Time Enough At Last

I said it before and I'll say it again: life moves pretty fast, you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. ~ Ferris from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" as sampled in "Channel Flipping" by Zeds Dead

I just returned from a visit to Seattle, which included a trip to the Washington Coast for friend's birthday, a place I've not been in decades. While it's not known for being quite as beautiful as the Oregon Coast, where I've been more recently (and my raised-in-Portland mother visited frequently with her fun-sized Catholic family), the weather turned out to be quite sunny, the air was clear of awful forest-fire smoke that filled Seattle, and all that time to spend with three of my closest childhood friends was - in a word - glorious.

During our road trip and while we walked, ate, thrifted, went to the pool and hung out at the Airbnb condo (right on the beach!) we talked a lot about our future retirements, how to get there sooner, what it might look like, what we will do with our time, if we can ever get to that promised land. 

For now though, life is usually too busy and time continues to feel like a scarce resource. One friend talked about being just greedy for it, even "time-panicked" and I could definitely relate! 

Now that I'm back home and in my normal work-a-day routine I'm pondering how to move assiduously towards some sort of "retirement" but not feel quite so desperate for it. Like, maybe I could restrain myself from checking my account balances almost daily. I mean, I can try.

😜

But also thinking more broadly, about how to live richly in the moment (or at least the day), and from a sense of "abundance" even while saving and striving and driving towards the goal of being free and having my time to myself. Or at least released from the kind of confines that a full-time corporate job entails. Above all I don’t want to be so future-focused that I “miss it” - this wonderful life that I’m lucky enough to be living right now.

Just to clarify though: I don’t expect to retire in the traditional sense anytime soon. Most likely I’ll want to do peer recovery work either part or full-time. The earlier I leave the corporate job the more hours I’ll probably have to do. 

For it’s a looooong stretch between 62 (when we can first take Social Security) and Medicare at 65, let alone between that magical age of 59 and 1/2 (when one can withdraw from 401k without penalty) and Medicare-age. And it’s sad that in the US versus other countries we are so hamstrung with our health insurance pinned to our jobs, but we strategized about that also. 

One friend had the idea of trying to reduce our hours year by year until we’re only working as much as needed to keep employer-provided health care. It was a great idea! And so we set a goal (or at least she and I did), and also agreed to keep checking in with each other about our progress. 

Have I mentioned I adore these women?!? They have always been and continue to be, so smart and interesting to me, which is about the highest compliment I can give. And because we have the best time together, I can totally see myself retiring with or alongside them, it’s just that there are about a million different possible configurations for it! 

The good news is we’ve still got time to figure it out. As far as where my husband fits in all this, well….he says he wants to work forever, and I just couldn’t feel more the opposite, so I’m not exactly making any concrete retirement plans right now with him; wherever I am, he can just visit!

Meantime, I’ll be hanging with my ladies, getting up to “no good” like we’re still 16 “except we have money and a good car and can do whatever we want” - “the equivalent feeling of running down the alley barefoot to who knows what as long as we’re together except quite a bit safer and healthier lol” as Heidi texted later, reflecting on our time together and calling back to when we used to sneak out of our houses to meet up (I promised I’d give her credit). Midlife as the “open alley” for us! (Her brilliant words again.) 

So much fun and freedom - and time enough - at last. 

😍😘😍