Don’t Reinvent Yourself. Reinvent Retirement.
By Karen and Erica
You just retired. Everyone wished you well, and expressed joy and envy that you now have time for yourself, so you can relax and enjoy life, free of the quotidian pressures that are part of life for career women.
Very nice of everyone, but–-what exactly do they think you are going to do for the next three decades? And why do they think that you–-a successful woman who made her way in a complex world-–now want to be free of pressure? Sure, you are glad to stop doing some of the boring daily tasks every career demands. But you thrived on challenges. And loved being part of the wider world. Why would you want to give all of that up?
The reason for the disconnect is that a lot of people visualize retirement as it was in the middle of the last century, when most retirees were men who had worked through a depression and two world wars, when life expectancy was much shorter, and when the very few years of post-career life were indeed seen as a time to play, preferably in the sun, on a beach or a golf course.
That’s not reality in the twenty-first century. Many of us, the women who fought to enter the workforce and then to be where the action is, will have a three decade runway ahead of us. Many of us will gladly give up the 24/7 life, and will embrace the freedom to take a long vacation and to go out to a matinee on a weekday. But the real freedom we have earned is the freedom to design our own third quarter–-a new gig that uses what we learned during our demanding careers as a base that allows us to take off in a new direction.
Post-career life is a time for reinvention–-but not reinvention of yourself. Reinvention of how retirement is done. You are a woman of experience and achievement, and you know how you want to live. You don’t have to shoehorn yourself into some outdated idea of retirement. Do retirement your way. Will you design clothes for women of our age? In the city of your dreams? Will you open a bookstore? Will you sail the ocean? Will you create wines with grapes from your own vineyard, in the hills of Napa?
The exciting truth is-–we are drawing on a clean slate. We are the first large generation of women who worked until we retired, and we are the first generation to benefit fully from health advances that allow us to be both mature and sentient. There are millions of us, so we can help each other. We have plenty of time for the next phase. And we are not starting at the beginning. Our careers gave us a formidable foundation to support whatever we want to build now.
So do what you have always done. Be you. And style your new post-career life to suit yourself.
