Transition 3.0

 

Prior to 2020 and the pandemic, I would have said that I had made a very successful transition from life defined by career to a new reality defined by exploration and growth primarily through the lens of travel. That new reality was already being somewhat challenged in 2019. One was by Wife’s decision she needed to deal with a number of physical deterioration ailments that were leaching the joy of traveling. The other was the decision to pursue our desire to find a place to become more integrated with and give back; the decision that led to Ghana and ultimately the Theodora Project

 

So things were already changing when the coronavirus pandemic put most of what was our transitioned life on hold as it did for so much of the world. As you know if you have been reading this blog regularly, the one thing that did not stop was the Theodora Project. Instead, for reasons not at all clear to me, the Project seemed to surge forward and evolve faster than I would have imagined even in March of 2020 when our initial program rollout was to have begun.

 

The changes wrought by the pandemic also made what was left of my consulting business much more difficult to maintain. The existing clients were fine. But getting new business proved to be almost impossible. Mostly people were just not (and still are not) interested in looking far forward and, therefore, planning for their exits. But I was also hit by the discontinuation of my mode of new business development which was very much driven by in-person networking.

 

All this came to a head in in December. I turned 73 last December. I don’t put much stock into particular birthday years. Turning 21, 40, 60, etc. didn’t mean much. But there were other years that for whatever reason seemed to mark a major realization or rite of passage. In my case, since 2014, I have been going like crazy. Traveling all over, then getting swept up in Theodora. As I stepped back, I realized that at 73 I really don’t have that many good years left.

 

Now before the army of ‘Age Is Just A Number’ adherents start barking, let me say that age is not a number. ‘Age is just a number’ only exists for those who are not old. If you are aging, you know that your capabilities are not what they were. You know you have ailments. You can read each day about peers who die. The reality is that when you get over 70 the odds of something happening that will severely decrease your ability to live your life as you desire start increasing and increasing. That ‘something’ could be an accident, an illness, or just something finally falling apart from natural deterioration. That is reality. It might be a year from now. It might be 10 years from now. But the odds that ‘something’ will happen keeps getting higher.

 

At 73 this now seems to be staring me in the eyes big time. I said to myself, “You don’t have that much time left. What do you really want to do with these last few good years?” The answers actually came up quite quickly and clearly.

 

First, I am done with my consulting career. I’ve done it. Enjoyed it. Accomplished as much as I could expect including setting me up for my transition into other things.

 

Second, Theodora is what I want to work on. It has the potential to facilitate change and transform lives like nothing I’ve ever worked on. So why not go all in and pursue that.

 

Third, get one last great travel experience. For Wife and I that looks like finding a place outside the U.S. to camp out. That is going to have to wait for vaccines and some settling down of the world to a point where we can travel again.

 

As Wife and I have gone through this thought process, we have actually begun to get excited again. We feel there is one last adventure, one last hurrah in our life story. Stay tuned for more about Transition 3.0.