But What Now?

Today’s Seattle PI is running an article by Suzy Orman as part of her “Women & Money” syndication entitled “You can find many ways to get set for retirement.” She begins by making reference to a Wachovia survey reporting that more than half of the women surveyed “feel worried” about being prepared for retirement. I found a press release from Wachovia.com, dated April 3, 2007 that does indeed report this.

Some Things Suzy Orman Suggests To Be More Prepared

1. Own your own home and have it paid off before retirement. Not only does this have the obvious benefit of no longer having a mortgage payment, but it also opens the possibility for a reverse mortgage later in life when you may need it. My mother has taken a reverse mortgage out on her house and, quite frankly, it allows her to continue to live in it and give her a little extra money every month.

2. Take advantage of your employer’s retirement bonuses. In other words, if your company (or agency as in the case of federal workers) offers a 401(k) or 403(b) with matching contribution, you are not only giving up more retirement income later on, but you’re also throwing away compensation today! I was lucky to have a boss early on in my government career who encouraged me to contribute the max amount required to receive a match, even when I thought I could not afford it at the time. It got me into the habit and I have been contributing the maximum contribution ever since.

3. Lower your auto insurance premium, by increasing the deductible to at least $1000. I guess this could go both ways if you ever got into an accident and had to pay those costly repairs.

4. Consider canceling life insurance once your children are grown. I have fairly inexpensive life insurance offered by my job that I will be able to continue after retirement, however there is really no reason to keep it because my partner will not be relying on this money to pay the mortgage if I die first. If you are still in a position of having dependents or of sharing a mortgage, it’s probably best to keep it.

5. Retire without credit card debt! This probably goes without saying, but it’s an important one. With less income in retirement, you could find yourself in a situation where all you could pay is the minimum due, which means you’d never get it paid off. If you were able to make larger payments, it’s still money that you could be using more productively.

6. Collect Social Security. You can begin at age 62, or wait until age 67. To learn more go to www.ssa.gov and search for “age reduction.”

Creating Healthy Habits With Money

Orman goes on to talk about creating healthy spending and saving habits early in life. The earlier we start saving, the more we have later on and the less likely we’ll ever become dependent upon credit cards. These habits will carry over into retirement and help teach our children better money habits.

She also suggests having your kids sit with you while you pay the bills. I really like this suggestion. Not only will they learn more about family finances, but they’ll have a better understanding of why you go to work everyday. Another side effect may easily be that they’ll get a deeper understanding at an early age about what it means to work. Hopefully, this will help them be more mindful about the career they choose.

To learn more about Suzy Orman, go to suzeorman.com.

Hello from my hotel room in Portland, Oregon! I’m here on business again, or rather I’m somewhere on business again, and again, not doing a very good job of taking care of myself.

Last night before I went to sleep, while feeling overly stuffed after having dinner with my team, I wrote a list of five things that I have done, or am currently doing, that help me feel more centered and healthy.

1. Meditation

I have been meditating on and off for many years, using a variety of different techniques and tools. There are lots of books on the market to help get a deeper understanding of what meditation is.

The two I recommend the most are Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD (he has a companion CD set which I own and have used called Guided Mindfulness Meditation) and Insight Meditation by Joseph Goldstein.

Joseph Goldstein & Sharon Salzberg also offer Insight Meditation: A Step-By-Step Course on How to Meditate that I think I may consider myself once I am retired and have the time

I almost signed up for Transcendental Meditation because I had heard such wonderful things about it for so many years, until the woman doing the orientation wanted $2500 from me to learn it.

A few years ago my partner and I learned Deepak Chopra’s Primordial Sound Meditation. We invited a local teacher to come to our home and do the teaching. It took 2 sessions each taking about 2 1/2 hours and we thoroughly enjoyed it. I still use the mantra to help me center and relax, although I have not been meditating on a daily basis, twice a day, as recommended by the program.

Most recently, I purchased a meditation program called, of all things, The Meditation Program. It uses binaural beat frequencies to gradually bring our minds to more and more relaxed states. I’m on the 2nd week and definitely feel more relaxed and stress free during and after listening. I also love the trance music woven around the beats.

2. Eating right

Isn’t that what we’re always told to do? What does it really mean? I think it means different things to different people. There are a lot of books and blogs about conscious eating. I think they’re probably useful, but what I have seen from most of them is what to eat rather than how to eat. Of course, eating whole, natural foods is much better for us than eating processed and fried foods, so when I am eating out I do my best to eat healthy food. Sometimes I love a hamburger, fries, and a beer, though.

For me, especially on my heavy (pardon the pun) travel schedule, it means being conscious of what I’m eating so that I do not overeat. Last night I decided that I am going to get into the habit of saying a little “consciousness” prayer before I eat. This is my first stab at one!

I eat this food to become nourished, body, mind and spirit.
Each bite will be taken with full conscious awareness
While I enjoy all of the flavors, smells and tastes.
My higher intelligence is guiding me to know when my hunger is satisfied.
I give thanks to this meal.

3. Being present in the now

If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware of Eckhart Tolle and his teachings. Being in the now helps us get centered in every way, but the best benefit for me, when I can truly practice this, is being free from worry.

Worry is the state of thinking about something that didn’t go right in the past or something we’re afraid isn’t going to go right in the future. Worry is not our present reality. In fact, many of the times I’ve worried the most about something really going wrong, it turns out completely different. Then I wonder why I spent all that time worrying (and not sleeping, etc.).

4. Exercise

I know I feel so much better when I exercise regularly. Getting out and walking for a half hour to an hour a day is beneficial for many reasons. It gets me out of the house, away from my computer, and out into the sunshine (that is when there is sunshine in Seattle). My body feels energized and alive. Sometimes I will take conference calls while walking, which is my testimonial to Blackberries being not all bad.

Weight resistance training also has multiple benefits. It increases my metabolism, which in turn helps me burn more calories at rest. For every pound of muscle, we burn about 50 extra calories per day.

I have been working out on and off for most of my adult life. To get the best results, join a gym close to where you live. For most people, if you have to travel too far you won’t go.

I highly recommend an exercise program called Power of 10 : The Once-A-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution developed by Adam Zickerman, founder of Inform Fitness in New York City. The Inform Fitness site provides a wealth of information on how this works. What I love about it is that I go to the gym once or twice a week for 15 to 20 minutes each time and really get a good workout.

5. Know when and how to say no

If we want to stay centered, we can’t be all things to all people. Setting boundaries with others is vitally important to our health and well-being! Not only that, but we also cannot take on every project under the sun. This has been an issue for me. I love to learn and get information. There is just too much to learn all at once, though, and way too much information to take in. I have to decide what is most important and most beneficial and do those things.

I need to manage my time and projects at work, as well. I still think that Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is the best resource out there to help us become more effective and centered.

I am reading a very good book by Marika and Howard Stone, Too Young To Retire. The thrust of the book is that retirement is an outdated concept. This is because we’re working longer, living longer and with more leisure time, strive for more meaning in our lives than ever before.

Retire the word Retirement

AARP disassociated its name from retirement some time ago by dropping American Association of Retired Persons in favor of only AARP. Whether this is because they’re looking for a larger membership base or if it’s because they decided to redefine retirement itself is up to debate. The authors of this book view the name change as AARP being ready to retire retirement.

Retire the word retirement is the first thing on their list of how to retire the concept of retirement. Retirement is not going away quietly, though. Before Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted social security, most people did not retire because they could not afford to. The concept of retirement did not exist then as it does today.

Their second item on the list is “realize that retirement is a relatively new concept.” Not only did people not retire because of money issues, but because elders were valued for their knowledge and skills.

Retirement Definitions & Antonyms

The book is filled with exercises to help the reader rethink what retirement is, evaluate assets, skills and abilities, take action on things, and a host of others. I have barely begun. The first set of exercises in the introduction invite me to really think about and write about the word retire.

Here is a pretty boring definition of retirement in Wikipedia

Retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely. A person may also semi-retire and keep some sort of retirement job, out of choice rather than necessity. This usually happens upon reaching a determined age, when physical conditions don’t allow the person to work any more (by illness or accident), or even for personal choice (usually in the presence of an adequate pension or personal savings). The retirement with a pension is considered a right of the worker in many societies, and hard ideological, social, cultural and political battles have been fought over whether this is a right or not. In many western countries this right is mentioned in national constitutions.

The rest of the short article covers retirement from a fairly traditional explanation of what retirement is.

Work is the obvious antonym to retirement. The American Heritage Dictionary tiresomely defines work as

1. Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something.
2.
1. A job; employment: looking for work.
2. A trade, profession, or other means of livelihood.
3. Something that one is doing, making, or performing, especially as an occupation or undertaking; a duty or task: begin the day’s work.
4. An amount of such activity either done or required: a week’s work.
5. The part of a day devoted to an occupation or undertaking: met her after work.
6. One’s place of employment: Should I call you at home or at work?

What I Discovered While Doing This Exercise

I found coming up with an antonym for retirement not all that challenging. It’s clear to me that the opposite of retirement is working. However, on further examination, retirement doesn’t only apply to people leaving jobs after working all their lives to some retirement pasture.

For example, what about retiring an object? Like my old sneakers. They’re worthless to me, they’ve lost their cushioning. They no longer gather stares at the gym. They’re worn out. Their shoe strings are frayed. Need I go on?

For sure, this example doesn’t help me feel positive about retirement as a concept. In fact, while my organization calls what I’m going to do in a year when I leave this job retirement, I call it something else. I am making plans to leave this job when it’s financially prudent in order to pursue new vocational adventures. Wow!

I personally feel that the term retirement is not going to, so to speak, retire anytime soon. Social security is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Many corporations and government agencies provide retirement benefits that people are free to take advantage of when they meet requirements.

Retirement really no longer entirely means leaving work for good and sitting in front of the TV or playing golf for the rest of our lives. It’s really more of a transition. The transition could be from one productive stage of life to another, allowing new choices and opportunities. It could also be a time for a break.

I’m fairly certain that most people take early retirements to leave jobs they’re dissatisfied with. I think we should all leave jobs we’re dissatisfied with as soon as we can. We all have so many more choices than we’re currently aware of. We get stuck inside our own tunnel vision thoughts of who we are and what we’re capable of doing. Or even what we’re comfortable doing. Some people stay in jobs they hate for years because they’re afraid of moving out of their comfort zones.

But I digress. I recommend this book to help us really rethink and redefine the entire concept of retirement. I know I’m going to enjoy doing the exercises as I read through it and will most likely share most of what I write here in future posts.

Tonight at dinner my sweetie and I were talking travel, as we often do. Since this year we are planning a trip to Nepal, she shared a story about a man she met there in 1994. There is no romance in this story as she and her ex-husband shared the experience together.

Anyway, he grew up in Chicago. She met him on the banks of the Bagmati River in Pasherpatinath. The Bagmati River flows to the Ganges and and at this particular location is a Hindu temple for cremations. He was a baba, or Hindu holy man. And he grew up in Chicago, for crying out loud.

After hearing more of the story, I thought, hmmmm, this is a job I’d be interested in. They are wanderers, smoking hash most of the day and accepting alms from people. Where do I sign up?? How was it that a guy from Chicago became a Hindu holy man?

This gives me hope that I can be whatever I want to be.

And if smoking hash all day, wandering and facilitating Hindu cremations aren’t your thing, she also met another man who grew up in Chicago selling jewelry in the gold souk in Amman, Jordan.

What is it about Chicago?

I witnessed a Hindu cremation while I was in Bali in 1999. It was amazing, this was my second trip abroad. I went out for a walk and came upon a parade where men were carrying a large bull and most of the townspeople were following it.

We came to the beach and an entire cremation ceremony took place before my eyes. I was very moved at the time because my father had recently died. Standing next to me was a man who spoke to me in English. He had lived in, need I even say it?, Chicago! He told me what was happening and pointed out a small pile of burning embers close to the water, telling me “That was someone not as important cremated earlier today.”

Ok, I’m not from Chicago. I’ve flown through Chicago too many times to mention. Maybe that counts for something.

According to Shakespeare in the Merry Wives of Windsor, the world is our oyster. He referred to young, rich people, but, on the whole people didn’t live as long in Shakespeare’s time. So, the world is my oyster and, even though I am from Seattle (and female), I am ready to accept its riches.

I recently came across an article in Entrepreneur.com called Hiring employees over age 50 is a smart move - if you do it right by Mark Henricks. According to this article, those of us in this age group have many more opportunities to choose from than we might have thought.

By 2010, “nearly a third of the U.S. work force will have had 50 or more birthdays, according to a report by AARP.” And not only will there be that many of us in the work force, but our advanced skill sets will continue to be in high demand. Employers will be, and in some cases already are, being challenged to fill positions with qualified and interested individuals.

Traits of Older Workers

1. Experience
2. Skills
3. Loyalty
4. Desire for meaningful work
5. Desire to learn new things and experience new challenges

Some employers will want to change their recruiting materials to include pitches to older applicants.

Older employees are most attracted by competitive compensation and benefits, interesting and meaningful work, opportunities for development and advancement, and a flexible schedule, according to AARP’s report. Flexible scheduling is especially appealing, says Robert Morison, executive vice president of Kingwood, Texas, HR research and consulting firm The Councours Group. “We’ve found that the most popular format for working in retirement is not shorter wordays or workweeks. It’s [longer] chunks of time off.”

What This Means To Me!

Naturally, being in this age group and being close to taking an early retirement from a job (or really a bureaucracy I no longer enjoy working for), this article and others like it resonate strongly.

And, since I am taking an early retirement, aka, I will take a percentage penalty for each year below age 62, I will not have enough money to sustain my current lifestyle and will need to continue working in some capacity.

More than that, though, I am looking forward to contributing my skills and experience (old and new) in new environments. Time off for travel and other activities will be of major importance to me and my partner.

Cut not the wings of your dreams,
for they are the heartbeat and the freedom of your soul.

Flavia

Read the full article here:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2006/october/167826.html

In the March 9th edition of Parade Magazine, Frank McCourt wrote a two page article called We All Can Have Second Acts (& Third!). I read it and hung onto it and read it again.

Mr. McCourt came to this country as an Irish immigrant. He initially earned his money picking up garbage. Knowing he loved writing, but following his practical mind instead, he became an English teacher.

He refers to this decision as the voices in his head, the one who knew that his dream was to be a writer and the other that said, “Yeah, but that won’t put bread on the table.”

The parallel for me is that teaching English was what I dreamed of doing, although I never did become an English teacher. I did eventually get a degree in English Literature at the advanced age of 39, but by that time I was pretty entrenched in the working world, ‘putting bread on the table,’ with no plans of going back to school to become a teacher.

But I digress… After 30 years of teaching, he retired and as he puts it, made little marks on paper until he had a book. In his words, “I stood before kids and talked about writing. Many of my students were superb writers; some were geniuses. I envied them.”

That book was Angela’s Ashes which went on to be a bestseller and then a major motion picture.

Frank McCourt was 66 when he had his first bestseller! Stamped on a beautiful picture of him sitting in a deck chair with a serene lake at his back is a circle that says “Live Longer, Better, Wiser.”

That’s good advice for anyone, but the more important message for me that there is time to follow my dream, i.e., do what I love. Reading this article again helps to solidify my decision to retire from my soulless job at the first possible moment I can.

Occasionally I need these reminders to help me get over the current paycheck that keeps so many of us tied to a life we just muddle through but hardly even notice anymore, except for all the complaining we do about our coworkers who are as miserable, or more, than we are.

Viva la second and third acts! I’m there.

I feel so busy, I spend so much time taking care of work business, I work at night, I work on the weekends and never seem to get it done. People depend on me to take care of certain things and I feel a responsibility to follow through.

Looking Forward to Retirement

Many people look forward to retirement because they don’t want to be this busy anymore, and they don’t want people intruding on their time and personal space. However, the other extreme is also true. Once some people retire they’re a little (or maybe a lot) lost without that responsibility. Especially people who have had positions of responsibility and management.

Even though I am looking forward to retirement (i.e., restarting on a new direction), I’m pretty sure that I’ll miss the people on my team and I’ll miss being relied upon. I won’t, however, miss deadlines not of my making and being in the position of having to bother others to meet those deadlines. On the other hand, I guess we’re all in it together for now and when the time comes I will be dropping out and someone else will take my place.

What will help is that I’ve been through this before. And, as much as I’d like to believe that they can’t go on without me, I know for a fact that they can and they will. And so will I. Change makes the world go round.

Being Busy After Retirement

You think that you’re not going to be busy anymore after you retire? Some of the busiest people I know are retired. What’s different about being busy when you’re working vs. being busy when you’re retired?

Here’s what will make the difference for me - I will be working on or enjoying or mostly choosing those things that I really want to be busy with. And, even more importantly, I will have time to not be busy if I so choose.

One of my favorite quotes from Eckhart Tolle is that “stillness speaks.” In other words, when we find time for stillness and we quiet our minds, we learn what it is we’re really here for and what will give us the most happiness. When we’re continuously busy, that stillness is not accessible. That is, unless we allow it.

I’ll be honest. As much as I want the stillness, allowing the time, allowing the stillness hasn’t been easy. I keep thinking that I’ll have time after I retire. That’s kind of a cop out, though. The interesting thing is as I write this I remember that when I was doing my 3 hour commute, two times a week I was in such inner turmoil that I found time every day to meditate. I know now that I was able to thrive during that time and even come out the other side a better person because I found time to quiet my mind and be still.

A retirement study released today by Transamerica reports that

“The majority (65%) of working Americans aged 50+ are becoming more comfortable with change and uncertainty as they grow older.”

As someone over 50, this doesn’t surprise me. In fact, when I read or hear that it’s something new that people in the workforce today will change careers at least x number of times, I think, so what else is new? I’ve change careers 4 times and even then, I’m going to retire early.

In fact, early retirement will be my 5th career change. I’m not completely certain what it is I’ll be doing to earn money, but I’m not all that worried about it.

My mother is proud of me because I have a government job, and in her generation, having a stable job was very important. In today’s world, a government job is probably as close as you’re going to get to something a 20 year old can get into today and expect to retire from with a pension in 30 years. But even that may change.

My mother taught me how to be resourceful, though, and continues to help me accept where I am today.

My father, on the other hand, bristled at the idea of working for someone else and had a goal of creating his own business by age 40. Bless his soul, he did it. When I was in my 20’s I didn’t appreciate it in the way I do now and I wish he was here today so that I could let him know how proud I am of what he accomplished.

I am lucky to have a role model who taught me that we do create our own reality. The funny thing is that I have a memory of him telling me that most of what we achieve in life is through “chance.” That surely wasn’t the case for him.

“Not Daunted by Retirement Uncertainty, But Not Expecting Too Much

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of pre-retirees say they will handle the change and uncertainty associated with growing older well and two-thirds (66%) are confident that even with the uncertainty associated with retirement, everything will work out.

The study suggests they are not only comfortable with the uncertainty; they also may be more realistic than commonly thought about their next life stage. When asked their retirement goals, most pointed to financial needs (having a steady monthly income –90%, having good health insurance — 88%, and having enough money to pay for medical bills if they become sick — 85%) as opposed to traveling frequently (50%), affording to buy a house/apartment (34%) or leaving something for their children when they are gone (39%). In fact, 68% plan to be working in some capacity as they age.”

Read the full story here: New Study Debunks Old Myth; Coping With Change Eases With Age … Boomers Confident They Can Handle Retirement Transition

LifeTwo has a series of humorous “aging backwards” blog posts. Today I enjoyed a fun post on sleeping with a couple of fairly unique tips for how to sleep better. My partner has used melatonin as a treatment for jet lag and she claims it works wonders to get her internal clock back on track.

Sleeping in the City

The tip to keep your room dark isn’t always easy when you live in the city as we do and we’ve gotten used to having some light streaming in from the streetlights outside our window. Worse than sleeping in a room that’s not entirely dark, though, is sleeping in a room that is noisy.

During the winter, when the windows are closed, our bedroom is fairly quiet. But in the warm summer months we so look forward to and love in Seattle, having the windows open are an absolute necessity. We could purchase an air conditioner but in this mild climate it would be an unnecessary energy drain.

Instead, we have gotten used to the traffic noise going past our house. I tried the ear plug route and didn’t like the feeling of isolation they left me with. I didn’t like having something stuffed in my ears either.

Read the whole post at ZZZ is for Beauty

Manicures & Pedicures (French or not)

Another aging backwards tips post is on French manicures. I’m not really into manicures but I love pedicures, although I prefer having them done in a salon rather than at home. That’s half the fun. But if you prefer to do it yourself (either manicure or pedicure), you’ll have to read this post Oui Love French Manicures. While you must pardon the pun, there really are some good tips here.

Retiring to a Warmer and Quieter Location

This brings me back to Kauai! Oh, I’d love to go back to Kauai. Right now, in fact. I can show off my beautiful pedicured toes year round and get plenty of sleep in a dark, quiet room. Read my Retiring to Paradise post if you want to fantasize along with me.

I have countdown clocks in a few places, including my work Outlook calendar. My Google countdown clock reports that as of today I have 298 days until my earliest possible retirement date. As the number goes down, the dreams in my head go up.

A Facebook friend wrote that I am too young to retire, that in truth what I am doing is re-starting. Yes, I know it all comes down to language and semantics. In our culture, retirement has connotations of old age and sitting around with nothing to do. I don’t think that anything could be further from the truth.

My truth is that in about a year from now, I will have the resources and the time to do something new. While I am not completely dissatisfied with my current job, I know that I am looking forward to moving on to something different. There are aspects of my job that I no longer enjoy and I love myself enough to do what I know is best for me.

Besides, I love challenges. Some people find their challenges on the job and I have surely been one of them. Now I am facing an even greater challenge. I am starting a new business. Today, with everything else I have on my plate, I don’t know what this will eventually look like, but I do know that it is shaping up. What was a big lump of clay even less than a year ago is starting to look like a lumpy mountain. The tectonic plates of my entrepreneurial spirit are moving and shoving and taking on a life of their own.

For now, I am learning all that I can, reading everything I can get my hands on (spending plenty of money on Amazon these days!) and writing.

How have you re-started?

What

I’m smiling at my title because I’m not supposed to actually answer this question. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please read my last post here.

I bought an iPod nano last weekend so that I can listen to audiobooks while I walk. Carrying that bulky CD player was becoming a drag. So, I spent the first couple of days figuring out how to rip an 8 CD audiobook into iTunes and make it bookmarkable (i.e., it’s an audiobook rather than a song). Anyway, I got that figured out. So, then I ripped about 50 CDs of music and a put a few videos onto it.

Now that I have all this music on here, I am listening to songs and albums I haven’t listened to in a very long time. This is a revelation!! I’m sitting here listening to an old Arlo Guthrie CD “Running Down The Road” and this song is “My Creole Bell!” is playing. I learned this song on the guitar last year from a Stefan Grossman country blues instruction video! I’m wanting to run upstairs and pick up my guitar and start playing again right now! On the same CD there is another song that I learned when I was 15 years old, “Coming Into Los Angeles.” In fact, it’s the first full song I ever learned on the guitar (which, if you know the song and like it as much as I do, you’ll understand how it’s not very difficult to play some really cool stuff pretty quickly).

Maybe I can blame my job for ignoring my beautiful guitar and leaving it strapped into its case, but it’s really all about the choices I make. I also know that when I’m not pulled in the way too many different directions time-wise and energy-wise, I will dust off the things I love to do and I will do them again. So, maybe I’m a musician, maybe that’s who I am!

Let’s face it, I can blame my job for all kinds of things. My bad back, exercising too little, waking up in the morning with too much noise in my head about doing, doing, doing, and not pursuing creative hobbies. The cool thing is that I am also making choices for myself every day. And every day I get closer to the choice I’m making about my job.

And every day and every moment I also get to live fully in the present. This means that I must remember to pick up my guitar and play and I must remember to listen to my favorite music.

Ok, that does it, I’m a musician, that’s who I am. Who are you? What have you not been doing because you don’t have enough time?

Check out this video of my guitar teacher Stefan Grossman teaching My Creole Bell. I love his teaching style.

My partner and I saw Eckhart Tolle today at Benaroya Hall in Seattle. We were mesmerized for 3 hours (minus the 20 minute break in the middle) by his disarmingly honest and real presence. I read The Power of Now years ago when it first came out. Then I listened to mp3s during my long job commute and most recently I am listening to A New Earth on my iPod.

The message that he so beautifully conveyed is that we are not separate from ourselves. There is no “me” as in “my life.” Rather, I am life with no separation between the two. I love myself and I hate myself are 2 sides of the coin which separates us from the living entity that we truly are. We have come to believe in a self outside of our actual existence and consciousness.

He spent about 2 1/2 hours talking about this from many different angles in ways that almost anyone can understand. I highly recommend reading his books, listening to his audiobooks, and watching his DVDs. If you can, go see him and listen to him speak.

Here are a few quotes I took away from today and will use to help with becoming more and more present myself.

“What is my relationship to the present moment?” Ask yourself this often to help be in the now. This is a teaching I’d heard on an mp3 before and I’ve found that when I ask myself this question it helps me get back to being in the present.

“Can I be the space for this?” I was on the edge of my seat when he started talking about this. It’s a technique to use for continuing to be present when in the presence of unconscious people, such as people who are going off on you or people who are demanding things of you or what have you. He joked that this is the one to hang on the cubicle wall.

“Who am I” He said to ask this question often but don’t answer it. It will help to open the door to awareness.

“I am” This is in the same realm with “Who am I” but with a slightly different twist. I am is the pronouncement of to be, “the formless I am; the formless one life.” It is simply “I am life,” rather than “This is my life.”

And for all of us retiring soon or already retired, but really for everyone, “Honor your function, but don’t let it be your identity.” This is really such a powerful message.

Playing Computer Games

Leisure is taking time off. Leisure is doing something you love to do. Leisure is sometimes just escaping to your computer to play games after a long week of taking care of too much, too fast with too few breaks five days in a row. That’s called work, the state of non-leisure. The place we yearn to leave (or at least I do) as soon as we can.

I love Pogo. Usually when I get on Pogo and play my favorite games there are on average another 350,000 players online at the same time. That’s a pretty large number, but not when you compare it with YouTube.

Here’s a video I found on YouTube that someone put together showing some of the games. It’s a couple of years old, but if you’ve never seen Pogo before it will give you an idea of what they’ve got. I love the pool game.

Watching YouTube

I’ve found that when I get on YouTube, time just disappears. I get on to watch something and then I start watching all the related videos and before I know it a couple of hours may have passed. My friends report the same thing. In fact, now that I’ve put a link to the site here, I’ll probably lose you for a few hours.

Ernie Zelinski’s books are all about leisure. He’s helped me understand what leisure is at a deeper level and with this new found grasp I am more than ready for retirement in a year. It can’t come soon enough for me.

I know I won’t sit around all day playing computer games and watching videos on YouTube, but I will part of the time and I’ll feel less guilty doing it because my time will belong to me. During the day instead of responding to the requirements of my job, I will be working towards goals of my own making (i.e., the things I’m trying to fit into my evenings and weekends now and feel just too mentally exhausted from my job to really give real justice to). Instead I play computer games and zone out for awhile.

When I let myself indulge in leisure time, I usually come out the other side refreshed and renewed. I’ll write more later about other forms of leisure, that is, after I play a few more games of Tri Peaks Solitaire and watch a bunch of videos on YouTube.

Many of us, myself included, are taking early retirements because we know we have choices and we know we’d like to do something different than what we’re doing in our current jobs. In today’s environment, we’re surrounded by choices, too many choices it often seems.

Once we take the leap and jump off the cliff into early retirement, we may need some focus or direction. And if you’re anything like me, you have a long list of things you’ve been wanting to do or learn or become or…

Community colleges are wonderful places to not only get a new focus, but also to meet like minded people. And this doesn’t mean that you have to actually attend in person anymore, although community building will be obviously enhanced when you meet people in person.

I think that every community college now offers discounted online classes through Ed2Go. You can go directly to Ed2Go and sign up for classes, or you can sign up through your local community college. My experience is that the classes are less expensive when you sign up through your local community college. Even without the discount, they are not expensive and the choices are about as limitless as your imagination.

Do you want to write, paint, learn a programming language, learn about the stock market or how to break into the real estate market? How about photography, guitar, cooking or travel?

I have taken writing classes online. I especially enjoyed Writterific, but there are a number of classes to choose from. You could become a full time student, in fact I am looking forward to that luxury myself.

Also, many community colleges are now offering classes that are only open to people who are 55 years of age or older. You know what this means, don’t you? It means that there is a huge demand for these classes! A couple of years ago I wanted to take a watercolor class and the only ones available were being offered to this demographic. I was still too young. I’ll be 55 in a month from now. Wow, that caught me by surprise!

With education the possibilities are endless and our choices are endless. And, anymore, the options available to us are wide open.

This is it, you wake up in the morning and you don’t have to go to work. This is not just another day off, this is the real thing. You’ve turned in all of your equipment, including that pesky Blackberry and pager. There is nothing and no one you need to respond to. You are free.

Do you know what you’ll do? Ok, it is the very first day. It might feel completely exhilarating or maybe a little scary. If you’re asking the question, “what’s there to do?” you may be feeling apprehensive about how you’re going to spend the day without someone telling you what to do or without that repetitive task you’ve been performing for the last several months or years.

Are you alone today or is your life partner also no longer going to a job? Have you thought about what you wanted to do after you retired? Do you have any friends or relatives you can call and invite out to lunch or to take a walk with you?

But, wait, you say, “I want to spend the day blissfully alone and start to get to know myself.” Bravo for you, what a sweet way to begin the rest of your life.

Here you are, after having worked so many years, faithfully saving your money as best you could and dreaming about the day you no longer have to show up at the office. Now it’s time for you.

Imagining that today is the first day of my own retirement, I’ve put together a list of goals for the day.

1. Sleep in. When I get up, take a nice long bath and then luxuriate over a pot of tea and a light breakfast.

2. Go work out at the gym at 10 AM rather than my usual 5 AM. What joy!

3. If it’s a nice day, treat myself to a long walk in my favorite part of the city. Maybe I’ll go to Discovery Park or Broadway or the Sculpture Park. I have so many choices, it’s a good thing I have tomorrow, too!

4. If it’s cold and rainy, start a fire in the fireplace and curl up on my favorite chair with my darling cat and a book I’ve been wanting to read.

5. Make a date with my sweetie for lunch somewhere we’ve never been before.

6. Most importantly, accept and love myself, even if I don’t do any of these things on my list. Treat myself and others with kindness all day.

There is always tomorrow.

So, you’re retired now. All of your co-workers who you have been friends with are still working and your interests are beginning to diverge. Or you’ve been retired so long that you no longer know many of the people you used to work with. You’ve made new friends and moved on.

Or maybe you haven’t. Here’s where we can take a cue from the younger generation.

MySpace is a phenomenon that began in 1999, believe it or not. I got this from Wikipedia. It started out as eUniverse in 1998. In internet terms, that was almost the dark ages. According to Wikipedia, as of February 3, 2008 there are over 300 million members. Never before in history has any media attracted that many people in that short amount of time.

Facebook was founded in early 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and was restricted to students of Harvard University where Zuckerberg had been a student. Not long after, membership was opened to other ivy league colleges in the Northeast. As time went on, membership was opened further and in September, 2006, anyone over age 13 could become a member.

Since then, Facebook membership has increased tremendously to where the number of people joining monthly is on par with MySpace and if the trends continue as they are, may outpace MySpace in 2008 in new membership signups.

The reasons for this are that Facebook, for the most part, attracts an older and more educated crowd than MySpace, so if you are joining in your 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and beyond, you are more likely to find friends. And Facebook doesn’t bombard you with banner ads the way MySpace does.

My purpose for writing this wasn’t to compare Facebook to MySpace, though. You can join either one you choose. The purpose is to inform you that Facebook is a great place to meet people.

You might find long lost friends, people you went to high school or college with or past co-workers. Another way to meet people is in groups. There are groups for just about anything you can think of and if the group you are looking for doesn’t exist, you can easily create it.

Joining and creating a member profile is easy. I recommend you create one with your real name and a good recent picture of yourself. This way people who are looking for you can find you and if you have a common name, which so many of my old friends seem to have, people may be able to recognize you by your picture.

Go to www.facebook.com and click the signup button to get started. Please comment if you have anything to add or have any questions about joining Facebook and being a member of the Facebook community.

Thinking and dreaming about my own impending early retirement is one of my favorite things to do. I have so many reasons guiding me towards this decision that I thought I’d share a few here. This list applies to anyone thinking about retirement at any time, though, not just early retirement. One of my favorite quotes by Ernie Zelinski in How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free: Retirement Wisdom That You Won’t Get from Your Financial Advisor is “retiring too late means you don’t get another chance to do it right.” So, let’s plunge right in.

1. Life, love and the pursuit of happiness.

You deserve to take time for yourself and your relationships with others. Taking care of yourself enables you to be a better friend, spouse and family member. Somewhere along the line, many of us were taught that we had to work hard and keep our noses to the grindstone and compete to win and climb the social ladder and all the rest of it. There’s a high price to pay for living like that. Fortunately, there is still time to change our direction and teach ourselves about having fun and enjoying our lives.

2. You are not enjoying your current job or are truly bored with it.

Know that you are in good company on this one. According to The Conference Board, best known for the Consumer Confidence Index and the Leading Economic Indicators, in a report published in 2005, they state

Half of all Americans today say they are satisfied with their jobs, down from nearly 60 percent in 1995. But among the 50 percent who say they are content, only 14 percent say they are

Someone who worked in my office a couple of years ago retired at the end of 2006. First of all, it’s amazing to me that that much time has passed, but that i