I live just above the tsunami zone in a tiny town on the Oregon Coast. The evacuation signs? They point to our neighborhood.
Right now that’s a metaphor for my life.
After working for nearly 55 years, the last 21 in the same job, I retired. After more than 20,000 days of employment I no longer live by anyone else’s schedule. My time is my own.
My purpose here is to document the transition from a middle manager with a sideline writing novels to a full-time creative; my journey into a full embrace of the modern maker movement in all its chaotic glory.
I won’t make this journey alone. I have a husband, children, friends, mentors, and colleagues who will all be a part of this.
I want this to be a record of the journey: the good, the bad, the ugly, the successes and the abject failures. I promise you this will be a real-time, warts-and-all, narrative of what happens when a semi-successful creative leaves the relative security of a decent job with a steady paycheck and benefits for the life of a full-time creative.
There are a lot of challenges ahead. Financial upheaval. Schedules destroyed. Relationships tested. Family disruption. Travel dreams. Drowning in a sea of possibilities.
I don’t know how I will address the issues, nor how they will be (eventually) resolved. But I can guarantee there will be some adventures along the way, and I hope to uncover some insights that will help those creatives and makers who want more than just a comfortable retirement.
Growing up in the 1950s and 60s retirement was next-door to death. Our parents and grandparents worked hard, retired at 65, and died before they turned 70. Retirement was mostly a few years of possibly-poor-health.
Now, we retire earlier and live longer, giving us time for a second act, or a third. Our health is better, we have treatments for ailments that were debilitating a generation earlier. For creatives especially it is a time of freedom from other peoples’ schedules, a time to make the things we want to make.
For me retirement was delayed well past 65 for various practical reasons, mostly financial. My (younger) husband, a full-time freelance writer for our entire marriage (36 years and counting) needed access to health insurance. When we found an affordable way around that, I gave my notice and left my office for the last time on the 15th of February, just a few months shy of my 72nd birthday.
Which brings us to today.
I’m in good health, I have a part-time consulting gig to supplement my Social Security and retirement, my husband has taken a flexible part-time job with access to health insurance, we’ve reduced our debt over the last couple years to reduce or eliminate those pesky monthly payments; in short, we have done the things the standard retirement articles tell us to do. Unfortunately we haven’t done all the things; there are home repairs not finished, we have two cars that are paid for but we’ve recently realized that we need a different vehicle (which may entail a financial hit), I need cataract surgery and have it scheduled in the next few weeks. All manageable but certainly not optimal. It would have been much better to take care of that stuff while there was that comfy paycheck to help deal with it.
But that’s the standard stuff, for people who have a standard retirement. Creatives are not “standard” people; they have a different worldview, a different way of looking at things, different needs.
There are going to be a lot of things that come up over time, and most of us have no idea where all those bumps are in our paths. I hope that you will share your bumps with me, that the comments, questions, and discussions will help us all figure out the road ahead.
{Note: Since I first wrote this piece I have had my cataract surgery and a very successful recovery. Modern medicine is a Very Good Thiing.}