Sylvia's Journal

I have started my last month at MSH. The lane change, as I consider it, turns out to be more complicated than I thought. For the first time since I (not really) negotiated my salary in 31 years I have to think about what my compensation should be. As a self-employed person I have to take care of things, purchase equipment and services that were provided to me as an employee. I have to figure, under Trump’s new tax laws, how I should position myself, tax-wise.  I am educating myself, calling on family, current and ex colleagues and other experts. The more I learn the more opaque everything is becoming – things that seemed simple at the start of my lane change. I am relying heavily on my two daughters who have learned things for me, sometimes the hard way.

I have added myself to Sita’s MassCollaborative enterprise. Her partners are OK with me, this white haired person, to join their team of high energy, creative and entrepreneurial millennials. Some people congratulate me on my retirement, but I am not retiring, just changing lanes.

Part of the new freedom is that Axel and I can now do things spontaneously, like attending one of the Cape Cod Institute sessions, as we did for years in the past. But this time we won’t be camping out at the Wellfleet Audubon campground, nice as that sound. We got a friend of a friend to lend us her summer cottage in Brewster. We also won’t bring the kayaks as we used to do, for our sundowner outings. My arm strength is not what it used to be and my rotator cuffs never quite recovered. We are thinking of bringing our bikes, maybe. The essential luggage will be for hiking, reading, writing, sketching and watercoloring.

We are also traveling to San Diego for a reunion of colleagues who I first met at my very first American job. We are still friends, 35 years later. We try to see each other at least once a year – it’s a ZugFest, named after our much revered author Leane Zugsmith, who is our raison d’etre, aside from the friendships.

Enjoying life, including this kind of travel as well as paying gigs, is our motto now. Axel is only 9 years away from the average life expectancy for white males in the US. Nine years, at this stage in our life, is nothing. We are starting to lose friends here and there, men and women; none made it to their gender’s average. This is an uncomfortable realization, the fact that we are entering this corridor towards ‘average.’ It’s a lane change alright, to the lane on the right, the slower one while the millennials and those coming after them are pressing on in the fast lane. But slow does not have to be boring.