We are nearly to the one-year anniversary of my final day of corporate life… time to do a personal retrospective and share some of my learnings.
I still love using Miro’s online whiteboard to capture my thoughts and visualize my ideas. For this exercise, in my Retirement Vision Board (yes, I have one), I used the 4L’s template for my retrospective.
What I’ve liked or loved
What I have loved the most is the flexibility of time. No alarm clock in the morning, and we can rise with the sun. I can choose what I will work on each day depending on my mood, my level of energy, and my level of creativity. Some days, I spend hours painting acrylic on canvas, but some days, I have no interest in it. Some days I read; some days I write. I find that I get quite sleepy mid-afternoon, and I love a good nap or a guided meditation. My annual life is no longer a cycle of strategy discussions, top-down goal setting, weekly status reports, performance reviews, one-on-one’s, software releases, jira updates, quarterly statistics and reports, merit increase calculations, and project meetings.
I love having more time to focus on our health. We eat more healthy food. We cook and create more homemade foods like yogurt, granola, and peanut butter. We take time cooking together and eating together. We go to the gym mid-day and take time to enjoy the outing. We enjoy visits to the local mercado (vegetable markets) to get fresh fruits and veggies. We take a yoga class together on Friday mornings.
Early in my ‘honeymoon year’, I reconnected with nearly 20 colleagues going back 40+ years and 13 companies in my career. These conversations were REALLY enjoyable and I hope to do more of them. They allowed me to remember the best parts of my working years, and reconnect with the friends I made. If I did not reach out to reconnect with you, and you’d like to reconnect with me, please reach out and let’s set up a call!
We are in the middle of building a house, and I have loved having the time to visit various companies to design and choose our kitchen, bathroom, closets, windows, and gardens. We had time to choose a builder (over many emails, visits, and discussions). We also have time to visit the land to dream of the future, and chat with the builder about our progress. And we have time to visit the city office to check on the status of our various approvals.
Having time for my own internal creativity and thoughts has allowed me to take some online painting courses and stretch my skills to new, bold styles on bigger canvases. Time to do more paintings grants me experience which drives confidence to share my paintings with others. I’ve sold a few paintings, offered some in charity auctions, and given away some to close friends. I have time to paint spontaneous bookmarks for birthdays and other special events.
We’ve had time to continue to study the Portuguese language and prepare for the language test. And now, after the test, time to continue to study and improve our conversational skills. Ongoing language study is good for brain health due to the difficulty in learning, and good for our long-term future in Portugal, making friends and dealing with businesses. As we learn the language, we learn the culture.
The flexibility of time allowed me to meet another coach-in-training and spend many hours creating a new multi-session workshop on leadership for new and emerging leaders. It took many hours over many weeks to create all the content which would never have been possible if I were still working a day-job.
Back in late November, I had a wild burst of creativity and energy, and I wrote a workbook about transitions and transformations, “What’s Your Transformation Story?“. The initial flood of writing happened in just two days, but it took another two months to create all of the exercises, do all of the edits, flesh out a few of the ideas, and figure out the self-publishing on Amazon KDP. With further spurts of creativity, I created some workshops based on those materials, and eventually, turned the workshop material into another mini-book focused specifically on preparing for retirement. None of that would have happened if I were still immersed in a company and managing a team.
In February, I noticed an announcement about a new choir starting up nearby, and I jumped at the chance to sing again. I have been in various choirs since I was a child and I love standing and singing ‘inside’ of the harmonics you feel from the singers around you. When I worked, I was hesitant to take on activities like this because I was always so tired at the end of a workday… emotionally tired is physically tired. But now, this was an amazing option. We worked on eight pieces for a concert in early June. I was also happy to take on the social media and digital imaging to support the group since Canva creations are another one of my visual artistic passions.
Back in September/October, I finished up my life coaching certification process, and I have continued coaching clients throughout the year. The flexibility of time allows me the freedom to talk with them when it is useful for them, most often during the day. I have no guilt for missing corporate meetings now! I was able to take on and complete a series of coaching sessions, and I am now looking for a few new people whom I can help. But… I’m not creating pressure on myself. I know that people will find me when the time is right. I like to use the principles from Open Space:
- Whoever comes is the right people
- Whenever it starts is the right time
- (Wherever it happens is the right place)
- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened
- When it’s over it’s over
One thing I love most is the freedom to plan short or long-term travel, within Portugal or in Europe, without worrying about counting vacation days. As ‘internal travelers’, we have visited many places that even many locals have not. We learn history and culture, try new foods, meet new people, enjoy local festivals, and enjoy this country which our new home. And, with other European countries just a short flight away, we can enjoy those histories, foods, and cultures for a low cost and short flight. Travel becomes more difficult as our bodies age, and we are sqeezing in all that we can before any of our body parts wear out!
What I’ve learned
What I’ve learned so far is that I still have a strong need for intellectual conversations, and that it is now my own responsibility to make that happen. I have continued my presence and voice within LinkedIn, now focusing on transitions, transformations, leadership, career growth, and surviving layoffs. Coaching feeds this same need, and also feeds my need to help others survive, thrive, and grow.
I’ve learned that our experiences during six years in Portugal can be useful information to others who’ve just migrated. I’ve learned that I like to share what I can to help others over the hump and through some frustrations. As our ‘migration mentors’ told us back at the beginning, “Living abroad is not for the feint of heart.”
I’ve learned that my creativity and my energy change day to day, month to month… and that’s ok.
I’ve learned that ‘purposeful procrastination’ is real and can be useful as my ideas percolate in the back of my mind over time.
I’ve continued to study creativity and brain science, and I am learning to appreciate the different styles of creativity in others, and how they can complement what I do. “Diversity in Creativity” creates a beautiful world and a lovely network of creative friends doing creative things. I had an inkling that this creative artist was inside of me, but it was hidden for a long time in project plans, team management, and corporate responsibilities.
I’ve learned that I can try activities and I can decide I don’t like them and stop.
I’ve learned that the day passes both slowly and quickly when the structure of a job-schedule isn’t driving my time. I learned that I have to block out time for certain activities or time can slip away unnoticed. I learned that I like free-time to think in a very quiet house.
I’ve learned that I like to write… that my thoughts gel better as I put my ideas into words. I used to write nearly weekly on LinkedIn and on my blog. That frequency has slowed down as other activities have consumed my time, but clearly (by this article), the words are still inside me wanting to get out and be shared.
What I long for
Our own nest: My husband and I are both looking forward to our new house (we have been in a rental for three years). We are ready to settle in, to create a small orchard, flower gardens, and some raised-bed vegetable gardens. We have never lived in any one house or any one city for more than four years, so thinking that we will live in this new house for perhaps 20 years is something special to ponder. No more moves due to job losses or job changes. We have a space that we chose, that we designed, with all of the things we know we’ll use in the rooms where we want them. We are fully aware that we are blessed by God to have this opportunity, and we are not taking it for granted. While neither one of us is looking forward to a move, this one is only fifteen minutes from our current house, so easy compared to some we’ve done. We are ready to settle in and nest.
Once in that nest, I feel like I will blossom again. More painting. More coaching. Gardening. Bee-keeping. More music. Friendships. Writing the story of our migration to Portugal. Tag-teaming to write the sequel to Roger’s first book, A Brush with Reality.
After a few short months without coaching clients, I can tell that I miss it. It gives me such joy and jazzes my energy to help another human break out of a mold, reach a goal, find some inner peace, transform into their own internal butterfly, and achieve a new vision for their future. If you think I might be a good coach for you, please reach out.
Retirement Phase 1, the Honeymoon Phase, is nearing the end. In Portuguese, the word for ‘retired’ is ‘reformada’. Reformed. I love it. I am now allowed to ‘re-form’ myself by my own choices. I think I’ll skip the Disenchantment phase and move on to Reorientation.
Lastly, I long to leave a legacy. I know that I have to be the one to make that happen. As a couple who chose to not have kids, there are no descendents to carry our legacy. We must be purposeful to leave our mark on the world, to make our world better because of us, long after we are gone. I’ll keep working on this as I make my choices on how to spend my time in this next phase of life.
