About nine months ago, Pat and I were talking about how our work lives don't seem to be getting any easier as we get older. Pat is a family medicine physician, with a more recent specialization in hospice and palliative care, and I am a clinical nurse specialist in child psychiatry, and we both have had interesting and fulfilling careers. At 60 (Pat) and 56 (me), we are not yet ready to retire. We have immersed ourselves in our community through volunteer activities, for Pat in a medical directorship of a newly established Hospice House, and for me with almost 10 years on the Board of Education. So as we began thinking about how to "cut back" on our responsibilities, we realized we had no idea how to do this.
In truth, we are our own worst enemies in this regard. He is supposed to be cutting his medical practice, but when someone says "my mother needs a physician", he rarely says "no". I wasn't going to run for another school board term, but then worried that our new superintendent should at least have an experienced board to help him for a few years ... etc. etc. etc. The world will do just fine without us, but we can't seem to let go of things. Our adult children are doing just fine, yet I can't stop slipping them a $20 every time I see them ... And when we take a trip or are gone for a week of vacation, Pat is just more overloaded when he comes home, so much for "relaxed and refreshed".
Enter the "walkabout" concept. It is an aboriginal rite of passage for adolescent males, who live in the outback learning the ways of their ancestors. This has influenced a phenomenon of leave of absence Down Under, where people just don't show up for work, and then when they come back months or years later they expect their job back. It is just so NOT US. Could we do it? Could we take off for six months, wander the globe spending as much time in each place we visit as we want, having no schedule, and having no one counting on us to be somewhere or take care of something? We had always wanted to do some medical mission work, and with six months we would be able to volunteer in several sites around the world.
Pat had an initial thought that "I can't be gone six months, but three months might be doable..." But I kept thinking that three months would just be a long vacation, not a lifestyle change. The more we talked about it, it seemed like a great way to prepare for the next chapter of our lives. If we wait until we retire, one or both of us might have health problems preventing it or at least making "cheaper" travel more challenging. Perhaps if we take a time out, we can reevaluate what we really value in our lives, and make sure that our sixties and beyond are years where we spend our energies in the ways that bring us the most joy - our family, our friends, our community.
This adventure will take planning and preparation, and we are just beginning that. We have both received permission for a leave of absence (couldn't quite do the not-showing-up thing, a year's notice seemed nicer), we have talked our oldest son James into housesitting for us while he saves money to purchase his first home, we have let him and Danny, our middle child, and Erin, our youngest, know that they'd better not fall in love right now because we can't plan a wedding while being irresponsible. See, I'm already being overresponsible about this ... it's hopeless.
We don't know where we're going, only that we'll start in the southern hemisphere in January of 2011, in Australia and New Zealand. We are going to have to negotiate a level of accommodation as a couple somewhere between one star (Pat would sleep anywhere) and three stars (my lower limit). We can't do the dorm style hostel thing as Pat snores like a train and someone might harm him during the night to get him to stop. So, that kind of works in my favor. I have already made the ultimate sacrifice for the "team", in giving up my morning extra shot latte at Caribou Coffee, which by my calculation will save a cool $1576.80 in a year ... scary, huh? We have set personal goals to get in better shape, simplify our lives, and to use friends who have travelled as resources to learn about the less traveled paths of the world ... So feel free to weigh in, give advice, steer us a direction, it's a big world out there, and we eleven months to plan our trip around it!
