Dear Abby Normal,

Oh my dear, this is such a timely piece. Your dilemma and questions echoing what I hear from so many of my clients.

I need to put this in context ( apologies upfront if my explanation in the next paragraph sounds like a commercial! Truly it isn’t. It just lets you see how I regularly run into dilemmas like yours.)

I work with individuals on a short term, virtual 1:1 basis helping them identify business ideas that, without actually realizing it, are already part of their personalities. Those business concepts are currently buried somewhere inside their brains even though for most, they have no business experience whatsoever. Sometimes the businesses they begin are tiny and very part-time efforts. True side gigs. Others go for full time. There are no rules on scope of these business efforts, it’s whatever works for an individual.

The operative word for my comment to you is rules. A good number (maybe 1/3) of my clients are retired from their full-time jobs. Their careers spanned from office workers, hospital staff, agency clerks, mid or higher level management, teachers, etc. Quite the range.

Without exception each one of these retirees voiced a quandary similar to yours, A.N.

They are upset that finally they were able to kick the J.O.B.only to find themselves “wanting”.

I hear things like, “Now I am supposed to enjoy myself. Make life all about the grandkids. Focus on hobbies, play golf, whatever.” For some reason, these formerly active-in-the-work-world people are disillusioned with “retirement”.

I have a strong opinion on that reasoning and I believe it is predominantly attached to “rules”.

I call it the escalator of life. At birth, the moving staircase starts lifting us up through the floors of life: school, job, marriage, babies, job, retirement, spend the rest of one’s days on the planet doing what retirees are supposed to do on that particular floor.

I call BS to those rules. Who said everyone needs to be on that escalator? Certainly, by all means, get on it, stay on it, if that’s what you want. There is no judgement. It is only to point out that options, combos, things never before contemplated are also within reach. No one HAS to follow any journey or prescription, regardless of outdated norms floating around us…

And this baloney about being “too old”? Gimme a break. Unless physical or mental incapacity is prominent, then age truly is a state of mind. True, the world is steeped in ageism. Yet working in YOUR OWN side gig or part time or full time business puts YOU in the driver’s seat. Bye bye to biased HR managers saying in so many words, “Sorry, not sorry, too old.”

Of course every choice we make in our lives has consequences. There really is no free lunch. This applies whether we choose to stay on the well trodden escalator path or veer off, at any point, in our own direction.

So the first step, I think, is to let go of the rules. The one where perhaps you say “Gee if I don’t like everything that goes along with the category called “retirement”, that means I should consider going back to the work I just left.” No way. You do not HAVE to find peace in one or the other of those two options.

You get to take a deep look at what makes you tick. What makes your heart sing. You need to do that introspection away, far away from anyone biased about what retirees are supposed to do.

There really is no single way to do retirement. You know that expression, The World Is Your Oyster? Well, it is. At any age or stage in life.

Hey A.N. Drown out the noise and expectations and dig into your shellfish platter! The pearls are waiting for you.

I am excited for all your possibilities, Abby Normal.

Much lemony magic and love to you🍋
Suze🍋🍋