The Sunset of Life

I was next in line at the post office yesterday and the woman in front of me rushed off without taking her receipt. As I stepped up to the counter, the clerk waved after her, shook his head and said to me, “People are in such a hurry these days.”

            I joyously replied, “I’m not, I’m retired! Take all the time you want; I’ve got all day!”

            It wasn’t that long ago I decided to officially retire. My certification as a Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy, or CAP® was due to expire and in order to keep it active I needed to pay a fee, study new lessons and take another exam. I decided I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to retire. I never thought I would use that word to describe myself, but here I am, retired, and this new chapter, the sunset of my life, is glorious.

I still have some initials after my last name, PhD, and that status is permanent, no fees or exams required. I remember in graduate school being told by one of my professors that the great thing about a getting a PhD is no one can ever take it away. He said, “Years down the road you could be a drunk in the gutter, but you’d still be Dr. Drunk.” I left academics decades ago, but I still love it when someone addresses me as Dr. Selak.

Now that I am retired, I never schedule anything before mid-morning, allowing time for my daily walk or swim at the YMCA. Can you imagine, a walk or a swim gets first priority in daily scheduling? I’ve also realized, as a writer, I can now claim this to be my full-time job. Writing is, and always has been, my passion, an absolutely luxurious way to spend my time. But in the past, it was something I squeezed in between family, work, meetings, volunteering, fixing dinner. Now I can get up in the morning, do my exercise, then write for the rest of the day. WRITE for the rest of the day!

Rather than thinking of sunset as the end of the day, I now think of it as the best time of life.