Each of us has a vision for what our retirement should look like. If you’re like me you have planned and worked for the day you will no longer be a slave to an alarm clock and someone else’s schedule. You have a list, at least in your own head, of the things you want to do, the places you want to go.
Then something happens and that plan gets shredded. Maybe it’s one of the “life rolls” I’ve talked about, or Mother Nature (she sent Hurricane Katrina to scuttle my plans for a trip to New Orleans several years ago), or a pandemic such as is trashing plans for the entire globe right now.
These two look like they know where they're going. Except that they're trapped in a vehicle that won't move. We've all had times like this!
Whatever it is, your plans will get messed with, and you will find yourself having to deal with the aftermath.
The idea for this came to me when my husband and I went for a drive in the middle of July. Because of the pandemic, all our plans for my retirement had gone right out the window. At first we had stalled, hoping things would get back under control quickly, but as time went on it became increasingly clear that wasn’t going to happen soon and we would need to make some adjustments. That drive was a one-afternoon substitute for a planned cross-country road trip. Yeah, plans change.
This is not what I planned to see. Instead of driving across the country we had to settle for scenery within an hour of home. Fortunately there's plenty of lovely places to see nearby.
While this relates to the discussion of “life rolls” and sick days, those are part of a larger picture: In retirement, as in our pre-retirement lives, we need to maintain flexibility. The good news is that in retirement we don’t have to plan around a work schedule, or the demands of a day job.
Flexibility should come much more easily when we become out own bosses, though it doesn’t always. The habits of a lifetime are hard to break, and we have trained ourselves to internalize whatever goal we are given and to strive toward it at all costs.
But we need to keep that flexibility in mind as we approach our creative pursuits as well. Your plans will get butchered, in ways you can’t anticipate. Right now I have a friend whose ceramics studio has been closed by the pandemic. Another friend lost their dance rehearsal space and their competitions have been cancelled. More friends can’t attend the conventions where they normally display their costuming efforts.
For every one of these people and many more creatives, the pandemic has brought about major disruptions in their creative pursuits. But none of them have abandoned their creative pursuits. They have drawn on their own flexibility and ingenuity to find ways to continue their creative lives.
I would argue that in times of disruption and crisis your creativity is more important than ever. I hope you’ll indulge me while I get a bit metaphysical. Finding an outlet that feeds your soul and brings you joy is critical when your world is in turmoil. Losing yourself in the feel of clay in your hands, in the concentration on a particular brushstroke, or the focus on a passage of composition can soothe the anxiety when things go wrong.
Finding a way to continue the thing you love when your plans are thrown into disarray, staying flexible and open to new ideas and new processes, giving yourself permission to change plans, those are all positive ways to weather the crises that will arise.
You can always find a way out. You just have to stay open to the possibilities.
We have all had those times on the day job where someone else set an agenda, a schedule, and remained inflexibly dedicated to that plan, even when it was falling apart. Their inflexibility not only created problems in fulfilling the original goal, it created new and sometimes intractable difficulties. All their strict adherence to The Plan did was make things worse.
We are no longer bound to someone else’s agenda and schedule. Where we previously were held to The Plan, we are now able to make A Plan. We can always change A Plan; it is, after all, only one of many options. But when it becomes The Plan, when it is the only one, we lose all flexibility.
In a greater sense, The Plan, the lack of flexibility, puts limits on our creativity. If writing novels becomes The Plan, then we remove the option of writing short stories, or poetry, or non-fiction essays.
Stay flexible. Be willing to explore your creative options and open yourself up to things you might not have considered if you were following The Plan. This is one of the beauties of retirement; we have the ability to give ourselves options. No one else can impose The Plan on us, and I believe we shouldn’t impose it either.
Flexibility is a gift we can give ourselves, and it is one of the most precious. It is permission to explore, to try and fail or succeed, and to adjust our plans and goals accordingly. It is the gift of setting our own rules, our own expectations, and our own plans.
It is the gift of Another Plan whenever we choose.