Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
The Endless Gift of Reinvention
We get stuck. We older folks get stuck. We get stuck in who we are or who we were and we keep circling back to that thing as if it’s the only custard stand in town.
Here’s what I figured out in 2017. When you are done being what you are or what you were, you can be something else that is entirely different. For me, this has meant spending the year shedding my business, deepening my writing, and becoming an activist.
I loved my business an enormous amount but I’m done with it. I am too impatient with slow progress on important issues, increasingly unable to be silent or even tactful in disagreements, and more and more drawn to anything and anybody who is anti-establishment. Plus I want to wear jeans and boots all the time. My beautiful suits have spent a lonely year hanging in the closet.
I see folks my age who have left their jobs, ended their paid careers, and they almost seem in a state of mourning as if life as they know it has ended and there won’t be any new life, just waiting for the end of it all. And I felt that way for a long while, hanging on to my professional persona until I felt like a paper doll wearing a business suit with tabs at the shoulders.
It felt unnatural and phony because I had, unwittingly maybe, become a different person. And I’m thrilled by that. It feels like swimming a half mile across a lake in the one and only triathlon I ever did. I swam in water roiled by other swimmers, felt the lake weeds brush my legs, went off course three times, and had to reorient myself to the distant tree on the other side. When I came out of the water and took my goggles off, I had reinvented myself as someone who could swim across a lake.
My husband’s best friend (and a dear friend to me as well) came to visit before Christmas. He sat on a kitchen chair while I was cooking and asked me if I was retired. “Yes, no, sort of.” He looked at me, waiting. “I look at it this way,” I said. “I have about ten years to become remarkable.” He laughed but when I said that I felt full of possibility and promise like I did when I walked out of that lake.
I am going to turn my Time of the Month Club into a nonprofit (501 (c) 3) and use it not only to collect period supplies for women who are homeless but as a platform for advocacy on homelessness issues. I am going to do research and write on policy issues and show up to advocate and agitate wherever and whenever I can. I am going to power up my involvement with League of Progressive Seniors, an advocacy group I founded with several friends to tackle issues affecting older adults. That means making signs and marching and hanging around where people are using megaphones. Protesting is not a lost art, at least not in my generation!
I am going to be physically present with the hardship of other people. I am going to leave my comfortable, rarefied perch of data analysis and policy recommendations and boil a hundred eggs for people leaving the warming shelter on Tuesday morning. I’m going to help wake them up and fold their sleeping bags. I am going to go where the hurt is and quit watching it through binoculars. That won’t be easy but I think there are people who will help me.
And I am going to write. And write and write. With concentration and commitment and openness to criticism and revision and throwing things out the window that aren’t right. I am going to learn how to write decent poetry and longer essays, maybe write a book. And blog. Always the blog.
I am looking forward to 2018 as an amazing, glorious opportunity to go out and come back in again, a slimmer chick in a cuter bathing suit who could swim a mile in big waves if she wants to. It’s going to be fabulous.
21 Comments on “The Endless Gift of Reinvention”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
How well you have lived up to your goals, Jan. I admire your choices and your actions.
I like this more than I can tell you. Your honesty, clarity–and yes, “I have about 10 years to become remarkable.” Oh, my favorite:). Cheering you on from afar.
Love your fresh attitude – you are inspirational. Delighted to see that you will continue writing. Please don’t stop!
You have a cause and I gave a homeless person food but afraid because one times all of them came around me and I hurried and got away.
Good for you Jan. Right now I am just about the exact age that you were when I met you. Have we known each other 18 years? I can so relate to what you have just written. My retirement will be absent clients and filled with useful projects. Your post is so inspirational.
Yes!
Jan, you are fearless in your writing and in the way you live your life. You are an inspiration to the rests of us. Thank you.
Thank you, Mike. I hope you can come back to LPS. We miss your voice and perspective.
I so admire you.
That’s pretty humbling – thank you
I hope that I have just half your energy and determination this coming year…if I can manage that I shall accomplish everything I set my mind to do!
Hope I can keep up the momentum!
Wow ! You are going to be amazing in 2018 ! You go girl !
Thank you!
You continue to be a role model to us all. Keep up the blogging and inspiring each of us to do more. Here’s to a Just 2018!
You two are the role models!
I love you.
So glad I know you, can’t wait to see what happens next! Also so glad you are willing to share with my students. My current reinvention is teaching emerging nurses and hope to give them a deeper view of the people before them.
Will always come whenever you ask. Thanks for having me.
Hoo boy, am I glad I took a break to read this post. So positive! I’m pulling for you, Jan.
This rang my chimes “…increasingly unable to be silent or even tactful in disagreements, and more and more drawn to anything and anybody who is anti-establishment.” Thanks for a great year of reading Red’s Wrap. I’ll buy your book when it’s ready.
Thank you! It’s great to be free from all that. I will report back as the year unfolds.