Killing It In My Sixties

I sat down to talk with my financial planner yesterday and he asked how it felt to be retired. I stopped because I wanted to really feel my answer – not just a standard “great”. As I paused – the first thing that came to mind was that my heart was no longer pounding. You know – the kind of pounding where you can hear it in your ears, taste the anxiety in your mouth, and see small fireworks in your peripheral vision. It would happen when I was questioned by an authority figure, when I was at risk of exceeding my thirty-minute lunch break, or when I went home after a stressful day with a headache and a knotted stomach.

I didn’t realize how constant the heart-pounding was or how it had become my baseline in my day to day life. Work consumed me far beyond the work day or the work week. I know that I brought this to every job I had. The first time I retired, ten years ago, from higher education administration, it was because I thought that very same heart-pounding might kill me. I loved the work – working with students to help them achieve their goals, with staff to be the best they could be and with co-workers to plan and develop for the betterment of our community. But the heart-pounding? That came from campus politics, professional rivalries, power struggles between administrators and my own self-inflicted, ‘always trying to prove I was good enough’.

So – I left – I took an early retirement that came with a modest pension and started over. First – I moved to Italy – but the over-achiever in me prevailed – I enrolled in a language academy and got certified to teach English as a Foreign Language. School, homework, projects, teaching and proving myself took over again. Forced to go back to the US after the 90 days allowed on my visa – I jumped right back in to finding a job. And I didn’t look for a lightweight job – I felt I still had to prove that the degrees I possessed defined me and I continued to try to prove myself.

Flash forward ten years – I held eight different jobs in that time. Each one more different than the last. My final position was back at my high school Alma mater – two blocks from my house in the neighborhood my dad lived in. This job truly brought my life full circle. The high school that had helped form me during my difficult teenage years – allowed me to return the favor and be a resource for today’s student. A “soft place to land” was how I viewed my contribution.

On my last day, I was flooded with flowers, cards, letters, candy, wine, gifts, and more hugs than I have ever had in one day. The students who had given me sense of love and acceptance over the past two years – well they were a huge part of my healing. Learning to love yourself is a solo journey but these students made my life better just by being themselves and open to the love I had to give.

It was a most difficult decision – to choose to leave – but I recognized that the next steps were meant to be what I had been waiting for my whole life. I was meant to have adventures, travel, walk miles, feel the sunlight on my face, wake up naturally after a restful night’s sleep, to explore unknown places, to leisurely stroll a farmers market for the perfect peach, to eat nutritious meals instead of wolfing down a Power Bar at my desk, and to enjoy an evening activity without being exhausted and bitchy.

In the stillness of remembering what I had and what is ahead… I feel my heart beating steadily and softly.