Shedding Lives

Snakes shed their skins.

Cats have nine lives.

I’m approaching my chosen retirement date or, as Angelic Daughter says, the day I will “graduate” from my current job. It’s a good job, perfect for my last act as a full-time worker. Although it pays less than half what I made in my last “career,” it has given me many things I regard as more valuable than a big paycheck: the chance to work from home, and a culture so supportive that it took me a year to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And now I’m heading into another big change in my life, which has led me to think about all the others I’ve been through.

Looking back, I see how much I’ve changed and how much of my true self I’ve regained, after years of sidelining it in favor of “making a living.” At this stage, I feel more myself than at any time since I drove cross country from Chicago to Southern California when I was a confident young college student.

Taylor Swift, the ubiquitous pop star for whom the term “overexposure” doesn’t seem to apply, is 34, and named her current world tour “Eras.”

She’s 34, and thinks she’s already had enough “eras” in her life to create a tour around them.

I could claim I’ve lived through nearly twice as many “eras” as Ms. Swift. I’ve been through childhood, adolescence, college, and law school, and those difficult, miserable years in my mid to late twenties when I felt like I had chosen the wrong path, for all the wrong reasons, and worried that I had missed my calling and wasted my youth.

Then marriage, and parenthood (two “eras” Ms. Swift has not yet experienced). Most parents will move on through the empty-nest years, retirement, travel, grandchildren (the closest I’ll ever come is great-aunthood), and decline, when someone younger who cares about them will be around to help, and will stay with them when they move through to the next life in the next world.

That’s a phase I worry about. There’s still so much to do to prepare Angelic Daughter for a life without me, someday. And while Angelic Daughter is the most selflessly helpful person I’ve ever known, she’s not a person who could be a caregiver to an aging parent. I don’t have a lot of options in the younger-person-available-to-help category that wouldn’t involve moving Angelic Daughter and myself cross country, and burdening someone I don’t want to impose upon.

I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, I suppose. Once I’ve made sure Angelic Daughter is safe, happy, and well-cared for in a place of her own, my intention is to become one of those indomitable old women who get up a 6, go out and split some wood, then come back in to mend something. Then I’ll putter in the garden or shovel snow, take a break of a few hours for a cup of tea and a good book, and attend a volunteer opportunity or a local committee meeting. I’ll finish the day with a dumbbell workout in the basement, after which I will haul my laundry back up two flights of stairs to be put away. I’ll enjoy a hot shower or an Epsom salt bath, put on my comfiest jammies and indulge in a snootful or three of my favorite libation, and jump into bed for a solid night’s sleep.

My “eras” also include, by my count, at least four careers, and nine different jobs in fifteen different workplaces in my adult life so far (not counting summer jobs or jobs I worked before I was 18).

I’m trying to stop beating myself up for every bad decision, wrong turn, embarrassing or even traumatizing mistakes I’ve made (and I remember every one of them), and instead see where it all might have contributed to my growth and helped me shed the skin of one kind of life to take on a new one.

I don’t have time to keep looking back. I want to greet every day as a new experience to be savored, problem to be solved, or challenge to overcome.

Getting ready for life without a full-time job and steady paycheck has been frustrating and a little scary. But I’m jumping through the hoops and filling out the forms. I’m getting it done.

I’m also enjoying anticipating how long my personal to-do list will be when I can finally use every day to “get up and do what needs to be done” around my house and in my life.

How many skins have you shed over the years? How many cat-like lives have you already lived?

Looking forward to hearing about your “eras,” I remain,

your future-focused, MeetUp group managing, list-making, starting-to-gleefully-count-the-weeks-til-“graduation,”

Ridiculouswoman