Living a simpler life
Retirement: Fear or Adventure of a Lifetime?
I had an interesting conversation with a neighbor, who hopes to move to his house here in southern Colorado in the next year or so. The kids are all finishing college this year and he and his wife have built a nice “cabin” near us, and far away from his many responsibilities as a business owner back in Kansas.
Besides the usual, “Have I saved enough money?” fears, my new friend is quite worried about how he will fare in his new life here. He is born and raised German Lutheran with an amazing case of Type A personality. In other words, he likes to be doing something most of the time, preferably something productive, and often pushes himself with deadlines, hating delays and uncertainty.
Now you might say, who does like delays and uncertainty? Don’t we all like to feel in control of our fate? The only problem is, we aren’t. When it comes right down to it we could all fall ill or die today. Anything can happen to anyone at any time. Starting from that premise, what do I need to do today to further my own specific life goals?
I was also raised with that good old German authoritarian, “What have you produced today?” work ethic. Luckily I have also been given the wonderful opportunity to adjust to the idea of retirement very slowly, not all at once.
“What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other.” – George Eliot
My husband Mike is my best teacher in this area. He had the misfortune to go from highly-skilled and productive engineering technician to Chronic Fatigue Sufferer in his mid-thirties. After many job losses and years of doctors and others not believing him, he somehow adjusted to the anger and frustration of having an illness that nobody seemed interested in defining or diagnosing properly. (New research!)
The long-term effects of CFS forced Mike to retire early. It also taught him to have more patience with himself and everyone around him. First it made him very angry, then CFS made him a better person. In fact I’m fairly sure we wouldn’t get along so well if he had not been changed so much through his experience with this terrible illness.
His patience and understanding provided me with the unique opportunity to change careers. At age 50 I started over as a freelance writer. After 25 years in the library profession, I finally gained enough confidence to believe that I could be a writer. With Mike’s great emotional and financial support I did what I had always wanted to do, but also feared. I could not have done this without Mike’s help.
That is why I now see ‘retirement’ as the next great adventure.
With love and support we can spend time finding out what it is we really want to try. What did you LOVE as a kid? What did you really want to be doing when you first went to work? You can do those things now. Sure it may not make money, but it could be lots of FUN!
Too many of us focus solely on the money issues surrounding retirement, and not enough on “What’s next for me?” Can I change? Would I like to be a more relaxed or patient person? Can I adjust to not producing something everyday? Can I change my focus to making life less difficult for others? Now that’s a good retirement goal!
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)
Journey Back to Self, Finding Home…
I saw a great profile of one of my favorite human beings last Sunday on CBS Sunday Morning. Richard Gere has been a bit of a guru for me ever since he found me at exactly the right moment, in the midst of a tremendously depressing afternoon in the summer of 2004. From the television, he looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Hang on, it all changes.” That was enough for me, and he was so right!
Richard now works as an advocate for the disadvantaged of the world. He recently played a homeless man in his film “Time out of Mind”, twelve years in the making. He also works to bring attention to the terrible plight of immigrants worldwide: People without a country.
I find Richard has a knack for asking the important questions, questions like, “Where am I safe in this world?” and “How did I end up here?” And then he said, “We’re all about our stories…”
fe truth I have been focused on lately is how so many of us seem to find a way to return to our original or true self through the chaos that midlife can be. For example, the constant questioning of how I ended up so unhappy with my life at age 49, led me to rediscover who I am, and what I needed to accomplish before I died.
I see now I was in search of a new sense of home and comfort within myself. I was looking for my place in this world.
What did I love and want more of in my life? What parts of my life did I need to jettison RIGHT NOW? What voices in my head were leading me to unhappiness, and which ones were wise and compassionate?
Finding the right voices to listen to has led me to this place in rural Colorado, where the birds sing me awake each morning, and…
“the sun pours in like butterscotch and sticks to all my senses.” Thank you Joni!
How did this happen? How did I end up here, feeling so fortunate?
It’s a long story, one I can now share with you in my new memoir!
The wildflowers are lovely at Cordova Pass!
To celebrate our two year anniversary of moving to this beautiful part of Colorado, we drove up to Cordova Pass yesterday. As usual we had no traffic on the way up there and only met one other couple along the way.
Cordova Pass, at 11,248 feet, lies on the western shoulder of the West Spanish Peak, east of the Culebra Range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The drive up the pass can be a bit rough at times, but I enjoyed moving through the various eco-systems, and did not even know that we might be able to camp up there sometime. They have a bathroom!
We had heard that mid-June is a great time to see wildflowers up there, and they were right. These Blue Flag Wild Iris were everywhere…
…along with lots of Golden Banner and dandelions.
Along the way at the lower elevations we saw lots of these beautiful bushes in bloom. Thanks to my botanist friends I now know these are New Mexican Locust. No wonder I never saw them up north.
Lots of great views near the top of the pass…
…and the trees along the road were florescent GREEN!
Then there is this very cool arch cut into a dike on the other side of the pass. We had to stop so Mike could study the geology of the whole thing, of course.
Our drive down the North Fork of the Apishapa River Valley, down through Gulnare and Aguilar, was lush and so beautiful! This is one of the few places I have been in this country where everything seems exactly like it might have been a hundred years ago.
And I loved this cool looking Teletubbie village up on the hill!
Bye Bye!
Why write about yourself and your experiences?
As I begin working on my next book, a journal of retirement, I wondered why anyone would find this story interesting. I have certainly had more interest in this blog than I ever expected, with over 50,000 views so far from over 25,000 visitors all over the world! I so enjoy seeing those from other countries taking an interest in our escapades in rural southern Colorado.
Of course the next question is why blog at all? Why do some wish to share their daily lives and lessons with others, while most can’t even imagine it?
In this particular case, I thought there might be some who would like to see what it feels like to choose to leave a nice suburban home in one of the “best retirement cities in the country” to move to a rural area with little traffic or shopping, but so much amazing natural beauty and lovely silence. And as I read the posts I wrote a couple years ago, when considering this gigantic change for myself, I do find my thoughts and worries interesting in retrospect.
I guess what interests me the most is the psychology of changing something major in your life, especially past age 50 or 60. Why do some take the risk and go for it, while others stay home and watch TV? I guess it just comes down to personal taste, but also a gigantic fear of change.
I was full of fear the day we sold our nice home in Fort Collins. I really did not know what to expect, and I admit it, parts of our experience down here have been quite discouraging. But now I know we made the right choice for both of us. Sometimes you just have to take the big risk, leap, and build your wings on the way down.
“We must be willing to get rid of the life we had planned, to have the life that is waiting for us.” — Joseph Campbell
With the best of intentions, change can still be hell! Trust me, I know…
“Even in seemingly dormant times, we are in transition. Losses and gains are in constant play. We are the change-agent, and we are changed. Even without toil, we transform. So, wisdom advises us to open our hearts to transition; to honor fully what is passing, to learn from all that unfolds, and to welcome what arrives at our door each day with courage and curiosity.”
As all who have been reading this blog for the past year or so know, I have had many doubts about this big, dramatic move Mike and I started on two years ago. Especially when we first moved to Walsenburg, and I basically hated it.
But then if you took anyone from a beautiful, suburban home in Fort Collins, and moved them into a tiny, dirty 100-year-old house in a sad, rundown town an hour away from any decent sized city, the shock would be total, and it was!
The challenges we have faced in the past two years have been daunting for both of us. For me the biggest challenge was simply adjusting to such a different world than I was used to. For Mike it was the many extra expenses, frustrations, and delays in building a passive solar home in a rural environment.
I am now quite happy that we made this choice, while Mike says he wouldn’t have done it if he had known how unhappy I would be in the process of adjusting to something so different.
In retrospect I wish I had not worried so much about everything and trusted more in Mike’s vision for us, because this place is heaven. I fully appreciate how much courage and vision it took for Mike to push this whole project through to completion.
Now we live in a beautiful home that is supremely quiet, with fantastic views in every direction, and our direct-gain passive solar is working great! Plus I now feel like I’m making a few friends and slowly starting to feel like I belong here.
In summary: This place is perfect, but change can still be hell!
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 