I am excited that my website is almost ready for prime time. The developers are helping me with the Events page so I hope to have it ready by the end of the week, with both my first workshop and book club available for scheduling. In the meantime, I am focused on a dozen other activities. I have wondered for a long time if I am overcommitted and not making progress on my purpose because I say yes to too many things.

Right before I retired from the government in March, I reached out to a friend who had been retired for over seven years. She had been successful in her primary work and was also happy with her progress in retirement. She had been teaching at the local community college and involved in local drama productions. Now she was cutting back on those and taking on more time with her grandkids and travel. Her advice to me was to try things on for size and not be afraid to drop it if it didn’t fit. In a way, this time of my life is one of expansion, even more so than when I first graduated college, as I have more freedom and a lot more knowledge (dare I say wisdom) than I did then.

The first month after retirement I slept in, getting caught up on rest and releasing all the tension. Unfortunately, I caught a cold and was really immobile for over a week. By the end of the first month, I realized that the only person I was seeing on a regular basis was my husband. Knowing that isolation and lack of connection leads to depression, I set out in search of activities. A few panned out and I was filling my days again. But there were all the things that I had been doing before that sort of snuck up on me (that will take another blog to dive into), and I felt somewhat overwhelmed. The things I planned to focus on got waylaid and I also started to lose confidence in myself. Whoa! I had been through the retirement coaching training and should have been prepared for and avoided these challenges – right? Guess I am not immune, but, in hindsight, it is good that I now have firsthand experience with what my clients could potentially go through.

Along the way, I have participated in a lot of great book clubs along with reading some new material. I attended the latest conference for the Retirement Coaching Association and lots of workshops with the Mid-Atlantic Facilitation Network. I successfully completed sessions with three clients and earned my RCA certification. Around the six-month point two weeks ago, I realized I had been taking in a lot of information but not generating anything of my own. My go-to response has always been to get more education to feel accomplished again. This time I am not sure that is the right answer. I am looking forward to attending a Midlife Evolution “Sacred Pause” retreat in a few weeks. My intention is to come out of it with a clear purpose and focus to help me regroup and eliminate activities that are distracting me. Just as I would with my clients, I will develop short-term strategies that will move me incrementally towards my goals. I will reach into my support network to keep me grounded and accountable.

If you are feeling any of the things I mentioned above, I hope that either my upcoming book club or workshop will aid you. I will be honest and say that I began down this path partly to help myself age well, but also to help my spouse and friends deal with their elderly parents in a way that was healthy and productive. My strengths in connecting, developing, and training aligned well with this particular niche of coaching and facilitation. If you have any areas you would like me to consider adding to my repertoire, please let me know. I won’t promise to follow through though, given I just told you about my desire to stay focused, but I realize that I do not know everything and your suggestions might just line up with what I need.

Take care,

Ann

The purpose of life is not to be happy – but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all. – Leo Rosten, “On Finding Truth: Abandon the Strait Jacket of Conformity,” an address delivered at the National Book Awards in New York, 1962, and the text published in “The Sunday Star” newspaper in Washington, D.C. [Quote Origin: The Purpose of Life Is Not To Be Happy But To Matter – Quote Investigator®]