The In Between

This week I shutdown my work laptop for good. Hung up my work hat. Became a ‘jubilada’ (I wrote in a previous post about Jubilación, which is the Spanish word for retirement).

I look upon this as the In Between, the time when I’ve just exited one phase of life and am about to enter another. I’m on a bridge, crossing from one landscape of life into another. I know, for a short while, I may feel unmoored, unstructured, and as much as we like to think of spontaneity as being cool, the reality is we all need and thrive on some kind of structure to our lives, as any parent of young children knows. I trust I will find my footing, because I always have, and I’ve laid the groundwork.

The world wants to label you so that others know in which hole to peg you. But the word ‘retiree’ doesn’t sit well with me. I may have retired from the paid workforce, but I have not retired from life.  Indeed, inside I feel 35, and yet, not the same as when I was 35. Because who remains the same person they were at 35 or 45 or even 55? Who wants to? We keep changing, growing, taking on new things, discarding others, shifting perspectives, re-calibrating, just as the GPS does when you make an unplanned turn.

Yes, this road to retirement has been planned but the path ahead can shift and change and swerve. It might lead to a meadow or a field full of flowers or a forest thicket. Who knows. This is the In Between. I will surely mull things over endlessly, because that is what I do. But I also get to shape and structure my time in the way that suits me best for who I am now.  I can shrug off one hat and put on another, trying it for size and fit and colour. A writer? A painter? A traveller? A lover of books and words and language? An adventurer? Or something else entirely.

Because one of the gifts that aging gives you is a quiet contentment and a belief in yourself that you will know how to proceed. The angst of youth and drive to impress the world are behind you. You understand that you can make and un-make and re-make yourself. I do not desire an exciting life, I never have. I want a fulfilling, purposeful life. I do not need to busy myself to keep boredom and restlessness away, I never did. I thrive on quiet time to reflect and do things that mean something to me, fire up a spark in my soul. I do not need a vast circle of friends and connections, I never did. I want small, close circles of genuine people who may not be trying to impress the world either but want to understand it.

I’ve been through many phases and chapters in life, closed some doors, opened and walked through others. This is another. Soon, the ground will settle and later, when I look back at where I stand today, I may wonder at a choice I made or why I felt a certain way. Because life will have changed. It always does. And I will have changed. I always do.

"Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else." —Fred Rogers