The Quantum Physics Of Transition Continue With No End In Sight - Part II

Since I wrote the last transition post on Nov. 21, I have continued to do a lot of thinking and contemplating. A lot of it revolved around continuing to promote my consulting business. My overall attitude and enthusiasm continued be sour. The clients I have now are taking huge amounts of effort just to get them to do the things they should. I even tried to fire one of them this week (they said they would get better. Why would you pay someone and not listen to them?). 

And last Friday I turned 78. So many people who interact with me in the work environment were shocked. They all say I look and act like I'm in 60's. Let me tell you, I don't feel like I'm in my 60's. I told one, "You can make up a lot of mental illusions about how you are really not that old, but let me tell you when you are only 2 years away from 80 there is only one adjective that describes you - OLD."

I'm thinking, "If we are really getting ready for the last lap of the race what the heck do you want to be doing? I don't want to be beating people over the head to do what is best for them. I've done that for almost a half a century." 

But what DO I want to do?

Well travel. It is still the thing that truly floats my boat. There is an expiration date on being able to do that, However, Wife and I continue to adjust how we do our travel in ways that seems to extend how long we might be able to continue.

What else.

The social impact stuff. The job development work in Africa. That is the thing that is starting to finally come into its own. (I know I owe you post on that.) Go with the flow. What is working with the least effort (now). The social impact stuff. What is like pushing water up hill. The consulting work. Listen to the universe.

Then yesterday evening was sort of the kind of proof that you just need to be open to, the universe talking to you. 

A long-term business colleague who is associated with the network building organization I started 20 years ago has been begging me to reengage with the group. She asked if I would come to the Christmas social. I said I would. It was, to say the least, an interesting experience. Other than a few old time people who I know well, no one...literally no one even acknowledged me, introduced themselves, made any effort to make contact. And honestly, I felt the same. I had not the slightest interest in finding out who they were. I left early because I had a social impact virtual call to some people in Malaysia. In the past, I might have felt annoyed that I wasted my time going to the meeting or that people were so rude. Not yesterday. I felt blessed and grateful. It was a clear message. 

It is time to turn the page and move on.  

The Quantum Physics Of Transition Continue With No End In Sight

I have written so many posts about my 'Transitioned State' since 'officially' ending working full-time that it feels like I am a film studio milking some franchise for every last penny (Oops...no more pennies) every last nickel of profit no matter how old and repetitive the material gets. 

An ongoing theme has been how much do I want to be doing the work I used to do versus doing something else. Well the something else has been travel. But the cost of travel limited how much of it could be done and required that some work be included to pay for it. So going over my Transition  tagged posts, there is this constant yo-yo between saying I don't want to work, to getting reinvigorated by work, to not wanting to work, and back and forth. 

Looking at my early 2024 posts, I claimed to have recognized that this yo-yo was just the steady state and I would accept it. 

That seemed to be fine until the return from this latest trip. 

This time the desire to get back into the work swing of things has been way, way harder than previously. My getting sick right after getting back and only just now, almost 3 weeks later, starting to feel normal again has been a significant part of it . So there certainly has been a lack of energy from that. 

But there seems to be other factors at play. 

To be sure of my memory, (which at my current age seems to be completely inaccurate), I went back over transition posts I've made over the last couple of years. Talk about memory lapse! Go back to the first part of this year and I am absolutely oozing with excitement over various business things I was doing. I'm talking about new opportunities, and revival of old ones. So what the heck has happened over the last 7/8 months?

Well, I'd say when the year started, we were not sure at all that we'd be able to traveling. The blood clot thing, our short trip to Sweden that went bad with breaking Wife's foot. I think in the absence of travel, there was a feeling 'well I may as well get more active with work."

Next, there had been an interest from someone close to me about taking over my practice. We had a lot of conversations. If someone was going to take it over, there needed to be an actual practice to take over. 

Third, we were in the middle of the remodel that was sucking up a lot of cash. Plenty of incentive to keep working there. 

So what has changed since we came back?

First, we did travel! And it was as good as it ever was, and now, with time staring at us, the desire to travel is even greater.

Second, being gone for almost two months, I find all those business things I was excited about, they are pretty much dead in the water. Not that they couldn't be revived. But you can't just disappear for months at a time and have initiatives keep moving. It takes ongoing effort. So if I go put in that effort now, what's going to happen. In 3 months I will be leaving again for two months and it will all relapse. So why put in the effort in the first place?

Third, we are finding since the way we travel has changed with age, we can travel spending much less money. This means there is a lot less pressure to need to work. 

But, offsetting these things are others such as:

I tend to need something to do with purpose in my life, hence why I have always taught, coached, mentored, etc. 

Then there is the need for a certain amount of meaningful inter-personal connection. That has almost exclusively come from work over the decades. 

Finally, there are recent events associated with Theodora and Rotary Club to End Human Trafficking that are putting that into a whole new light. (Will do a separate post on those). Would that fill the 'purpose' need? 

Now add to the mix that Wife had elective surgery to repair arthritic damage to her thumb and doesn't have use of her right hand for a few weeks. That means a lot of time and energy to assist her. 

Factor all this in and you have a recipe for much introspection and not a lot of clarity. 

(To Be Continued) 

 

Pumped...About Business

I have to be totally honest. From the time I started transitioning into my post full-time work life, the 'work' component has been something that I have done to fill time when I'm not traveling and to make the money to pay for travel. As I wrote a number of months ago, I go through cycles where I just want to travel, which are interrupted when I realize I have to do some work to pay for the travel. Then I get motivated, build up some income and cash, travel more, lose motivation and repeat the cycle. 

However, during the most recent work refocus period something very odd has happened. I've run into a set of circumstances that not only have me interested, but have me absolutely pumped about my work. It's a bit complicated, but I will try to summarize in bullet point form.

• The baby boomer generation, which has many business owners among them, is reaching a point where more and more need to figure out what to do with their businesses.
• There are a significant number of these that would really like their business to continue on for the good of their communities and their people. 
• But doing that is not easy. You need an heir, a family member, or people in your business to become owners. Typically those transactions are not successful for a variety of reasons.
• Another means often suggested is the Employee Stock Ownership Trust. It, also has a lot of impediments to being used.
• I remembered a very significant example of a business that successfully created a multi-generational succession that kept the company independent AND provided a charitable benefit at the same time...Hershey Foods. 
• I found another example...Rolex Watches
• Now I had a model that could be potentially replicated.
• These models have lots of challenges, but (for whatever reason), I seem to have resources that fit nicely to resolve the challenges. 
• Now I am having meetings with potential resources and slowly putting together the team of specialists one would need to do these kinds of transitions.

And I'm very excited. It is not just intellectually stimulating, it has the potential to provide a resolution to a number of vexing issues associated with businesses, their owners, and their communities.

The one thing though that rattles in my mind is...

 WHY IS THIS ALL HAPPENING WHEN I AM IN MY LATE 70'S????

COULDN'T HAVE COME EARLIER, WHEN I HAD MORE TIME AND ENERGY?

There is, of course, no answer to this. Things happen for a reason. I am not wise enough to see it at this moment in time.

Deluge

 Can someone tell me who turned on the fire hose?

2020 was the death knell to my consulting practice. Throughout the halcyon days of our travel soaked semi-retirement, I had created a very nice, balanced amount of continuing consulting work. It funded most of our travel and kept me occupied when we weren't traveling. Then in 2019, the great Ghana/Theodora venture launched taking more of my time. Comes the pandemic and any thought of the kind of work I do was out of the minds of business owners simply wondering if they were going to survive. And on top of that, my whole practice was built on a face-to-face networking method of marketing which was completely out during the lock down period. 

2021 I finally managed to find an online platform and began to find a means of building my network again. But it was exclusively oriented on Theodora. The few consulting clients I still had were slowly withering away. 

Going into 2022, I was reconciled that my consulting life was over. Except when we did our financial analysis and realized that to get back to the travel life we'd had before and fund travel to Ghana, I'd better find some work! Fortunately the business world seemed to be reawakening. I did some perfunctory non-Theodora networking. But nothing that should have led to any business right away.

Comes July and I get two referrals. They immediately close. Then come two more. And two more. Suddenly over a period of 45 days, I've had the most new business closings in my entire career!!!!!

WTF!

And they are closing in the shortest amount of time. I meet with them. I give them a proposal. They say yes and off we go. 

Don't get me wrong, I am incredibly grateful to get this surge of income just when we needed it. I just have no idea at all as to why it is happening.

Time For A New Transition

This weekend was a most interesting one. It actually started early in the week. I was talking to one of my close business colleagues and mentioned to him how frustrated I was feeling about life at the moment. As he is works in financial planning, he asked me 1) what was frustrating me and 2) what could I do to change it.

Good advice. The kind I give to my clients all the time LOL. So I did just that. And what came up was what I've said consistently over the last few months. I am missing the balance I had when I was doing all my travel. I have slipped back into the imbalance of working all the time where I was before my transition from full-time work. This was mostly just fate. The biggest being the effect of the pandemic on Theodora and all the extra work necessary that would not have taken place without the pandemic. So I now knew what the problem was.

On Friday, my friend and I spoke again. I relayed my thoughts. His next advice was, "Well, what are you going to do about it?" Don't you just hate it when your confidants give you your own advice?

What was I going to do about? Well fate in the form of newly minted Middle Eastern Princess, Pu' al-Isha aka Daughter #2 who from her quarantined apartment in Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq out of boredom, sent Wife and I a link on something called the Golden Visa.

The Golden Visa is a program that for a certain size of investment allows you to get permanent residency in another country. Pu had sent one on Greece. This came to us around Noon time on Saturday. Wife and I were doing our own thing during the afternoon. Sometime during that period, I actually looked at the link and realized that the site referred to many countries that had these programs. This really intrigued me. Wife came downstairs. I mentioned to her my discovery. She replied that she had already gone a step further and looked at the countries and identified three as being the most cost effective for us. There was this moment of silence as we realized we were both rushing down the same logic path.

Conversations over dinner confirmed, we were ready. We are not happy where we are. We are unhappy with the on-going divisiveness in the U.S. We both doubted we could travel as we have in the past because of our physical deterioration. But if we were in a place already where travel was much easier. And I realized that I am really ready to totally give up work. That the only thing that really motivates me now is coaching and mentoring the Theodora women.

By Sunday, we had had conversations with all our children who were in one way or another very supportive. We threw together initial financial analyses and built out a 'to do' spreadsheet of things we would need to research. At first blush the numbers looked totally doable. There are a ton of details to be considered. We won't really be able to do serious research until we can travel again and actually go and look at where we might consider being (somewhere in southern Greece). But there is this palpable excitement.

Wife and I have done this more than once in our life - just picked up and moved to somewhere totally different. We have been in New Mexico for 27 years. We are ready for a change. We want one more challenge and adventure in our life. It is going to take a lot of effort, research and planning. It may not come to pass. But I am reminded of when we first came to New Mexico. We had an instinctive feeling we wanted to be here. It took two years, research and unplanned for events but we made the move. I am feeling the same way about this.

2018 Eastern Mediterranean Trip - In Review - Lessons

Okay, I promise...I mean it...really...I do...you can count on it...go to the bank with it...

This is the LAST POST on the 2018 Eastern Mediterranean Trip.

So what great lessons have we learned on this trip?

Are we ready to act our age?

Accepting age limitations and restricting our efforts remains much more theory and a discussion point than practice. We talk a good game but the minute we are out in the field our will power falls faster than a souffle out of the oven. I mean really, the first day, the very first freaking day in Jaffa, we walked ourselves into the ground!

But the flip side of this is that I continue to return from these trips feeling (once I’ve recovered) physically stronger and mentally more alert. So what is the right balance? Not sure.

A subtle change in attitude about travel

When we first started doing these long trips, I felt a kind of pressure that we need to this or we might never do it. There was almost an urgency to take advantage of the opportunity. After nine of these long trips, there is no longer the feeling of needing to do them because you are afraid you never will. If it all stopped now, could say we did a helluva a lot. But on the other hand I believe we have also gained the understanding that we will travel and will continue to travel. We have openly talked about if as we become less physically able to travel the way we have been, we will just change the way we travel. It has truly become part of who we are. Which has led to…

A change in my perception of my life

An understanding that the travel life and the home/work life are one. When people now ask me how my vacation was or have I gotten back into the work routine, it really doesn't compute. Because for me all I have is one life, a life that is composed of my work transformed so it supports and nourishes me rather than drains me and my travel. Sometimes I am more traveling and work is less prevalent. And other times I am working more and travel is in planning mode. But they are just two sides of the same.

On using guides

One of the influences of aging has been an increase in our reluctance to do things like driving on our own in many situations. Another has been a reluctance to attack cultures that we are unfamiliar with totally on our own. This has led to our making greater and greater use of guides. Our first use of a packaged guide/driver/accommodation trip was in Albania last fall. We did two this time - Jordan and Turkey. In Greece, the Peloponnese, we used a guide to get us around but arranged our own housing. 

There are pluses and minuses to this system. Guides as a general rule, have their own agenda...by that I mean they have a certain world view and if you are with them you are going to get them. Based on what we'd heard from many people who have been to Israel and used guides, I was pretty glad we did our own thing there and could have our impressions be unsullied. But I would not have been comfortable doing that in the areas where we had our guide drivers because driving and navigating would have been really tough. We got all our big guides this time through the TourHQ site. I was pretty happy overall with what we got and after this experience think I can use that sites resources more effectively to get what we want.

And on to the future

When I discovered the joy of the long trip, I had a passion to do them, as if I didn’t I would be missing the opportunity forever. And it was clear that the whole process of planning the trips and then managing during the trip provided stimulation to an important part of me that used to come from working…a part that needed to still be stimulated at some level especially if I wasn’t working.

Then two things took place that caused me to reevaluate. One the voice of limitations I’ve alluded to before became stronger and stronger. Even before we started this type of travel, we had these ideas of things we were going to do when we traveled that never came to pass because of limitations that arose. It is clear we can’t do what we thought we might have even five years ago because of various limitations that inexorably keep growing.

But equally important, I have mastered how to do all kinds of different traveling to all kinds of different places. Now it feels like the whole process of how one does traveling like this has become less of an effort. Before it took so much thinking to plan out a trip and consider all the options. Now if you told me we could go off for long trip, I think I could put something together in weeks. The need to plan to the extreme is really not required. And frankly, it is not quite the challenge or as stimulating. Yet the need for challenge and stimulation remain.

This has caused rethinking on what we might do and how we might do it. Result? An exciting new list of opportunities to explore. Maybe we shouldn’t lock into a destination, but should follow the availability of airfares to take us wherever that leads? Perhaps we should try to do things purposely with less notice. Maybe we should travel less long and more often? We are going to try this fall to do a completely unscripted, unplanned road trip in the US (the smart money is all on my caving just before the trip starts and make a bunch of reservations). I feel like a flower that is blooming. So many new ways for us to go out into this wonderful world and find experiences.

A Brief Transitional Interlude

Let's break away from our travelog deluge to reflect on transition, a subject I've written much on. Let's look at Wife and my day today.

They were calling for rain. I was not excited about running around the crazy roads here if it was raining especially as I am really looking forward to exploring the hill towns of the region. So I decided today would be a work day. One of my goals when I finally designed the semi-retired state was to be able to continue working in a reduced state on what I liked while I was traveling wherever I wanted in the world.

So today I worked. I did a review of legal documents. I wrote a newsletter. I did major work on revamping the design and text of my website. I did a lot of this outside looking over the Mediterranean sipping coffee or Orangena soda. Then around Noon, Wife and I decided it would be an Italian day and went into Ventimiglia for lunch. We enjoyed some of the best pizza we've had on the trip with a lovely salad and a half liter of house red wine. We went walking in the town and took some pictures. We grabbed a gelatto. We spent maybe three hours on the whole lunch period including travel.

We came back to the house. I took a nap. I went back to work, again looking out over the spectacular scenery. We were both so satisfied from lunch that we skipped eating anything for dinner - not uncommon for us when we are traveling.

After I finish this blog post, I will dig into writing my book. It was a productive day punctuated by our being in another country enjoying a completely different lifestyle than we do at home.

This life style did not happen by accident. It happened because of the long hard work Wife and I did figuring out what we really wanted, figuring out how we had to change things so we could have what we wanted, and making trade-offs, sometimes hard trade-offs of other things that we deemed less important.

The final chapters only have the chance of being happy if you are willing to do the work to make them so.

Balancing The Buckets

Having completed the evolution to the post-'career defines you world' - what some might call retirement but prefer the word transitioned, I can look back at the process and recognize certain realities that were hidden from view while living through the process.

I think one of the most illuminating - sort of a 'ah ha' moment - things I recognized is just how important the natural reduction in energy level as we age is in the whole process. It is well recognized that people toward the end of their careers tend to be less enthusiastic than when they began. Some of this can come from boredom - having done the same thing for such a long period of time. But I think energy loss compared to energy required is the biggie.

When we are in the full flush of our careers, we tend to work balls to the wall. This is especially true for the entrepreneur or the highly career motivated person. Our work life which dominates our persona is based on expending a lot of energy which we can do when we're say in our 40's. As we go into our mid-50's and beyond we find our natural energy levels declining. Yet our work life is designed on an energy burn rate based on our younger energy level. A person starts feeling tired and that feeling of fatigue increases. It manifests in a negative attitude toward various things especially those aspects of work that we are less than excited about.

This gap between energy needed and energy available continues to grow as we get older. Most people finally hit a wall and end up stopping what they're doing without any plan for going forward. This leads to the scenario we've all seen of some one retiring and going into a funk or worse. Now their energy level is higher than what they have available to do and they're frustrated again.

The key to resolving this is to determine what one wants to do in the post-transitioned state...easier said than done. In my case I've been lucky enough to find a number of things that I like to do each of which provides something different to me. I couldn't do all of any of these things and be happy. I need the balance of them. So I have travel which fulfills the type A part of my persona, I have my highly pared down work which provides satisfaction from using my skills, keeps me socially engaged in the world and adds to the ease of our finances, and there is what I call my 'solitude stuff', the things I do totally by myself including my hiking/exercise, meditation, writing, and cooking that fulfill my inner being and peace-of-mind.

Together these three 'buckets' as I call them give me what I need. The key is to make sure I put the right amount of energy into each. Too much into anyone and I'm out of balance and feeling stressed. Too little and I'm bored and not stimulated enough. When I have the right balance of energy (tied of course to my energy level now) going into the right buckets, I find each day to be nourishing and fulfilling...just what one wants from the transitioned state.

Transition Complete!

Can you believe this a blog post that is not about travel in Asia? Actually it has been a bit of a come down since we've been back. We were going at such a pace and we were being exposed to SOOOO much new stuff on SOOOO many levels that being home seems...well kind of dull.  BUT mellow, pleasant, enjoyable, beautiful too. I've said it in the past and stay with it, our home is one of the most beautiful places in  the world to stay...and we've been in plenty of places around the world.

We are also being blessed with wonderful weather. After the intense heat and humidity of SE Asia and the pollution of Hong Kong being in the moderate temperature (highs in the 70's and lows in the 40's), dry climate and crystal blue skies of Albuquerque are a joy. Unlike when we came back from Europe in the Fall and I was shocked and grated by driving and crime here compared to where we had visited in Europe, the calmness of the roads and the lack of noise of Albuquerque in comparison to all the places we visited in Asia has been a balm.

When I got back from our last big trip, I'd had a bit of a crisis concerning working as part of my transitioned life. With the help of my advisors and Wife, I was able to overcome that (actually if memory serves me correct, I think they outright laughed at me and told me to get back to work). Since then I have pruned what was left of my practice until I had it to exactly where I wanted it, and was able to get out and sell again with enthusiasm...all this within the limits I've set of the amount of time I'm willing to work in semi-retirement.

The acid test was this trip. As in the past there was a little anxiety about leaving but an easy transition into the international traveling life once we were there. As in the past I was able to keep all my business relationships warm, holding a number of phone meetings, doing what was necessary via email, and even signing up a new piece of business while gone. And this time, within days of getting back I was into the swing of things with my at home/part-time life. I'd already scheduled many meetings before I even left Asia. It was all smooth and natural.

I now have the balance that so many seek when they get out of their businesses or retire. I'm feeling very good.

Back To School

As we did back during Christmas and for our anniversary, Wife and I decided that we needed to do something for Valentine's Day. Fortunately this year Valentine's falls on a Sunday and with us now firmly in the 'nice Sunday mid-afternoon dinner' pattern, it was easy to make something we both loved.  But what else?

Cards? Cards for various events has gotten to be a sore spot because Wife and I are...well let's be nice a call us frugal. Going out and plunking every more money for Hallmark's latest just hasn't sat well. Wife had the idea we should buy a bunch at once and then just keep rotating them. But I came up with the idea that we should channel our inner kindergarten child and make them! Shockingly enough Wife actually thought this was a good idea.

So while dinner was cooking, out came the art supplies. This type of idea works well when one has lots of grandchildren and has various things on hand. Unfortunately with our grandchildren only visiting us rarely because of distance, a lot of our supplies were long past the expiration date. Also unfortunately neither Wife nor I are particularly talented in the graphic arts. But it's all about the participation, right?

Everything laid out and ready for action

What! Your kindergarten never served decade old Bordeaux during drawing time?

Maybe they should have and you'd still be doing art today.

Wife decided to go with the Hallmark inspiration

I on the other hand based my theme on the alchemistic idea of the four elements

In keeping with the Kindergarten theme this was followed by snacks or in our case a grilled ribeye steak, baked potato and steam broccoli with ample amounts more of Bordeaux and "I love you".

Updates

Things have been going day-to-day in a nice rhythm. But this will change soon as we will be on the travel adventure path so I thought I'd just put down some status reports on various themes I've been recording in the blog.

Transition/Retirement/Semi-Retirement

After a rough period after we got back from our Fall trip where I found the desire get out and hustle for the small amount of work that funds the travel portion of transitioned life (and was given a kick in the pants by certain individuals), I seem to have gotten fully comfortable with the partially working component of the semi-retired life and have been pursuing it with great gusto. What is important is that I do each component with enthusiasm but I no long feel any need to push the envelope beyond what is enjoyable and reasonably easy to do.  That means that when I do work, I'm rarely tired or stressed which is a key part to the 'retirement' part of semi-retirement.

The Story


Writing of The Story has (as I've mentioned in the past) become my primary evening leisure activity.  Every night once dinner is over, I get out the computer, put on music, read about 10 pages of the last things I wrote to get back into the story and then write and additional 4-6 pages.

I am deep, deep into the third of four books that are going to make up the cycle of stories related to this basic fantasy concept. I'm currently writing chapter 10 out of the 20 planned chapters and as of last night I was writing page # 260. There's a lot more to go. I've definitely decided I'm not going to do anything with this until I've finished all four of the books. Then depending on how I feel at that point (which at the rate I'm going is going to be years from now), I'll decided if I want to do any of the things necessary to go beyond just writing for myself.

Travel

Stay tuned! New travel adventures on the near horizon where Captain Jean-Luc de-I and second in command Dr. Wife Crusher take the Eldership and break all of their carefully crafted transitioned life travel rules and get swept up into the vortex that is a trip organized by the Poo Lee Shah Travel agency. If we had done our research, we would have found out that Poo Lee Shah Travel is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Magical Queendom of Pulandia. For those who may not remember, Pulandia is not restricted to a particular space in the universe. It miraculously appears in various times and places bringing with it its own set of rules associated with physics, the conservation of energy, peace, quiet, and chaos theory. If we had realized the Poo Lee Shah Agency was a portal into Pulandia we would have had our eyes much more opened as to what we were getting into!

If nothing else it should make for great blog fodder.

Cooking In The Semi-Retired State

I find that much in the daily gastronomic world is changing now that I am firmly entrenched in a semi-retirement state. These changes are the result of:

• More time available daily to cook
• Need to decrease consumption of food associated with declining metabolism
• Decreasing ability to eat various things associated with age (i.e. large quantities, overly rich food, etc.)
• Increased desire to be creative

While one of the manifestations has been trying to expand flavors I cook with and being a bit more creative with building flavor bases, I think the most interesting development has been the desire to make use of everything. This means that whatever is cooked gets used to the fullest. It often means the reprocessing of leftovers into soups and it means cooking more larger cuts of meat and then processing it into a variety of meals and ingredients.  For example for our Sunday dinner last weekend I made roasted a turkey breast that served as dinner. The major part of the meat was harvested into 6 oz packets for future use. All the little bits of meat and pan juices were added with other leftovers for a stew. Finally the carcass was turned into a stock.

I'd like to delude myself that I am being incredibly frugal and not wasteful. However it is hard to maintain that illusion when two people share a 3200 square foot house with no other occupants.

Selling In the Semi-Retired State

The balance between retirement and 'semi' (meaning the amount of time I still work) has been a work in progress. But after the exploration and rejection of full retirement after our fall travels, I have been much more at peace with the chosen path. This has led to a refocus (within acceptable limits) on the disciplines necessary to get business.

So it was with interest that I read daughter #3's recent post on the selling environment of her soon to former employer and her new employer and I reflected on how certain sales management and sales process fundamentals are the same whether you have a sales staff of thousands or you are the sales staff. Among those fundamentals are that sales is a process, you have to do the work (make the calls, have the meetings), you have to measure what you're doing, you have to analyze what you measure, and you have to be accountable.

Last year as I was going though the transition, I was a bit sloppy with many of these fundamentals. Fortunately I had enough momentum from past years that with what I did do enough came in for me to produce more than what I had hoped. I did keep the most important metrics however and I was able to the kind of analysis I've done for many years. It was very encouraging in that the basic relationship between developing leads, prospects, proposals, and sales had remained constant even with the lower total activity. So I've been able to set some targets for my basic sales variable - networking meetings - with a good degree of confidence.

What is most evident since November is how I conduct my meetings. For one thing I am definitely lighter (meaning my attitude and spirits). I just have confidence that my system works and I don't have to have this to survive so I don't feel so intense about things. Therefore, most of my meetings are about the person I'm with (though I must admit a lot of people I meet with are curious about how I manage the semi-retirement mode successfully). Bu ant I always close my meetings, the last 10 minutes or s, with my pitch...this is what I'm looking for and these are the conditions that will tell you when you should bring me in. And I am very unabashed about doing it...something that was not always the case earlier on in my career.

It also helps that I am much more selective about the work I want to do which makes it much easier to explain, and as I don't need the income I needed when working full-time I can be much more flexible in structuring a service and payment scheme that people will buy.

Catching Up

I haven't posted in quite a while so I'm going to catch up the month in one post.

The major theme of November was illness. Right after the month began I came down with what seemed like a fairly minor viral infection over a weekend. I didn't feel too bad afterwards but I did notice issues breathing. It morphed into bronchitis. That's when I made my major error in that I should have gone to my alternative medicine folks then when that type of thing would help. But there were a number of times when it seemed like things were getting better so I held off.  Then it went down into my left lung and it was definitely NOT getting better. Just before Thanksgiving, I finally decided I needed to do something but unfortunately my doctor was out of town so we were doing consultation by phone. We tried some things but they didn't work and we made the decision I should go to Urgent Care and get a chest X-Ray. The doctor there said, "let's listen to you first because if it is obvious, there's no need to radiate you unnecessarily." This was Monday morning. He said it sounded like a classic case of pneumonia and prescribed some antibiotics that I started immediately and I can say within 48 hours I've seen a big improvement.

In spite of all this I've been doing a lot of cooking. We had a very quiet Thanksgiving with Cabinet Lady, Dr. Debbie (ret) and Dr. D's sister. The turkey I did was crazy good. I've been working on this recipe from Saveur Magazine the last 4 or 5 years that is an apple cider based brine with a very high temperature cook. Each year I seem to get it refined a bit better.  I also finally pulled the plug on the great stuffing/dressing experiment. My Mom always used Pepperidge Farms packaged stuffing in the bird and everyone loved it. I've tried so many from scratch recipes without success. So this year I just bought the package - less work, better results.

Wife and I are also putting on a party this weekend so we're doing a bunch of cooking for that. I decided a while ago that I'd had it with people coming to our place for meals and then saying something like, "Oh we should have you over but I couldn't possibly cook like you do." and then we never hear from them again. So I started this year to recruit people who could be my audience. My rules are simple:

• I like to cook and I need people who want to eat so I can cook
• If you come there is no obligation
• I don't want you to bring anything and I don't expect you to invite me back
• If you can accept those rules, you're on the list.

I had quite a few takers so we'll have a dozen folks here not counting ourselves. Our theme is FOOD FROM OUR TRAVELS. So we've been working on finding recipes for all kinds of things we've eaten and loved over the years. It is going to be a progressive buffet. I'm not sure that is a real culinary word but it should be. It means we'll have an initial amount of cold buffet and then start adding hot dishes but not take anything off of the buffet.  I will give a full report on this next week. I've already made a number of dishes and so far everything is tasting great. Hopefully I will take some pictures though I've been terrible about that lately.

We also cut the cable meaning we no longer have cable TV or satellite TV. We have a high speed internet connection, a Roku box, and an over air HDTV antenna. It really doesn't affect me as I haven't watched a lick of TV since before our last trip because I AM ADDICTED TO WRITING!

It's crazy. I've talked about it before but I would rather be writing every night than just about anything.  I finally finished Book #2, the sequel to my first book. Three people actually read the first book and the feedback was it was like drinking straight Coke syrup - too much going on, too jagged, too intense. In Book #2 the conflict between the original younger author and the current older author's voices was finally resolved. And things definitely stretched out. The subject matter of Book #2 was so much that I pushed lots of it off to yet another book. And Book #2 came in at 364 pages compared to Book #1 which was 187 pages. I should be on to Book #3 any day now. Then there is the prequel and the rewrite of Book #1.  It was funny when I was done on Monday because on the one hand I was "Yay I've finished" and on the other it was "Boo Hoo, I'm going to miss all the stuff and folks I've been living with these last 9 months".

More Semi - Less Retirement

Each new long trip that we do seems to further our understanding of how to be away for long periods enjoyably and within the energy resources we have. That in turn, at least on my part, just makes me want to travel more.

Simultaneously I find that my attitudes toward what I want to do and don't want to do in this last phase of life changes. Prior to going on this trip I was pretty good with doing some work while I was in country. Coming back this time I find that actually doing the work (helping clients) is easy but there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm for getting out there and selling - which of course is necessary if you want to have work.

Another data point is that the work that I have been doing has been very profitable so we actually ended up with a surplus compared to our budget.

So I was curious as to what it would look like if I cut out work but expanded the travel - basically reduce income and increase expenses.  We had our advisers run the numbers and (not a big surprise) it doesn't work. So it appears that if I want the extra travel I need to keep the semi-working side going.

I'm conveniently skipping the part where one of my advisers and Wife looked at me sarcastically and said, "Oh so you are going to have to work 20 hours a week for 50% of the time and get to travel out of the country twice a year for 6 weeks at a time - you poor thing you!

Review of Travel Report

As traveling is an integral part of the semi-retired life landscape, I like to summarize the overall observations and feelings that come out of each trip.

To summarize this was a 6 week trip with a significant 'stay' component - stay meaning we stayed at one place and used it as a base rather than traveling around a lot. 'Stay' in our lexicon also implies that we are renting houses or apartments and not using hotels. For the six week period we had only 5 hotel nights, we had 8 nights at our daughter's, and the rest was either homes or apartments. We made a conscious decision to limit the amount of driving that we did. This of necessity limited the number places that we could visit. Our trip started in Vienna Austria, went for two weeks based out of Graz Austria, went for slightly over a week based out of the Euginia Hills near Padua Italy, a couple of days in Ljubljana Slovenia and just over a week in Amsterdam Netherlands.

Here are the observations and conclusions:

• Travel really agrees with us - I in particular felt that I came out of the trip more mentally acute and active than I have been for quite some time. I think this was a function not just of traveling but also some of the decisions we made to put some limits on what we do.

• It is that act of travel that is the desired outcome - I don't have a 'bucket list' of things I want to see or do. What I like is the whole process of planning, then going, then dealing with all the challenges that come from the type of travel we do. Yes the challenges can be frustrating but they are never impossible and when overcome lead to a sense of accomplishment. I think this is what is feeding the mental acuity aspect.

• I think our lifestyle is healthier when we travel - We may eat a bit more but we walk tons more! I suspect our daily exercise level when we travel is on average at least two to three times more than what we do at home. At home we have schedule exercise in. When we travel just about every day we go some where and end up walking and walking and walking.

• If we're going to stay somewhere (3 weeks or more) I want to be somewhere I can communicate - I have no problem dropping into areas where we don't know the language (keep in mind we're strictly in first world countries) and figuring things out. That's part of the challenge. But if I'm going to be somewhere for a while, I want shopping and understanding the systems to not be that much a challenge so I if you don't speak the language. So that means for our longer 'stay' type of trips and English or French speaking country.

• Driving in Europe was much less dangerous than here in the US - Navigating is a challenge because of signage differences or non-existence but the GPS has really helped us with that. But by and large people follow speed limits, stay on the right unless they are going faster than other vehicles and don't go weaving in and out of traffic.

• We have to keep acknowledging our age and declining capabilities - Even though certain children who will not be identified snarkily said that our 'slowing down' brought us back to where normal people are, we really on a number of fronts tried consciously to do things in a manner that did not beat us up so much.

• Paying attention to the quality of sleep area pays off - In making our arrangements I wanted to avoid some of the problems of the trip before this where sleeping was not as good as we would have hoped because rooms and mattresses. This time by being aware of the issues we were much happier in that regard and the result was we didn't come back exhausted.

• The type of travel we do is probably not something any of our peers are going to do - We've always dreamed of being able to share our love travel and the places we've been with friends but I've come to the conclusion that the way we do things is a product of decades of experience. There are so many things that we take for granted now like going to a grocery store in a country where you don't know the language or driving around and navigating as just some of the little challenges of travel. If you've done it in three languages, what's problem doing it in a fourth. For someone who has never done it, that's a much bigger deal. We've also fine tuned how to get the best value for the money we've spent and know what we want and what we're willing to spend for it. That has come from lots of experience. So the net is I suspect it will just be Wife and I doing our traveling.

• Finally we recognize time is running out - We are in our upper 60's and fortunately still have mobility and acuity. The odds are some time in the next 10 years that's going to change and we aren't going to be able to do what we're doing now. So anticipate more blog posts from places around the world!

Some Commentary on Travel

We'll take a break from the busy work of documenting our adventures to wax philosophic about the travel experience itself and more specifically why I like traveling and like traveling the way I do.

First, I think there is a wonderful aspect of getting out of one's daily routine. I've found that as I've gotten more and more into the retired mind set that it is so easy to get trapped into the comfortable bondage of routine. There is no doubt that for me anyway traveling is a major means of breaking that rut.

Second, I love the aspect of figuring things out. Each time Wife and I go to a new place, it is all about how do we figure out how we get around, how we find what we want, how we take the unfamiliar and make it familiar.  There is a degree of stress that goes with that but there is also this great feeling of satisfaction as you meet each challenge and make things your own.

Third is related to the Second. Because it is all about the process of discovery and challenge, of figuring things out and making them your own, I think that is one of the reasons why cruises and such are not attractive to me. One of the major aspects of a cruise is they make it easy for you. I totally understand why that attracts so many people, but it definitely goes counter to the the desire to discover and make something one's own

Fourth, smaller is better. We were in Vienna and it was enjoyable but it was huge and we could have spent much more time there and not gotten to feel like we knew the city. A city like Graz is lovely and has an area around it. It is all very approachable and we within a fairly short time can feel like we can make it 'our place."

Fifth, you got have space. I've related this before. Having a nice big place to call your base takes all kinds of pressure off of the process. You don't have to worry about housekeeping coming to your room. You have space to spread out. A nice place (especially with a view!) is fun to be at. It means you're happy to do less during the day and go at a more sustainable pace (important if you're older and taking longer trips) because there is the pleasure of the place you stay at.

Update

I know I've been offline lately but life here continues at a good pace.

We are busy at work planning our next big trip. We're going to be gone from mid-September to the end of October in Europe again with a focus on Austria, Italy, and maybe Slovenia, Croatia, and Hungary.  We had a whole different agenda in mind but life interfered and people who we though would be with us couldn't make it.

We took a short (in time) road trip to Omaha Nebraska for Wife to attend and provide major genealogical support to a reunion of cousins on her Mother's side of the family. Wife's Mother came for a very large family so their are scads of cousins in this line. Wife's Mother also was the primary cataloger of information for that family and she passed all those records on to Wife when she passed many years ago. Wife took up the torch in recent years as her interest in genealogy grew.  We left Albuquerque on a Wednesday, got to Omaha on Thursday, spent Friday and Saturday at the reunion, left on Sunday and were home on Monday.  It's interesting driving because you don't stay on the interstates very much. You take I-40 east for a little over 200 miles (that doesn't even get you out of New Mexico) and then you head diagonally northeast on US highways through the Texas panhandle, the Oklahoma panhandle, all of Kansas and into Nebraska until you get to I-80 for about 80 miles to reach Omaha.  It's actually pretty easy driving with not much traffic and pretty low stress...except when certain family members who will remain unnamed to protect this blogger decide to pass trucks and find there's not as much time as they thought...then it's more like a stress test.

The semi-retired life is great. I've got this workout routine that I think is doing good things in terms of my overall strength, balance and flexibility - all things that we older folk need to be paying attention to.  Meditation and spiritual life is strong and deepening. I have plenty of energy. One side effect of this is that in the evenings I'd much rather be reading or writing rather than watch TV. I work just enough to keep me engaged especially with those people who actually have lives and aren't just talking about their ailments or latest doctor visits (that would be all my peers which includes me when I'm with them!). And I'm making pretty good money since I don't invest anything into 'growing my business' which pushes the financial margins out enough that we can do the things we want.

The home decorating continues.  After some test runs with the new lounge we decided that the seating wasn't going to work for four people so we're researching something else. We're on to work on the living room. We purged our library of almost half its contents (we still have a hell of a lot of books!).  We have some things that need to be done to the yard still and are looking for a maintenance person.

And the book is done! Once I had all the back stories figured out I only had a couple of big re characterizations to figure out and when those were done the rewriting just flowed.  It is a very, very curious thing because not only has the ideas for this book flowed but there is this gusher of ideas that have led to me outlining two new books (prequel and a sequel). Especially when I do my hiking/solitude workouts, the stuff just comes. I'm not even trying to think about it.  I get back from those and I will put down all the ideas that came out in the new book outlines. Very strange.

Transittion Report

Having completed our first 'official trip' in the transitioned state, it's a good time to reflect on the lessons learned and the changes that seem to have been successfully made.

It was very easy to go from the thrill of the travel to the daily life in Albuquerque.  I'd done work while I was traveling as I had planned to and it did not interfere with my travel enjoyment.  I walked through the door of our home and was happy to be back and thankful to have such a wonderful place (home, city, environment, life) to come back to.  Within days I was 1) back to my daily routine and 2) planning our next trip.  This is just the way I wanted it to be.

Observing what's happening in the 'semi' side of retirement - meaning the time that I'm devoting to work - I believe that the hard lessons I learned during the transitioning phases have truly been absorbed.  I've actually had a really good run since I've been back and have signed up a couple of new clients and have a shot at a third in the next few weeks.  But I feel no desire whatsoever to really build on this.  In fact it's the opposite.  I feel that I need to be careful that things don't get out of hand and I get too much work.  So the demons of ego seem to have been put to rest.  Nothing to prove to anyone.

Finally there is a real peace in enjoying this time of life.  Wife and I have had plenty of tough spells.  Maybe not as bad as many in the world but certainly not a breeze.  It seems that it is easier in some ways to accept "God's Will" when things are going poorly.  I call it the Book of Job effect.  It feels guilty somehow to accept good fortune.  But I'm working hard at not being guilty but accepting what I have as what is right at the moment...

...because it's going to end.  Bad times will come.  They have to.  It's all part of the aging, dying process.  It's not if, it's when.  And I want to enjoy every minute of the good times and be as peaceful and accepting when the bad times come.

Euro Spring 2015 - Interlude - Reflections on Istanbul

Gad it's good to come up for air from all these picture posts.  And there's more, More, MORE, MORE.  You didn't listen to me in my first post when I said the pictures would come Vesuvius like.  But now that your computer is buried Pompeii like you wish you would have listened.

(pant, pant, pant, pant)

As I'm slowly nursing my way back to health from the exertions of Istanbul, I thought it would be good to just reflect on that experience.

I cannot believe how hard we pushed ourselves - I understand that some of what happened was a bit of circumstance like not knowing exactly what was going to happen during the photo tours but darn I thought we were supposed to be slowing down.  Well call this first phase a failure in that respect

Being gone is easy, getting gone is tough - Wife and I both have reflected during this first week or so at just how hard it was to get out the door whether it was Wife arranging for all the things that need to happen to maintain the home and economics while were gone or me arranging for all the things we need while were traveling.  Our thoughts related to our retired lifestyle were that we would take two fairly long (5 to 6 week) trips a year.   Now our thoughts are we'd rather just deal with the transition from home to away process once and maybe take just one really long trip (8 to 9 weeks) a year.

Loved Istanbul, Crossroads of the World - You go to a new place and you don't know what you don't know.  Istanbul was an exciting, vibrant, friendly place.  With the exception of the tourist core on the Hippodrome Park, we really were never bothered by any one.  And people were very helpful even when there were language difficulties.  And we saw and met so many people, visitors from all over the world; people from Iran, Abu Dhabi, and Kurdistan to name a few.

Only can take so much 'big' city - Being in Malta compared to Istanbul is like going to Albuquerque compared to New York.  Istanbul is huge.  We really only saw a fraction of it.  There were bunches of things we'd read about or were recommended to us that we never got to because of time, distance, and energy.  A week of all that hubbub is about as much as I can take.

Review of apps (so far) - I took on a number of apps and services for the first time on this trip and tried them all in Istanbul.  The overall results weren't that good.

• Uber - Used them a couple of times in the very beginning.  I think the service is fairly new to Istanbul because there were not a lot of vehicles available.  Also I think they do more in the business/residential areas to the north of us.  Not very useful for the old town area we were in  plus both cases where we used them the drivers were not really at the location we were and we had to seek them out.
• My Maps (Google Maps) - I tried to get this feature up and going just before we left on the trip.  Haven't been able to really figure it out or get access to it via my phone so pretty much a non-starter.
• Speak and Translate - I reviewed a lot of translation apps before choosing this one.  On the plus side all you have to do is speak the phrase you want and it translates it.  But in real use if your data connection is too slow, it won't work.  And it takes time for it to translate which undermines its effectiveness when you are in a real life situation.  I found it best for putting in phrases ahead of time so I had access to them or could practice them.  
• Trafi - This is an app that is suppose to help you figure out public transportation routes from where you are to where you want to go.  Only tried it twice.  First time it worked OK.  Second time it said I couldn't do what I wanted, but I figured out a way to do it.  From that point on we either were in a tight enough area to not need or had our guides with us.
• TripAdvisor - THE WINNER.  This has been far and away the most useful app.  I used it to find places for us to eat at least four times during our 8 days in Istanbul and I've used it to find things we knew about because it seems to connect better with Google Maps than going to Google Maps directly.  That seems weird but its the truth

Okay, enough a break.  Back to pictures.  Want them done today so I can move on to Malta posts!