Retirement difficult? Not
for me! I had twelve little Papillons and two cats around my feet at
all times—blessings from God who were born knowing how to live in
the present—and a lifetime of projects I was itching to find time to
complete.
My agency had wisely
mandated attendance at a retirement planning conference prior to my
departure. Three of the five days were devoted to cautions that the
identity crisis resulting from retirement was responsible for a high
percentage of deaths of men within two years of retirement. The smug
look on my face during that conference reflected my disgust that
anyone would find retirement difficult. Women wouldn’t! I wouldn’t!
Despite my smug assumptions,
I found that the ending of my second career echoed the opening line
from Dickens’
Tale of Two Cities:
It was the best of
times …
Indeed, it was wonderful to sleep late and not race for my van pool
and the hour’s drive to my office each day. My beloved animals were
around to share my company. I was able to devote unlimited hours to
scrap-booking all the pictures and memorabilia I’d planned to
preserve through years of working 60+ hour weeks. There was finally
time to catch up on decorating projects for which a busy
administrative job had not afforded time. But it was also
the worst of
times. One
day I was the center of a small universe with a talented staff
responding to my slightest instructions. State legislators and
committee chairs and national and state education bigwigs were
calling for advice and help. The next I was a retiree, a has-been!
Yikes!
It took two days to catch up
on my sleep and three weeks to convince the dogs to move their
morning outing from 5:30 a.m. to 7:00. It was another three months
before I got all the rooms painted, floors replaced, closets finally
cleaned and organized, and most of the photos reduced to scrapbook
pages. So I painted the car. When I started considering what color
to paint the telephone pole at the corner of my lot because it
didn’t match my roof, I knew I was in trouble!
I called a council of my
furry advisors. Gentle nose rubs around my ankles urged me to stop
and think. Chores, however appealing, would not fill the need for
purpose to the rest of my life. If retirement from a rewarding and
fulfilling career represents that you’re over the hill, then the
only view is downward. I needed another mountain to climb.
Consulting? Profitable, but
playing second fiddle to someone else’s decisions about projects
would not fit my controlling nature.
Travel? Get real! My days of
riding elephants in Nepal and camels in Egypt, cruising up the
Orinoco in a canoe and visiting native tribes in Venezuela are over.
Even without consideration of the worsening political conditions
around the world, my bad knees would not allow such exuberant
endeavors.
Volunteering? Besides being
more like a short-range chore, what would I do with bad knees that
my controlling nature would find satisfying?
Besides, the
animal chorus chimed in,
you’d have to
leave us again, and we rather like having a doorman on duty 24/7.
I’m sure it had to be their telepathic inputs that spawned the idea
of writing fiction.
I was comfortable with
writing non-fiction, of course. During my first career as a
specialist in navigational astronomy with NASA I’d authored a number
of highly technical texts on the determination of launch windows for
sub-orbital vehicles, star positions, and spacecraft orientations
during flight. The published texts were somewhere in the dusty
archives of the Library of Congress, the details expressed in double
integral equations that were understandable to maybe 200 people.
Five of those might even still be interested in the information. If
so, I hope they can understand the text. I haven’t used double
integral calculus in 40 years, and I can’t understand my old
writings now.
In my second career as
director of research for Virginia’s higher education coordinating
board, I had to broaden my writing skills to convey information to
members of the general assembly as well as the general public. The
student information system I’d developed with the help of my staff
was so successful that it had been adopted by the federal office of
higher education statistics as the reporting model for the entire
country. There was certainly no opportunity there for a challenge
with control.
But, the fur
balls around me seem to say,
you love
mysteries, you love us. And mysteries are word puzzles. Write
us
into a mystery!
I suddenly realized that
here at last was an objective that would challenge me, give me
unlimited time with my furry friends, and be little impacted by bad
knees. Research into writing and publishing fiction convinced me
that it was an uphill climb, one that would challenge my brain,
creativity and emotions. In short, I’d be so busy looking upward at
the hurdles to overcome I would never be bored again.
The first book in my mystery
series was finally published six weeks after my top dog died of
natural causes at 16 years of age. Although he never lived to see
the book which was dedicated to him, he’d listened to every one of
the drafts and given them his approval with gentle tail waves or
sloppy kisses. I’ve always felt his spirit remained beside me as the
passing years brought more books, articles and writing awards. I’ve
thanked him and my other furry friends over the years for the
challenging mountain they opened in my life that means I approach
each day looking upward.
Jean C. Keating,
a national award winning author, will present lectures at the ATOM
Center with Carol Chapman on animals’ role in fiction and
Everyone Has a Book in Them! Find Yours!
