Retirement Journey: Part I
“It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.” — Margaret Mead
“The path ahead: Take it one day at a time, to live in the moment, to be a human being, not a human doing, and when I’m able, a human becoming.” — Retirement Aspiration
How I Got Here
Two weeks ago, I made the difficult and life-changing decision to retire at the end of the year. I had been thinking about it for the past year, as I watched the dust collect in my home, and my closets and kitchen cabinets overflow. Next, piles of books, old technology, last year’s holiday decorations, and the last box of photos and newspaper clippings from our childhood after our father died began to find homes under the bed and stacked along the walls. I need to purge and let go of material things to make room for living.