Where to go for Retirement?
First of all, this beautiful brown-eyed woman is not me. This is an image from Freepik that nicely sums up my perplexed nature of late. I decided that today is the day to begin chronicling my process of deciding how to spend the rest of my life. I thought I had it all figured out, how to handle my life once I’m able to earn retirement from my employer in two years. But life happened. Things changed. Plans ran amuck through no fault of my own. One of my long-held opinions has always been that there are two kind of people in life, negative ones and positive ones. The negative ones say, “oh, look what’s happened to me”, and wallow in the negativity, acting as victims. The positive ones immediately say, “how am I going to get out of this situation?”, with an implied positivity that he or she will make things better, they just haven’t yet figured out how. I am a positive person. I am resilient, resourceful, and by the grace of God have had good health and good relationships to help carry me through life. But in the past couple of years I’ve dealt with a hefty amount of life challenges, and after the first couple of hits, I began not handling things well, in terms of my self-care, and I haven’t improved. I want to turn around a bad situation, and I know I will. I just haven’t done it yet, and am working out the details, and trying to figure out the rest of my life. As I take the baby steps towards my solutions, I figure that I might not be the only person who could relate to the situation that I am in, so I am sharing my thoughts here.
It’s been a couple of years since moving into a new department at the University. I wanted this job, felt my previous position was unstable due to funding, so I moved. I wanted to be able to narrow my job focus to strictly human resource functions instead of that, operations, and so much more that I was doing previously. Despite having an awesome supervisor who shared his vast amounts of knowledge, it was beyond stressful to learn the new job. There’s so much politics to deal with. A lot has been sorted out and I feel so much better about my knowledge of operations, that stress is lower. But there is still a daily and consistent level of frustration that runs through the department membership. It comes from above. A lot of it can be blamed on COVID, but a lot is just the mindset at the top. I appreciate that my employer is being very careful with funds. But the amount of red tape seems to keep us wrapped in frustration more than making us productive. I’d never been a person who aspired to retire. Visiting my retired friends creeped me out after the third day of the visit. But I find myself wishing my life away, wishing I could walk away from this job. I am tied by a promise of stellar health care supplements post-retirement. And then there’s the fact that I am not independently wealthy. I also have the thought that after investing so much in learning the job, would I really want to walk away from that? Maybe.
Then there’s the notion of my retirement, how I envisioned it. I’d always figured that after earning my retirement in Indiana, and after my parents were gone, I would return to the Phoenix area where I would purchase a townhome in a retirement community near my best friend and her husband. Ellie has been a friend since we were six years old. She became like a sister to me, and another daughter to my parents. Her husband, Ed, was like a brother, and son-in-law that my parents never had. I pictured being able to be with them every day. We had so much fun together. They were my rocks, always. But Ellie was stricken with cancer last summer and she decided not to fight it. She had her reasons, and it turns out she was right. I couldn’t argue with her, although I challenged the decision briefly. I understood where she was coming from. I supported her decision. In six months’, time she was gone. I’d already lost another lifelong friend, Gail, very suddenly, right about the time I started the new job. That was unexpected, and equally as jolting to know all the plans that she and I had made to enjoy life after retirement were not going to happen. A piece of my heart died with her. She was what I call my soulmate best friend. Her never-ending kindness and support was gone. I still had Ellie, but only for two more years. She died on January 2nd, 2021.
Some people might be reading this and thinking, “this is why you don’t put off enjoyment until retirement”, and I agree with the sentiment. I didn’t mean to. I tried to travel, and I do have my love of creativity, and a tribe of friends who enjoy the same. But it’s difficulty to find time when you are working full time, caring for a home by yourself, and caring for elderly parents who are still in their home. For the past few years, I saved my vacation time to take my father to his medical appointments. On weekends I would prepare meals that they could heat up during the week. They tried meals on wheels and didn’t like it. Another loss that happened in the last two years what that my father passed. Although the fact that he was 93 made this a natural life passage that we expected, it was still terribly sad for me. He was one of the good guys. When my father passed, I moved in with my mother. I’d promised my father I would take care of her. I thought it would be the kindest thing to leave her in her own home, although in hindsight, my home had more room for the two of us. But my house was not in a maintained community and the house was getting hard for me to handle. Plus, I never dreamed that my mother would live much longer than my dad. They were married 68 years and you always hear of how the other person passed within months. My mom has lung disease. I don’t know how she’s lasted this long. I thought I knew what stubborn was, but I never fully understood it until moving in with her. She has hoarding tendencies and I’ve had to fight for every bit of space to place my sewing paraphernalia. Sewing is my creative outlet and heals my spirit. I often thank God that I have an interest that gives me such joy.
After fighting tooth and nail to make space for my creativity, I am making some headway. I started by purchasing the Kallax shelves that I see many quilters use to store their stash. This was helpful because I’d been struggling with heavy totes under the bed. When I shifted to the Kallax I was able to see there were holes in my stash. I’ve been shopping to fill those deficits and keep entrepreneurs in business. Soon I will have a space that will allow me to sew a little bit each day. I’ve been acting as the positive person that I am to do a little bit each day to find a way to cope with my current situation, which is being stuck in a small place with COVID ruling our lives, and processing each possibility of how and where I might find an enjoyable lifestyle for the next several years. I know that I want to keep working, at least part-time, as long as I physically can and want to. I know that I want to live in a warm place, at least in winter, where I am in a community of people like me. I know that I want more time to do what I love, to exercise my creativity. I am grateful that I have two cousins who are in situations like mine, retirement pending, and looking for a fun place to retire. They both like Florida, which hasn’t been on my radar screen, but I am willing to explore. If my family would be near me, that would be so wonderful. I’ve been turning my quarantine time into useful time, gathering as much information by the web, to formulate travels plans to visit possible communities in Florida and Arizona. When I asked myself what I want, the answer was, I want to live in a place that feels like a party is only a day or two away, and that often feels like a festival. My experience in Arizona is that there were many festivals and fairs to enjoy throughout the winter. I think it’s time to find the same in Florida. I’ve been pointed to the Tampa and St. Petersburg area. So Googling I will go, for right now.
