I haven’t personally contributed to the blog lately– Clay has done all the heavy lifting. He does such a good job with painting word pictures.  Yay, Clay!  But I have a great excuse:

I am too busy reading novels.

On my floaty thingy.

In an 80 degree pool.

Being truly and completely retired now (which is supposed to mean there are more hours in the day),  I’m back on the blog road again.  This time, giving my impressions of Retirement 3.0 (as in 3 months since my official last day of work).

On our motorhome bookshelf, sits “The Escape Plan” binder.  Its maroon cover is faded from years of fondling, perusing, journaling and researching.

Not everyone has an escape plan in life. That big red ejector seat button riiigggghhhhttt under their finger (“Don’t pusha da button!!!” as our son Jesse used to say, after he willfully pushed the elevator Emergency Stop button and the ear-splitting klaxon of alarms scared the soup out of him).

We like pushing da button.

And we were feeling the urge to un-merge from our current lifestyle and change things up dramatically.

Clay and I would look each other in the eyes after a particularly trying day, week or month and desperately say,

“You and Me . . . right?”

Since the answer was always a heartfelt resounding, “Yes!”  then it didn’t really matter what storm or life quake was currently happening.

Our mantra became (because we were thinking of moving to a Spanish speaking country such as Uruguay or Ecuador), “Vayamos, muy muy legos, sin los pantalones.”  Loosely translated: “Let’s go far, far away, without long pants” (nice weather all the time, wearing shorts and flip flops).

The true germination of this wild idea came in March of 2012, on a piece of lined notebook paper, “The Start of It All”.

Our original questions was, “What do we actually want to do when we retire?”

I adore, love, can’t get enough of world travel. Packing for a plane trip makes me grin. Having a passport gives me wings.  Settling into a cruise ship melts my bones. Being somewhere I’ve never seen before makes my pulse quicken (in a good way– not like an anxiety attack). Picking up phrases in another language is a game for me (Please. Thank you. No thank you. Don’t touch me. Left, Right. I don’t speak your language. Do you speak English? Where is the toilet?).  Learning about other cultures and art from a knowledgable native tour guide is like taking a mini-college course and I suck it up like chocolate milk.

Clay also likes to travel, but really loves being in any allergy-free season/zone so he can be completely engaged in what’s going on around him.

I have spent the past 27 years of my life studying to become a physician, going through residency, solo surgical practice and temporary medical assignments on the road. It’s who I am and what I do.  A few years ago, Clay asked me, “I know you are ready to retire, but what are you going to do with yourself to keep fresh, alive, fulfilled and entertained when you’re no longer wrapped up in life as a doctor?”

“You mean, after I sleep for 6 months?”

“Of course.”

“I will be a writer!”  The idea popped into my brain as a full-fledged Aha! moment.  I have children’s book ideas, young adult fiction, medical memoirs and this blog.  Our daughter Caroline introduced us to Scrivener (www.literatureandlatte/scrivener) a word processing program for authors that organizes writing of any sort and gets it ready for publication.  Thanks, Caroline!

And Clay will continue to do what he has been doing:  thoroughly enjoying doing investment research analysis. When he’s not writing his thoughts down or studying astronomy, astrophysics and history.

So we’ve pushed da button.  And virtually every day since, we have a moment when we look at each other and just giggle with delight at our new-found freedom.  We’re flapping our arms and flying away!!!!

-Wendy