To begin, I don't like the word retiree for me.
I like how Serena Williams phrased it after she retired from competitive tennis in August 2022. She said she was moving on to new challenges and believed the term retirement is rightfully reserved for others who truly live it in much-deserved leisure.
I heard a term that more aptly decribes my arc over the last year - repositioning not retirement.
I was reminded of the term when a friend - who does marketing for a leisure craft rental business - needed to move a boat from one port to another to accommodate a client. It clicked! This is what I've been doing for the last year! Repositioning.
But repositioning is not simply moving from a work office, to a kitchen table with a laptop, or an "encore job" or "sidehustle." If only it were that easy.
The last year has been eventful and through it I've learned a few immutable truths that make repositioning manageable.
Meaning over Happiness
Choose 'meaning' over 'happiness.' Checklists are often created for fulfillment, happiness. Not checking off those items can actually have the opposite result.
My checklist upon leaving my career in healthcare communications was robust and optimistic. It included the grandiose (buying and operating a third wave cafe) the altruistic (volunteering for no less than three organizations) and the creative (building sets for a local theatre company).
My checklist grew longer and longer, and I became more and more anxious. Each day it seemed I would add a new item in my notebook funnily branded 'Plans Secretos Para Dominar o Mundo' and with each addition, a film of anxiety covered me. (I'll get to anxiety later in this blog as it merits its own article).
It was in February of 2023, the dead of winter, February blahs everywhere, when I heard a remarkable segment called Re-Thinking by professor and organizational psychologist Adam Grant. I was skeptical at first, but the crux of Adam's message really hit home. Have meaning in your life, and happiness will take care of itself. Thunderbolt! This was the key for me.
From his words - you can find his Re-Thinking meditation on Insight Timer - I revisited my new life, already more than eight months underway. I identified the elements that do or could add meaning to my life - and only then engage in the activities that will nourish that sense of meaning. Easy, right? Not so fast.
Focus
There can be many things that can add meaning to your life. Partnership, friendship, music, reading, animals, health, altruism...the list (there's that word again) goes on.
I was reading High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, part of my 23 books in '23 project, and was struck by the absolute lack of focus that ruled the main character Rob Fleming. His search for meaning was so scattered and yet so fun to read on the printed page. But I finished the book with a real thirst for focus. How do I find focus for those things that add meaning to my life.
The very next book I read - non-fiction - was 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Again, like when I began to listen to Adam Grant's meditation, I was very skeptical. See, I remember daytimers, productivity hacks, and the countless "gurus" who spewed these messages. But 4000 weeks I quickly discovered was different. Two chapters in, I returned my library copy and bought my own so I could scratch it up with pencil in the most meaningful sections.
The point to Oliver Burkeman's book - to me anyways - is simple yet radical.
"Let your impossible standards crash to the ground. Then pick a few meaningful tasks from the rubble and get started on them today." Radical, yes but not in the context of the entire book, which has given me many tools with which to shape this new focus on those meaningful things.
The book also impressed upon me ways to create realistic, short lists and how to "resist the allure of middling priorities," as Burkeman calls them.
Middling priorities are not what this space is about. Rather it's about "surrendering to the speed of reality" and the "profound sense of meaning that comes from being willing to fall in with the rhythms of the rest of the world." 4000 Weeks is filled with nuggets like this and I encourage you to read it when it seems right to you.
The book I read right after 4000 Weeks? Fight Club. Analyze that.
I joke, but being a better reader adds meaning to my life I feel, and I'm discovering fun sub-themes in my 23 in '23 project. Reading books that became films and understanding the differences between book and film versions is fascinating and makes great conversation with friends. Read more about 23 in '23 here and in future blogs on the books I'm reading.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy Life and Pieces.
I borrowed the title from a Korean/English journal I bought which is designed to capture ideas, questions, phrases, conversations, media, sketches, etc. It's much less intense than my 'Secret Plans to Dominate the World' notebook and fully embraces the need to observe the world around you and glean the elements that add meaning to your life.
Life and Pieces.
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