcomer to rural southern Colorado. After two years I decided to compile a short journal about the ups and downs of moving from a good-sized city to rural America to build a passive solar retirement home: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado

Please share this information with your friends if they are considering similar life changes. Feel free to contact me directly to discuss any of these challenges, and to order your own signed copies of any of my books! Cheers, Laura Lee (email me: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com)

When Breath Becomes Air

April 5, 2017April 5, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / 8 Comments

“No philosopher can explain the sublime better than this, standing between day and night.” (pg. 34 of When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi)

I just finished reading this fine book, the last written words of a top neurosurgeon who died in his mid-thirties of lung cancer in March of 2015. With a recent scary cat scan of my own lungs in January, you may wonder why I chose to read this book now. I wasn’t sure myself until I read it.

First of all, Kalanithi is obviously a deep thinker, always searching for the meaning in life. In fact as I read I realized he had the opposite reaction than most of us when confronted with such a daunting diagnosis. Most become more emotional, he seemed to become more analytical. This was not my response to my own recent confrontation with death. My response was along the lines of: “Am I proud of my life?”

One aspect of Kalnithi’s story rang very true to me, the way my perception of time has changed so much since we left the city behind with all its traffic and deadlines.

“Everyone succumbs to finitude…Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed.” (pg. 198)

We are never so wise as when we live in the moment.

I am boundlessly grateful to finally understand the pleasure of living in the present.

Southern Colorado is Closed Today and Tomorrow – Slipping off the Grid!

March 26, 2017March 27, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / 12 Comments

You would not believe how we spent the past three days…

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We got a BAD lightning and ice storm on Thursday night around midnight. I know because it woke me up. The combination of rain, hail, and then ice took out our electricity since Friday morning at 6AM… 3 days ago! No heat, no cooking, no nothing except Mike did set up a generator to keep the food in the frig cold.

We used our camp stove in the garage to heat a few things and eventually got the TV and coffeemaker working…priorities you know.

All in all this was a thought-provoking experience. We drove into town today at lunch for a hot meal and some heat. Low and behold, the power came back! Hallelujah!!!

In an interesting twist, the TV stations who say that they cover southern Colorado, never noticed when the thousands of Coloradoans who live in the poorest counties in the state, went without power for days! Money still talks….

Anyway, I did write while we were cut off from power. Here are my impressions from Friday morning, the last time we had power:

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The view out our door on Friday morning…10 inches or so!

Why get up?

Nothing like waking up to a foot of thick, wet, snow and all the power is out. This is the best example I can think of that old ZZ Top song: “Why get up?”

The first thing I want is coffee and maybe a little news, but I cannot make that happen. Furthermore, when I contact our electric company, they tell me every town within 50 miles is without power, so even if I could go somewhere, they wouldn’t be open…

Which brings me to the next line of that before mentioned song:

“This whole world’s gone crazy think I’ve seen enough. Gonna sleep forever, why get up?” …What better description of the Trump presidency?

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After the storm… If you want the rainbow you must have the rain!

I’m a newcomer to rural southern Colorado. After two years I decided to compile a short journal about the ups and downs of moving from a good-sized city to rural America to build a passive solar retirement home: Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado Please share this information with your friends if they are considering similar life changes. Feel free to contact me directly to discuss any of these challenges, and to order your own signed copies of any of my books! Cheers, Laura Lee (email me: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com)

Welcoming Spring to the Colorado Foothills

March 20, 2017March 20, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

Spring can be subtle here at 7,000 feet, especially when we have had so much heat and so little moisture this past winter. Talk about mild, we have had only two decent snowstorms since October and very little measurable precipitation. But there are some much welcomed changes to observe.

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First of all the type of birds appearing at our bird feeders are changing. Not that I’m able to identify many, but I do know when a new one flies up.

And we see the Rocky Mountain Bluebird coming by more and more. Such a beauty! Mike built a bird house for these. Sure hope they make use of their new accommodations! And there are a few other newcomers to our feeders. So nice to see…

In spite of the very dry conditions, I am beginning to see little patches of green along the county roads and subtle suggestions of future wildflowers. These lands are used to drought. Mike recently carved an abstract piece of art out of the base of a Pinon tree that we had to cut down to create our new home. The base is only a little over five inches wide and yet Mike was able to count 196 rings! This short tree was almost 200 years old, but most of the rings were impossible to see without extreme magnification.

Oh, and here’s a photo of his new piece. He calls it Rabbit-Hawk…

Arrival: The pros and cons of seeing your future

March 1, 2017December 6, 2018 / Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

One consequence of moving to a rural part of Colorado is the delays in seeing the latest movies. This has been a bit difficult for me, because I am a great fan of cinema! I admit my favorite aspect of going out to see a movie is to lose my present self in someone else’s life. I love the “fly on the wall” aspect of experiencing someone else’s reality, but in this case I felt like the canary in the cage. Funny, with my lifelong breathing difficulties, I have often compared myself to the canary in the mine in the numerous polluted situations I have found myself in.

Long story short, we finally had a chance to see Arrival last night, a quite cerebral approach to alien invasion. Number one I LOVED that the scientist, the linguist with all the answers, was played by a woman, and specifically by Amy Adams. I think it’s about time women played the smartest person in the room, and I’m also happy Ms. Adams finally got a demanding and serious role to play.

One of the points of this film seemed to be the greatly undervalued communication tool of emotions. By having a wise woman play the great communicator, I felt that intuitive wisdom as well as intellectual power were brought to center stage. This is a position I have fought for since way back when I hoped to become a college professor in the 1970s. I found universities so limiting in terms of valuing the whole person or professor. This is one of the primary reasons I gave up on that goal.

But the real point of this film is the simple question:

If you could see your future, with all of its phenomenal beauty and raw tragedy, would you still choose it?

This question brings up all sorts of interesting life contradictions. If I had seen my future in the past and tried to change one part, would the other parts have stayed the same? In fact, as I age I see almost every aspect of my life in terms of contradictions. If I choose this, what happens to that?

Choosing to leave behind the lifestyle I had lived for most of my life a few years ago, was a very difficult decision for me. When you choose something life changing you are almost always crossing a bridge you cannot go back across. This filled me with anxiety. But the true contradiction is that you can never know what will come of this difficult choice, unless you choose something different and then see how it goes.

I’m a newcomer to rural southern Colorado. After two years I decided to compile a short journal about the ups and downs of moving from a good-sized city to rural America to build a passive solar retirement home in the foothills: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado Please share this information with your friends if they are considering similar life changes. Feel free to contact me directly to discuss any of these challenges, and to order your own signed copies of any of my books! Cheers, Laura Lee (email me: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com)