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.
