Fifteen years ago today, Kevin and I officially quit.

We walked away from our business/jobs/careers/livelihood/employment. We took a swan dive off a high board and did what no one around us was doing. For lack of a better word (and trust me, I’ve thought about a replacement word quite a bit) we retired. 

For the next fifteen years, we lounged around on big Lazy Boy ® recliners,  guzzled blenderfuls of margaritas, ate copious amounts of nachos, occasionally wiped our greasy chins and watched reruns of MASH. What else?

The truth was, I did have this niggling little fear…what if? What if, once all the responsibility to get up and be somewhere had been removed, what if we just slid down the walls and became total slobs? Could it happen?

If every day became like an ever-looping series of Saturdays, then what would prevent me from really losing it?

As those nearest-and-dearest to me can attest; I have lost it from time to time. Though I’m pretty sure that would have happened whether I was retired or not.

But today, on this fifteenth year of our retirement, we are in our seaside cottage on Stalashen Drive. It is a sunny Tuesday. It is 1:31 pm and we are in the throes of switching offices. Kevin is moving to my little writing space off the upstairs bedroom and I have taken over the main floor den.

Between organizing my new office, sewing a little and having just come from a yoga class, and as I hum along to Christmas carols, I am once again stunned at the bounty of my life. I am shuffling through over a dozen years of papers that have accumulated in my various repositories, clips from magazines, key cards from hotels (oops…), cards, photos and letters to finally reach me here, here at this desk, writing this blog in my current incarnation of Colleen.

Doing this little anthropological excavation has been a lovely study about what we’ve been up to, because somehow, with no pre-retirement intention to do so, I became a writer while Kevin has reinvented himself a few times, his latest being a Realtor.

I guess these things qualify as working, but to me, the concept of work is something you have to do in order to live. But we have the freedom to choose to do whatever it is we want to do. And when we don’t want to do it anymore? It will have no impact on whether we eat or not. That is the luxury I am talking about.

And now, all these years later, I finally understand some of those first surprised responses. It didn’t seem that amazing at the time, but the older I get, and the younger everyone else gets (!), I realize it was kind of a big deal.

Every day I breathe the word thanks. Again and again. Thanks.