Lustre. Ten Years and Ten Lessons.

By Karen and Erica

We are amazed. We have been retired for over ten years. And Lustre is ten years old. How did all that happen?

It has been quite a journey. At first, we we weren’t really sure what on earth was happening.  But we didn’t think we liked where we had landed. Then we worked at it, and ultimately started Lustre. As we have travelled along the retirement path, Lustre has grown up. First a blog, and a website, then events, then a platform allowing members to connect, then a member site, and now–a conference.  We are thrilled.

We could not have come this far without the colleagues who have helped us navigate the digital world of which we were so ignorant. Those colleagues–Emma and Danielle especially, who have been with us almost from the start–and Fern and Kayla–have been amazingly generous with their time and knowledge. And without Chris our conference might have been very different. Not in a good way.

But what a delightful time we have had. All the while, we have been learning, meeting dazzling people, and doing things we never did before. Like taking the sometimes crazy risk of being online. Like becoming entrepreneurs, of all things. We have fallen on our faces more than once. But mostly, we have moved forward, in fits and starts, spending vast sums on the Lustre project that otherwise would have been spent on therapy. 

Here are ten lessons we have learned.

• Lesson 1. Younger people are cool. One of the most important lessons we have learned is this: people younger than we are know many things of which we are entirely ignorant. Younger people are wonderful fun and immensely creative. Don’t do retirement without them.
• Lesson 2. Women love community. Of course, you all–women like us, women who loved their careers, who practiced those careers for decades, and then retired and began their quest for the next fabulous phase–you have been a key part of the journey. When we started Lustre, we believed we were tapping into something bigger than ourselves, but it still felt as if we were stepping into the void. Were we deluded? Would people laugh at us? Or just ignore us? Now we know. We are, together, a large community of women eager to move forward, and eager to help each other–just as we were in the Ms. Magazine era. 
• Lesson Three. There is life after a career. This lesson is like the first two, but slightly different. We did love our careers, and were not too sure that there was anything outside of those careers that could be as satisfying as they were. It took us a while to find out that, in fact, it is a big world, there are many splendid possibilities, and you just need to have the courage to step into it–preferably with a companion. You will fall on your face now and then, but your face can take it.
• Lesson Four. Finding purpose takes work. We learned early we could fill our time, but that is not the same as finding purpose. We became ladies who lunched. We took classes–Erica did design, Karen learned to fly. But we needed more. Purpose does not happen overnight. Figuring out how we would live while we sped along our long post-career runway took work. It was our new job.
• Lesson Five. No more ladders for us. Though we are working, and sometimes pretty hard, it is not the same as working while climbing someone else’s ladder. We are proving ourselves to ourselves. We do have long term objectives–but that is not our only motivation. We are on a mission.
• Lesson Six. Change is happening. If ever so slowly. Older women are being seen as active members of society more often than they were when we started. We are flexing our power, more every day. This is hardly a consequence only of Lustre’s efforts alone, but we are helping.
• Lesson Seven. Older women belong everywhere. Despite the progress, older people, and older women specifically, are very much sidelined when it comes to certain parts of twenty-first century life, like designing generative AI. That appears to be because some people–especially the tech bros–think we don’t know enough about technology, and couldn’t learn, so there is no reason to give us a voice. But we know that any pervasive technology like generative AI is more than a set of algorithms. AI is powerful. It can change life as we know it. Everyone should have a voice in how it is developed, and how it should, or must, be governed. Especially those of us who, because of our years of living, have a broad view of the world. The seventh lesson is–we have a way to go.
• Lesson Eight. We love tech. There is much that is topsy-turvy in today’s world, but the technological advances that gave us global connections when we worked are making connection ever more plausible. We can communicate with people going to the Moon. Maybe we will even go to the moon ourselves. 
• Lesson Nine. Control rocks. We are immensely grateful to have more control over our time than ever before.  We have much to do.
• Lesson Ten. We don’t want our old jobs back. We’re glad we’re retired, we’re glad we discovered a whole new world, we’re glad we keep meeting so many captivating people, and we’re glad we are still embarking on all kinds of compelling projects.  

Thanks to all of you for joining us on the voyage, and welcome to all of those wonderful women–and men–who will join us in the future. We raise a toast to all of you.