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Stepping up the Outrageous Scale

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How Outrageous can you be?

Venice 030412 028 300x225 Stepping up the Outrageous Scale

Taking time for lunch

Getting back from Venice was an adjustment. There was the usual decompression after being away; going through the mail, unpacking, washing clothes and settling back into the routine of normal life. Now after two weeks it is almost business as usual. But not quite.

Business as usual is normally a positive state. It represents an equilibrium between work and play, business and leisure and it is what we were used to one month ago. At that time I thought that what I was doing was outrageous because I wasn’t settling for a retirement lifestyle of leisure and entertainment. I was focused on building a business income to support a lifestyle of extended travel. I had an action plan, a business coach and a daily routine intended to take me to that goal.

Delayed gratification was in play. 

Originally, the reward would wait until the income was produced but along the way we got worried that maybe we were waiting too long for the reward. You can work with the aging process but you can’t stop it. Maybe, we were too old to travel the way we want. We broke the routine and took a trip. It was the best trip we even took (although we couldn’t have known how well it would go) but it wasn’t the trip of our dreams- or the retirement lifestyle we have been working for.

We didn’t play by the rules we had chosen. We took a trip before we had actually earned it according to the plan. It did stop the momentum of my business effort and I am now paying for that as I put the project back together. Still, the memories of those days in Venice give a focus to my work that it never had before. Last month, a travel lifestyle was a fantasy for me with a lot of baggage and doubts about our resilience and energy on an extended stay in foreign countries. I had lots of outrageous thoughts about how we were going to live once I got my business going but I had even more concerns about actually doing it. I had the dream but I was afraid that it was only a fantasy. I needed proof.

After Venice, that is all changed.

I know we can travel for much longer without getting bored or homesick and the vision of spending much longer in Venice, or some other beautiful place just can’t get pushed aside. To be sure, it wasn’t all a piece of cake. We need to plan some down time on the next trip because aging bodies just don’t have the stamina to be on the go 24-7. That is easily accommodated, especially with a longer trip. And down time can be good.

But was it outrageous? 

Back to the idea of an outrageous retirement lifestyle. A month ago I would have said that I was living an outrageous retirement lifestyle. I was working to make a dream happen- creating a business to produce income to support a lifestyle of being away from home as much as six months each year.. It might have been true at one time but the project was taking so long that it turned into a rut. Without something to make the end result seem real to me, I was just going through the motions, making some headway but not charging forward to the finish line and the reward.

Look up! 

Maybe a rut is just part of the process when you pursue a dream but while you push on, it is important that your eyes are on the horizon visualizing your dream, not watching your feet in the muck. Sure I lost ground when we made out trip but I gained something as well. We; thought that ten days in Venice was outrageous one month ago. We couldn’t believe that we were finally making such a trip- the trip of a lifetime. Now that we are back, wonderful as it all was, that trip seems ordinary. We can’t stop talking about how much we would have enjoyed 10 more days or a month. We just scratched the surface of our penetration of the Venetian lifestyle. Doing what we did this month is no longer outrageous but we have many ideas about what our next trip should be whether to Venice or some other place. We stepped up our outrageous scale and we grew the confidence to know that we can handle it.

Back to work.

Now, today I am struggling to put the pieces of my plan back in motion. Picking up the loose ends I dropped when we started packing and getting my feet back in the old rut. But it’s not the work, or the rut that keeps flashing through my brain. I know I have to complete those steps and get my plan in place. But now I know that our dream lifestyle is not a fantasy but a very real possibility and that if I keep my head in the game, we will have it- maybe as soon as six months from now. I have always wanted to winter in the Southern hemisphere where it is warm and sunny.

Anybody got any ideas?

 

Stepping up the Outrageous Scale

I don’t want a vacation. I want a lifestyle!

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It’s not a vacation if you can’t take a day off!

I dont want a vacation. I want a lifestyle!

Tourists or sheep?

After a lifetime of vacations that were over scheduled and exhausting, I received a revelation during our recent stay in Venice. I realized that as much as I wanted to enjoy Venice every moment we were there, I was looking for more than non-stop sightseeing. I don’t know what to call it; maybe just recharging my batteries or time to develop other dimensions of my life but you might call it ‘taking some time off’. I took a serious book with the idea of spending afternoons reading someplace exotic (surely any place in Venice qualifies as exotic). I took my sketchbook and drawing materials with the intention of drawing when the spirit moved me. Neither of those things happened. Now it is time to figure out why.

Like all our other vacations, I felt a compulsion to sight-see. Venice is so rich in interest that I never considered taking a day- or even an afternoon off despite booking ten days in Venice, way longer than most tourist visits. I was surprised to find that this longer time didn’t change my compulsion.. Either ten days just wasn’t enough or maybe there was another problem. We thought that more time would help us relax and enjoy ourselves more. The original thought was a month. We settled on ten days because:

1. That’s how how far our money would stretch.

2. We questioned our stamina for a longer trip.

Ten days seemed like an extravagant amount of time to spend in one city. When we actually reached Venice, however, ten days passed very quickly. Just as we began to feel really comfortable with the Venetian lifestyle, we were packing to leave. Ten days was only a teaser. We could easily have stayed a month- if we had the money.

 But it was more than time!

And maybe we would have relaxed. A longer trip might have made it possible to enjoy some afternoons of reading and drawing that I anticipated. Maybe , my compulsion to see and do things would have slowed on a longer trip. It’s certainly possible but I think there is another problem- my attitude about vacations. I treat them like a job. I make a schedule and drive myself to keep it. Two days, ten days, a month, I don’t think that I know how to to let go. There is a compulsion about vacations that I drives me. There are always more things to see and do. I just can’t take time off.

Then there is the Lifestyle problem.

My wife tells me that there is another problem that relates to drawing. She says that I need to have a pattern of the activities before the trip. Since I don’t have a regular pattern of drawing when I am at home, I don’t work it into my vacation schedule. I won’t become a drawer unless I draw and I won’t draw unless I work it into my regular schedule. I never have time to draw at home so why would I have time on vacation?

I dont want a vacation. I want a lifestyle!

Try to assimilate.

She makes a good point. It comes back to lifestyle design, or retirement lifestyle design. How do I want to live? It is not enough to decide that I want to draw. I have to make it happen by making a practice of drawing on a regular basis. If it it not part of your lifestyle at home, it isn’t likely to be part of your lifestyle on vacation.

 But maybe it is even more complicated!

Maybe the idea of vacation is wrong. I don’t really want a vacation like I have always known them. I want a lifestyle that includes travel to different places and gives me variety and stimulation. I don’t want a break from regular life. I want a richer regular life that takes me around the world. I clearly need some study to sort this out. I think that I’m really only scratching the surface of this lifestyle design thing. I still have to work out how I really want to live. I need my regular life to become richer and I need to lean how to make that lifestyle portable. I don’t want to be a tourist. I want to be a traveler. Right now I make a distinction between normal life and travel. Where I want to be is where normal means spending extended periods of time in different places. There won’t be two lifestyles. I must find a lifestyle that accommodates many locations and different activity levels. There is more work to do. I clearly haven’t got it figured out yet.

I dont want a vacation. I want a lifestyle!

Retirement Lifestyle Lessons from Venice

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The trip to Venice was an experiment.

3328837949 cda364750c m Retirement Lifestyle Lessons from Venice

Venice (Photo credit: Monosnaps)

I keep talking about ‘outrageous retirement’ but my retirement lifestyle has been pretty routine so far. I say that I want to do unexpected things and cling to the ordinary. Part of the reason for this is inertia but there is also fear. What if I don’t have what it takes to live outrageously? What if I fail? Finally I pushed outside the ordinary and planned the trip to Venice. It wasn’t the ultimate adventure- but it was a start, a test to see if my wife and I have what it takes.

At age 70, I was in denial about the aging process. I believed that sheer will and determination was enough to overcome the inevitable breakdown of my body. I believed that I could do the same things, in the same way as a youngster of say 45 or 50- at least that’s what my conscious mind way telling me. My subconscious was more suspicious. It knew that even though the mind was willing, the body might not be able to deliver.

It’s been a goal of mine to travel more in retirement. I have been talking the idea up for years, always with the excuse that tomorrow would be better than today. Tomorrow I would have more money. Tomorrow my wife’s business commitments would be less constraining. Tomorrow, I would finally get all the ducks lined up and do the trip right. The excuses sounded rational but they were really masking the fear that it just might be too late.

 We took action!

About one year ago my wife and I had a serious discussion and decided that we might not be able to do everything but we needed to do something before the aging process made it impossible. I wanted to go for a month but we didn’t have the money. We used frequent flier miles and booked a ten day trip to Venice. We wanted to know if we could be happy spending an extended time in one city and we wanted to find out how we would like living in an apartment away from the tourist bustle in a foreign country.

If we were still wanting more after ten days in Venice, then surely a month would be even better. We would also be learning what we needed in our rented apartment and what we didn’t and learning the tricks about traveling. We would also be finding out whether we were physically capable of making an extensive trip and more importantly, whether we would enjoy it or discover that we were just too old- either mentally or physically to enjoy travel.

So what’ the verdict? 

Well, today, the experiment is officially over. We are back at home and getting into the routine of normal life. It is time for reflection, analysis and honest discussion about the trip. What went as we expected. What surprised us- both in positive and negative ways. What did we learn and can we use our lessons to make the next trip better?

The quick answer is that we are very excited at how well the trip went. We enjoyed every minute even though we found that our bodies weren’t so resilient as they used to be and we took more down time due to aching muscles and bones. That in itself is an important lesson and an even better justification for staying longer. An hour or so napping or reading is wonderfully refreshing. We found the Italian lifestyle with it’s long mid day break quite in sync with our not so strong muscles.

Our time in Venice was too short. We only scratched the surface of a fascinating city and we had no time for the reading and sketching that I had hoped to do. A longer trip would provide a more relaxed visit with a day off from time to time for R and R. We could easily have stayed on longer.

 It was outrageous!

So to conclude today/s report, the experiment was a success. The subjects survived and the lessons learned will help us plan the next trip. I will have more about specific aspects of the trip but the general conclusion is that for aging individuals with no serious health problems and an adventurous mental state, travel is wonderful. At least a long term stay in an interesting environment with adequate amenities like our stay in Venice. We came back refreshed, stimulated and ready to see our regular lifestyle in new ways. More importantly, we came back excited to plan our next trip. Time’s a wasting.

Retirement Lifestyle Lessons from Venice

Ciao from Venice

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No time  to compose a post here.  This is day eight in Venice and it isn’t nearly enough.  It has all been wonderful and I have learned many lessons.  The big one is that you can do it even as an ultasettantantino (over 70 year old).  I’ll be posting about Venice and what we learned about traveling while ancient.  Lesson one is:  It isn’t a vacation unless you can take a day off.

That’s all for now but here are some pictures.

Venice Day seis 017 300x225 Ciao from Venice

Burano 026 300x225 Ciao from Venice

Burano

Pardon the formatting.  I just wanted to get this out.

 

Well we made it!

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Venice Day 5 Sunday 018 300x271 Well we made it!

San Marco from the Vaporetto

As planned, we boarded the plan in San Francisco, the first leg of our trip to Venice Italy.  We started on American and transferred to Iberia in Los Angeles. I expected to lug the bags from the American terminal to the International Terminal but the bags were checked all the way to Venice.  We never saw them again until we arrived.  It all went as advertised.  I even slept on the way.  The transfer in Madrid was confusing but it all worked out and Madrid was our only encounter with passport inspection.  Italy doesn’t know or care that we are here. So far it has all been wonderful, learning the ropes in Venice.  This is just a placeholder for more posts later.  I  am attaching some photos just as placeholders.

Venice Day 5 Sunday 054 300x254 Well we made it!

US school girls celebrating the moment in Venice

Well we made it!