Light and Dark - Spiraling into the Next Phase - My Intentional Life Change

I think I must have come through something. Maybe it's the sun. Maybe it's the air, still cold, but there's a damp that shoves the smells of musk and blooms up from the earth. It might be me, living out the myths of Persephone in the underworld, coming from the dark into the light. Ok, maybe it's just a case of seasonal affective disorder healing itself. No matter, I feel different. I sense light. And I didn't realize I was dark or depressed. It's Spring.

I picture a spiral. If I was asked to choose a symbol of some kind to illustrate my life, it would be a spiral. It conveys a sense movement... it may be up or down and always coming around. There's a near side,  the side I show, like the man in the moon, and a far side that only Sputnik sees, transmitting shaded glimpses back for study. As I spiral, I see the same sights, I go over the same territory but maybe with some movement... from a passage in a book, a conversation over wine, a Tweet, a poem, a fragment overheard from the stall in the Ladies...  something that swirls around  on the bright side and the dark and changes my view.

Ever since August, when I spontaneously offered to cut a day of work and agreed to take a 20% cut in pay and benefits, I've dwelt on this change. I organized it, named it,  monetized it to show value. I've refinanced my mortgage, reorganized my finances and done my taxes. I call my Fridays, my Serial Sabbatical. I schedule something to learn, experience or see on those days off.  I've spent time with friends in Spain and continue to renew my Spanish with Duolingo. I've made time to paint plein air, planned a vacation in Maine to learn about color and began an online sketching course.

With pressures for space at work, I gave up my office, moved into a cube and now work, most weeks, two days from home. I put in cabinets, bought a fancy bungee desk chair,  cleaned out two closets, made three trips to Salvation Army to do so. It's brought me an unexpected sense of expanded time at home, by myself and with a luxury of un-hurry.

All the while, I've stewed about these changes as a gateway to retirement. I equate these changes with the next phase of work or non work or different work as time will reveal. I'm living with a cut in salary. I have a day each week to fill. I'm searching to find meaning and purpose and organization in my life. And,  I wonder about how I'll live, where I'll live, will I live with someone,  and how well I live.

Last Saturday night, my friend... my friend with boundless patience agreed that I'd been spiraling round the same topics for quite some time. She reminded me that I already knew what to do. She'd seen this before, from another perspective... when I talked (and talked) about divorce... And knew all along I knew exactly what to do.

My spirals repeat the topic sometimes and they repeat a process. Even when I know the truth, my truth, I sometimes don't like it, and ask the question again like a Magic 8 Ball, hoping for a different answer. My 8 Ball is consistent, I'm just not ready to do what's best for me. Fear, inertia and fatigue block my momentum. I know that in the meantime, I continue to spiral, like I got pg and the baby's going to come whether I want it or not... (well that's exactly) what happened twenty nine years ago. This birth into a new life will be on my schedule and my sense of readiness whether I like it or not.

So, I think I came through something that I didn’t realize I traversed. This morning I felt a lightness that may be a sign of SAD lifting or maybe a sign that I can stop fretting. I have more of an understanding of my process. I have pieces of a plan, some of the what, some of the how, a sense of the when and now, I'll use my Fridays to discern more of each and always learning about the who.

Count Up: My Intentional Life Change - Status Report

As it turns out, the theme of my first quarter of the rest of my life is about money. Now into April and the second quarter of the year, I can see that I accomplished several things with my financial future in best stead. I refinanced my home moving from a 30-year mortgage to a 15-year. With the better rate, my monthly out lay is only a few dollars more but I have gained two big benefits. First, I am now nearly tripling the amount of equity. Instead of $150 per month, I gain $450. And, I no longer am escrowing, I am simply saving the amount to pay my taxes myself. When I retire and move to a more or less fixed income, but with this change, I will have less of a monthly nut. I will still save to pay for the property tax or I will use my savings then to pay it. For me, that is a big burden removed that gives me more money oxygen to breathe. 

I also changed my financial advisor. I chose one who is less incented to sell me stuff. The last one at Morgan Stanley kept pushing “alternatives”. This is the year 2015, but I kept picturing Enron or

Bernie Madoff. I don’t have a great memory for specifics, but I do remember the reaction to these two scandals from 2001 and 2008. I wanted something much more simple to understand and concrete, even if that is the miracle drug for what may ail my portfolio.

Of course, this quarter is IRS taxes too. I guess fortunately, I got a refund. I am hesitant because it was sizable and clearly I am not doing things right. I’d rather have the money in my pocket. It did go to paying off a lagging credit card, instead of a trip or something more fun. No, come to think of it, the remnants on the card were from my trip to Spain in February. All is well.

Yesterday, I received a report that shows the amount I will receive from my pension, monthly for the rest of my life, once I retire.  It’s not a lot, but I am grateful, that there is a constant source of income from outside my savings and Social Security. My next financial hurdle is to determine whether to stay, rent out or sell my current home. I like the idea of a rental property. I like the idea of renting-out where I live now because I see evidence that they rent quickly. Mine is larger with three bedrooms and two baths where most have 1½ baths, so I should be able to rent it and create some income. The question is, when do I do that? Now while I am working? If I wait, I don’t know how the banks will look at my credit once I retire… especially since I took a 20% pay cut with only working 4 days each week. My friend Karen pointed out that my talking about it feels like when I was deciding to get a divorce. I talked and talked about it, till I got it completely rationalized, event though I knew from the beginning exactly what I wanted. I know I want to move and rent my place. (As long as I don’t have to go through a move.)

I will continue to look at other revenue sources… coaching and consulting for example, over the next few months to learn what that could yield and what resources a launch would take.

In addition, I want to figure out one major volunteer project to align with during retirement. I want to find an issue that I can throw myself into and maybe make a difference. While others are working, I can keep the passions alive to get things going. I am leaning toward saving the planet. Is that big enough? I also think about joining the Peace Corps once  I stop working. I like the idea of a complete adventure for a month or three. I’m interested in looking into that and similar volunteer experiences. I like the idea of moving to a small place which I can lock up and leave for a couple months at a time… maybe with a lake view.

One theme for the next quarter will be where will I live and another theme of the next quarter is how will I live? The report I mentioned earlier had a date late in November for my potential retirement. I found that unnerving. The date is too soon. I will likely work longer to build up all coffers, but then again, if I can put everything into place, I will walk away from work without fear and with confidence that all will be well, to quote the saints! 

Nostalgia - You Are What You Were When and What You Choose to Be Now

I just got an email that has cute pictures and in poetic form tells all the things they miss about the nineteen-fifties, then asks me to send it to someone else who'd appreciate the memories.

I realized in reading it, I don't like those memories.

Those cliche' views leave out that women were relegated to staying home or could only get secretarial, teaching or nursing jobs, and African Americans had to sit in the back, couldn't eat in most restaurants, and feared being lynched. One couldn't marry someone of the same sex let alone show them affection. Education wasn't valued, men knew best, white people were all powerful and the United States was proud it dropped nuclear bombs. And, pedophilia, depression and anything else mental was seen as a personal fault not an illness.

I get the idea that we are who we were when, but I would relate to nostalgia better if it acknowledged the "and then... this evolved into that." I'd appreciate it if it noted that in time, change doesn't stop. Are they still wearing saddle shoes and wearing a pageboy or duck's ass? I mean everything they listed as contemporary will be just as old and past in twenty years anyway. I don't really like revering a time unless you can learn from it. We may rail against things not made as well now, but I'd rather have a cataract removed now than then... An hour in a chair in out patient suite vs three days in sand bags in a hospital... give me the good ole days... NOT.

I don't like nostalgia. Personally, I have no interest in making any of those times anything more than that... a place in time. I'd rather use my energy to make peace with today... to embrace all the things that have changed and live with integrity among them, to bring myself to understand the present, maybe try to make it better from the lessons that I learned from when I grew up. I'm so dismayed at seeing the fundamentalism that's trying to turn back time like in Indiana and around the world.

I still don't get why I feel different now that I am 60 from when I was 40. Ha! Sure, I can't get pregnant but I still have my whole life ahead of me to birth new things. I have to remind myself that it's okay to start things... even a business. I just may need a sooner than later succession plan. Thank goodness there's an app for that... probably.

There are years ahead. My watercolor painting reminds me daily that if I am at all normal, then I'll look back on the junk I'm doing now as the time I had to put in to get to where I will be then. My brother just bought something that requires classes and learning to be safe and to get good at it. That's inspiring. It's good to start something new. When my friends retired they picked up and moved to France. They started over... even language. That's more and more inspiring the closer I get to that time.

I find myself placing meaning on retirement that means shut down; that makes it seem to coincide with diminishment, but I don't know if or how that's going to happen... There's no sense in acting like it is inevitable or it's total incapacitation.

So, I’ve beat to death the idea that I really don't like nostalgia. The reality is, I do like to tell stories. So, my learning today is that I don’t want to be nostalgic for the sake of remembering. I want to remember so that the present and the future is worth remembering.