Fourteen years ago – on this very day – my husband Kevin and I retired. He was 39 and I was 36.

Fourteen years has produced a lot of changes…most notably the fact that we’re now both in our fifties, with more salt than pepper in our hair, and that we are starting to have way too many conversations about our own and our friends’ health issues.

Yet, for a lot of people it’s only in their fifties that they actually start to think about their retirement.

I don’t know what our early opting out says about us…Flakier than a Crisco crust? Entrepreneurial hippies? Lazy? 

The truth is, I don’t really care what it looks like to others, because we both agree, the time has gone by at lightning speed and there is still so much we want to see and experience of this world.

Yet the end feels like it’s looming toward us and, like those old kitschy movies of the past, I feel like there is a huge hourglass super-imposed in the movie of our lives, and the sand is cascading down at a Niagra-like pace. The scariest part about this black-and-white hourglass is that the bottom pile of sand is very clearly larger than the sand that is pouring in from the top.

There is so much to do…I want to write books, read a million more, travel everywhere, learn French and Spanish, make new friends and hang out with old ones.

I want to live so many different lives and every time I read another book, I add another life to the list…the Parisian flat, the pick-up truck enhanced dusty horse ranch in Arizona, the big ol’ Victorian house somewhere in a rural Eastern township in Quebec, a log home in the Cariboo ranchland of British Columbia, a Mexican villa draped in magenta bougainvillea or a NYC penthouse.

Clearly, imagination plays a huge role in all of these lives since mostly we cannot afford any of them, though if we really wanted to, we could make it happen. It matters not. It’s more fun to imagine them and visualize Kevin and I on horses or strolling in our all very NYC black outfits through Central Park and yet, truly? I love the idea of it more than wanting to do anything concrete about it.

The strange thing about all these fictional lives is that when I really get down to it, the idea of leaving where we are now strikes me as giving up way too much. I love going on trips, but I absolutely adore being at home too. I guess it’s not a bad conundrum…turns out, I love my very own life most of all.

And yes, retirement is a very stupid word. There is nothing about ‘retiring’ that fits with what we’re doing. The word should be ‘engaging’.  Yes, there ya go. We fully engaged 14 years ago, and all I can say, is I want more of it please.

If you’d like to read a more in-depth story of how we quit, please check out this link to Homemakers Magazine article and for a younger take on an alternative life, read Brooke’s blog about living large on a small budget…