And I think the attitude of looking for new things or taking on a passion that you always had, but never had time to pursue is the secret that keeps people "young".
Agreed, but there's also a different strategy that doesn't defer pursuing one's interests / passion until after completing a lifelong career. It's not a path I'd recommend for anyone / everyone, but (as Hunter Thompson said of drugs, alcohol, violence, and insanity) it worked for me.
I made my entire adult life something of a quest to keep reinventing myself toward a certain (professional; expert) status in a subject matter area that was my passion from my initial college days. Phrased another way, I bent and leveraged my working life to support pursuit of my interests rather than having work / career serve as the objective in and of itself.
This involved having to exercise a lot of 'grit' (to use Sigmundsson's terminology) during my thirties, but IMHO it paid off from that point onward.
I was first employed as an expert-level researcher and trusted scout on new / emerging issues at 37. I was first given the opportunity to manage a research facility and agenda at circa 42. I was relieved of the 9-to-5 grind and formally allowed to work exclusively from home at 48. At that point I effectively became a consultant even though I was a full-time employee. By the time I turned 50 I'd earned a reputation as '
the guy' for certain interesting project work, which would be my bread and butter for the next two decades. In my mid-fifties I was the object of 3 university team efforts and an apprenticeship to understand how I did what I did, and my approach / techniques became a brand-name for my client population. When my then-current project was suspended for a year owing to funding cuts, my long-time employer laid me off. When the project resumed as predicted, the client made it clear I was to be the principal one way or the other. I then set myself up as a one-man consultancy at 62 and continued doing what I'd already been doing until after I reached my full retirement age of 66.
By the time I began drawing my retirement benefits I'd been pursuing my passion professionally for 30 years and leveraging it to make a living from home within a casual / semi-retired lifestyle for two decades. For me, full / formal retirement wasn't an abrupt shift, but something more like a smooth landing after a long leisurely glide path.
This has all been consistent with:
- A long-held concept for where I wanted to end up in terms of vocational style and status, as well as ...
- A similarly long-held belief that the most important thing to accrue and nurture during one's adult working life is 'slack.'
Yes, there have been sacrifices and outright losses along the way. On balance, I believe those downsides were more than offset by the rewards from doing what I still believe was right for me.
Phrased another way ... I've been doing what brownmane prescribed all along.
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