Re-wired, NOT Re-tired
My husband and I retired from employment a year ago, and joked that we were not retiring, we were rewiring. It’s become a popular play of words for those like us who have decided to leave our jobs but were not quite ready to cease being productive yet. I suppose rewiring has become a perfect metaphor for what we were facing: like an old appliance that’s just been rewired, we will continue not only to be functional, but also able to adopt to a new or different environment; becoming useful and appreciated in ways we have not expected. Like an old car that’s been rewired, we looked forward to how our post-retirement life will surprise and delight us in ways we have not yet began to imagine.
We embraced this idyllic concept and forged ahead with minds curious, hearts open. We had imagined – and had a plan – about how we would execute our rewirement. We were ready. Or at least convinced ourselves that we were.
We considered retiring in the summer of 2018, and a year prior, the beginnings of the plan started shaping up. We’ll continue to work on what brings us joy: coaching for me, painting for Allen. We’ll honor our bucket list – visiting a place we’ve never been – around our anniversary. Around this, we’ll spend the winters in the Philippines and the summers in the US – this way we will have the best of both worlds.
Our life in the US would be about being around our grown children, family and friends. It would be about going to college-town basketball games, visiting New York, Chicago, Hilton Head or some other favorite place or beach, leisurely dinners with old friends, Sunday picnics at the winery, visits to art museums, theater and movies, home-cooked meals and reading newspapers and books for hours on end.
Our life in the Philippines would be about pursuing our aspiration to be “all in” in helping with the economic development of a farm community in the Philippines; we’d learn sustainable farming and be role models in “living off the land”. Having proven some success in projects we have sponsored in the elementary school – most notably the initiation of a Kindergarten class - we wanted to be immersed in the life of the children, working with the teachers and administrators towards introducing programs that will provide the children with broader and deeper access to learning.
With the benefit of hindsight, it becomes clearer now what motivated our aspirations for our life in the Philippines. I suppose because we immigrated to the US when we were in our 20s, and built a meaningful life there – raised our kids and made an impact in our work environment and community - perhaps we were also longing to build yet another life in the Philippines that is also meaningful and impactful. Re-wirement at its core.
I spent my first month of retirement re-settling in our home in Virginia. Note that I’ve been living in Chicago for almost four years prior to this – and while I visited regularly, that is the operative word – I was only visiting. I felt the need to re-settle by de-cluttering and re-organizing. This act was cathartic. I dropped numerous boxes of books to the local library, clothes, shoes, accessories to many-a-thrift shop, reconnected with old friends, hung out with my daughter, held a dear friend’s hand as she slipped away from this life.
In many ways, the decluttering was a way for me to get us ready for our “big move” – a plan to spend the next six months in the Philippines and completely avoid the winter. These six months will involve breaking ground on – and building - our new farmhouse, to be situated on land I inherited within the farm community that is at the heart of our aspirations.
A million other tasks manifested themselves. To get ready to be out of the country for six months, while making sure that life as we know it will be the same when we returned, I created the spreadsheet of spreadsheets with multiple checklists: financial, moving company, travel, Dude, etc. As if setting bills on autopay and getting ready for being away for six months was not complicated enough, we had this idyllic notion that we would fill up a 20-foot container with household belongings to furnish and decorate our new farmhouse in the Philippines. We also decided that our 8-year old, 8-pound dog Dude should accompany us. Why? Why not? I half-joke that I can now write a series of self-help books under the umbrella, “Crossing Borders: Surviving Outside Your Comfort Zone” : from creating a self-managing personal financial system, to getting my dog to accompany me in cabin, on a 24-hour trans-Atlantic flight to building a farm house remotely ten thousand miles away: every part of which I have never yet done before nor know how. I discovered sooner than I wanted that this – our rewiring – was going to test our capacity and resilience.
It’s been a year since we made that fateful decision to not “just” retire – but to “re-wire”. Our farmhouse in the Philippines will be move-in ready within a week. Our dog has adopted to his jet-setting life. My husband and I have learned to appreciate, once again, the culture that is the Philippines: where people are kind and helpful, where the old are cared for and respected, but where the bad traffic, the inefficient infrastructure, and humidity can drive anyone crazy. We also cannot imagine a life without the US: where, truly, I can honestly say I feel a different kind of freedom. It’s where our kids and their spouses are, where the system and infrastructure truly work, and where I can experience the four seasons. We have truly become citizens of the world.
I’d remember this year as a very enriching, enchanting year – a year where we reached way beyond our comfort zone and learned a lot. I mean a lot. The re-wiring continues….
