When The Full-Time Commute is Over—Part I

Now What? An Open Conversation with Myself

Time is flying. The stars aligned. You’ve hit the magic age. A 40-year career is complete. The kids, now adults, are grown, accomplished, self-sufficient, married, and, have children of their own. The day after writing that last tuition check was like getting a raise. Still, you and your better half remain moderate consumers. You’ve been fortunate in compiling the financial resources allowing you both to live comfortably, travel when and where you want, splurge on entertainment and art, while leaving enough to contribute to the charities of our own choosing.  Life is good but it took some adjusting. You are now doing it without the structural comfort that surrounded your previous world of full-time employment. The daily regiment of meetings, work assignments, deadlines and billable hours no longer dictate the schedule. Now, more than ever, how you fill the day is clearly a matter of choice.  You have to be your own administrative assistant. You need to take personal responsibility for the daily and weekly routines. You have found that even now, priorities continuously change. Even now, you are still adjusting to a world where fewer and fewer people vie for your attention.

It’s no longer mandatory to get up before the crack of dawn. You don’t have to figure out how to cram in a sporadic morning workout and a healthy breakfast before backing out of the garage. As far as your old commuting pattern goes, you no longer have to join the human version of the great wildebeest migration when your former freeway trek felt like a gnus gauntlet across the Serengeti. (Think of the highway patrol as the lions picking off the stragglers along the fringe of the herd.) Without a night meeting, the door-to-door-to-door commute started and ended in the dark. You never had to stop and think about filling it with things to do. If you missed breakfast, you ate in the car. Now, there are no more food rappers, crumbs, coffee stains, usually on the shirt, or banana peals to clean off of the front seat. Including the added trips to the cleaners and the carwash, the old demands of family and work consumed the day.

Welcome to the new dawn. You are now the oldest. You are at the top of the family food chain. The parents are gone, the kids are independent, your past career is done and those long commutes are over. You find yourself with a newfound cash of time. You may now, more than ever, realize that time is your most precious commodity. How you utilize it from here on out is totally your responsibility. Scheduling may require a rediscovering of you. Not the professional you, no you the person.

It’s the next phase of life. Beyond introspection and checking off items on the bucket list, what else?  With the help of the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, I’m developing a portfolio, both personal and professional. What have I learned? What pearls can I pass on? Did I leave places better than when I found them? What are my encore options?  Continue teaching? Back to consulting? Volunteering?  Climbing Kilamanjaro before the final snows melt? You get the point.

Lets let the Vogues and Drew Carey start the conversation–

Steve Harding finished his full-time working world in 2014. During his 40 year career, his professional travels cut across higher education, the public, non-profit, and private sectors. Traversing over two-thirds of the state of California, he has served as a city manager, department director, corporate vice president, and president of a publicly held non-profit. Fifty-two courses and over a 1,000 students later, he continues to travel along his path as a student and a teacher.

Sometime in early 2015, I jotted down four short personal essays. The topic: Figuring out retirement and what to do in this phase of life. They are nearly ten years old and virtually unchanged. However, I’m discovering how my thoughts, understandings, experiences, and ideas of moving forward have changed. The follow up series, “Ten Years After” is under construction.