Through the Eyes of a Daydreamer's Daughter

I am not the only person I know who is thinking about life after sixty. The idea for this Blog came from a brief correspondence with Lyman Orton. Head honcho at the Vermont Country Store, www.vermontcountrystore.com , Mr. Orton has been contemplating the characteristics of "the good life" and he put an editorial about problems in one active senior community in his store's catalog. I noticed the editorial, read it, and sent him my own two cents on the subject. (Hopefully Mr. Orton and any other readers will have two cents to add as they read this blog.) Mr. Orton seemed focused on the big picture--attempting to define the good life as applies to everyone rather than just for himself. I, on the other hand, have been thinking in strictly personal terms. But I have been thinking about aging in America for as long as I can remember. I was raised in a family that believed retirement was deadly. My grandfather had a massive coronary after retiring at forty-eight and moving to ...

If sixty is the new forty, then I assume that I can feel free to have the midlife crises now that I didn't get around to at the appropriate time. In my actual forties, any change I craved was limited to minor tweaks to an all too comfortable lifestyle. Sometimes I talked a good line of discontent, but I had no real desire to make major upheavals in my life--no desire that lasted long enough to actually make any change anyway. I simply wasn't ready for a midlife crises at the proper age. Hitting the sixties, it is clear that life is truly short and time truly fleeting. The economy alone has turned life upside down and inside out for me and for most people I know. All sense of entitlement and any feelings of unlimited options has been wiped out in the economy's tumble. If the sixties are to be the new forties, I'm thinking this would be the appropriate time for me to examine my current lifestyle and see whether I can't come up with something that suits me better or ...