Preparation 2 - What Will We Do All Day?!

When Steve said he wanted to 'give up serious work' and, oh by the way, he wanted to do it in our 40s, my first reaction was, "OMG, what will we do all day?!" The concept of stopping work for more than a holiday isn't something encouraged by the American Keep the Economy Pumping Productivity Programming. You are supposed to work for as long as you can. Who would want to retire (because all you'll do is sit on a porch and die), right? I'd never even really thought about not working. The only alternatives I had ever considered were different types of work. Work is just what people do.

So when Steve said he wanted to do this (after the initial panic wore off) I had to start thinking about what I really wanted to do if I wasn't working on more than full-time transformation programmes. And once work comes out of the picture, you start to think about what you really want to do in your life. When you start to think that way, it's like looking at a blank canvas - what do I want to do?

I can see why people just fall into working forever, it's easy. There's no thinking involved. But I found being confronted with the blank canvas of my life really difficult. Thinking through and deciding what to put on that blank canvas is hard (especially when the hardy New England upbringing (work, work, work!) kicks in!). Some folks may have a long list of what to do if there is no work, but I suspect many more are like me - never really thought about it before.

Work isn't the be all and end all, and quite frankly I don't want to look back at 99 and think of how many great meetings I had or how much time I spent at my desk in a cubicle. Nope, I actually want to do a lot more than that, as I discovered when making my list of what I want to do post 'serious work'. (We are still tackling what to call this - it's not retirement, it's not a sabbatical, it's not a holiday - fodder for another post I think). I/we made our list and it wasn't an afternoon project - it took about two years to do.

There are books to write, instruments to learn to play, languages to speak, skills to learn, places to discover and explore. We want to sail around the Bahamas, up the coast of the US and in the Med. We want to bicycle through France and Italy, and motorbike through both the US and Europe. We'd like to explore both places by caravan too. Then we really need to get busy and explore the rest of the world - the Far East, Thailand, India, Japan, China, New Zealand, South America and the list goes on and on. We may be able to fit it all in in about 50 years or so!