Recently, when I was visiting my forty-eight-year old sister, Kathy, in the suburbs of Flower Mound, Texas, I was surprised when several of her friends, whom I had met briefly before, called hoping to see me before I headed back to Costa Rica, where I’ve been living for the last six months. Although I was flattered, I didn’t understand their enthusiasm to see me again. Maureen, Nancy, and Susan all showed up the next night, and as we gathered on Kathy’s back porch for a glass of wine, they encircled me with questions about my life. But still, I couldn’t understand what they found so interesting about me. I’m just a 46-year-old woman who ditched her high-paying job as an event producer in New York City and moved to Costa Rica to write a novel. Of course, I also had to learn Spanish, navigate jungle life, scorpions, and potholes, and find a new way to earn income, but my past reinventions had prepared me well. I knew that any big change would come with even bigger challenges, and that I would have to find a way to overcome them.
The women, like my sister, are all in mid-life and have in common that their children are going off to college. A window of opportunity is opening for them. They are about to have something they haven’t had in twenty years – time. They look at their lives, their husbands, their own accomplishments, and wonder: Could I make a life change too?
Susan wants to know what motivated me to leave my lucrative event production job?
“After years of eighteen-hour days producing drug launches for pharmaceutical companies, I realized I just didn’t care enough about the industry to justify putting in those kind of hours. It made me wonder, what if I dedicated that kind of time to something I really did care about?”
Nancy wanted to know if I missed my ‘Sex and the City’ lifestyle?
“I haven’t worn a suit in six months, unless you count my bathing suit,” I told her. “For that matter, I haven’t worn a pair of heels or any make-up either.” I thought about my storage unit full of top-dollar clothes, shoes, and bags, and realized I didn’t miss any of them. I made a mental note to donate the clothes to women who did upon my return.
Maureen, a fifty-three year old training executive who had just been laid off after thirty-three years with the same company, wanted to know how I was dealing with the loss of financial security.
“I expected to rely on my savings,” I told her, confidently. But I was unable to ignore the fear that was rising inside, as I knew my savings would never sustain me the two to three years I would need to finish this book. I explained how I had scaled back my expenses, getting rid of my coveted $3,100-a-month, Upper West Side, garden apartment, selling most of my furniture, and putting the rest in storage. In Costa Rica, I got down to basics, cutting all non-critical expenses, including the one item I didn't think I could live without — my cell phone. I grabbed her hand: “This is a wonderful opportunity for you, Maureen, I hope you know that. This is when you make your dreams happen.”
Unlike a lot of the articles I’ve read in More magazine, this one is not about a successful reinvention. It’s about a reinvention in progress. And there are bumps along the way, deeper than the potholes in Costa Rica. For example, I just heard yesterday from my tax accountant that my tax obligation for last year is significantly higher than I expected. I will need to continue putting the maximum in my retirement account as well as dedicate much of my remaining savings to last year’s taxes — putting me in a deep hole, indeed.
After allowing myself a twenty-four hour panic attack, I pulled myself together and repeated aloud my guiding mantra: “Build the life you want. Not the one you don’t.”
This morning, I got to work. I would have to put aside my novel and change my focus to finding new avenues to generate income. I had already begun research to organize writing workshops led by published writers in the States, here in Costa Rica. I had reached out to my writing coach in Boston, and she agreed that she would love to lead a workshop here. She even thought we could get enough people to attend just from her existing students. Yes, it’s a great idea, and one I’ll pursue, but I realized any income would be at least nine months out, as people need time to plan.
What other skills do I have? Italian. I speak and write Italian, a fortunate outcome of my first reinvention when I left Oklahoma at the age of eighteen to go to college in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. If I could organize workshops with American writers for Americans, I could organize them with Italian writers for Italians. Another great idea, but again, income would be nine-months out.
What was tangible now was the desire to write. I scratched my head again. I’ve got a Master’s degree in Journalism and studied magazine writing twenty-two years ago. I have an Internet connection here in the jungle. Maybe I could write and sell some magazine articles? I remembered reading my sister’s issues of More on the plane back to Costa Rica and relating a great deal to the articles. I had always wanted to publish a magazine article, but had never tried. Hmmm? I thought over my morning coffee, while looking out over the exploding green jungle to the soft, secluded shores of the Pacific below. Maybe I could write an article for More? I took another sip. Who knows, maybe they might even be interested in a monthly column about a woman in the midst of a reinvention who hits potholes and is forced to re-direct her path, navigate new territory, and even reassess the feasibility of her original goal? I got up from my porch, penned these words, and sent them to More — my mantra reverberating: Build the life you want. Not the one you don't.
