It has just got serious. The three month countdown to retirement from full-time employment has begun. How do I feel? A little bit scared and a whole lot excited.

I had planned to retire next year but lockdown has given me the chance to think about my life and what I want to do with it. I’ve enjoyed the extra time at the beginning and end of the day which would normally be spent commuting. I have read. I have reflected. I have crocheted. I have made the decision to start the new phase of my life six months earlier than planned.

The only thing that was holding me back was my financial situation. I wanted to use the remaining time in what is a fairly well paid job to pay off my debts. But when I played this off with having 6 months of a new life there was only going to be one winner.

It is however scary. I’ve now worked for forty-three years. Longer if you include Saturday jobs. The majority of the time I have loved work. I have rarely experienced that Monday morning feeling. I have accomplished great things. I’ve made some great friends along the way. And I have never been bored.

Work has played a significant role in my life. It has been my passion, my identity but it has at times caused me a lot of pain. I have invested so much of myself into it. Not just the physical time being at work but all the thinking time out of it. I have often had my best ideas when walking my dog on a Saturday afternoon or running on a Sunday morning. But there have been the sleepless nights worrying about a deadline, a poorly delivered presentation or a challenging situation.

I want to make headspace to think about other things. To have the time to take on new challenges and experiences. This includes self employment. My encore career.

Sending in my letter of resignation, completing the pension documentation has brought a feeling of elation. I have been visualising what my life will look like. What will be important, what can I give up. Oddly, my wardrobe was one of the first things that popped into my head. Not the structure but the hangers full of work clothes. Some that I currently wear (less so during lockdown) but many that I have kept ‘just in case’. Clothes that I never wear outside of work. I can now get rid of them. I have the opportunity to reinvent myself through what I wear. I’m not hugely optimistic that I will succeed but I can only try.

One of the benefits of becoming more stylish would be increased traffic to my blog. When you look at the older women that have successful blogs it is usually what they are wearing that gets them there.

Whilst I have no intention of focusing my blog on style (it would be a car crash) I have been doing some work on upgrading it. Instead of writing it I have been updating the platform it sits on. It hasn’t been easy. I have completed Udemy beginner courses on using WordPress and Canva. My blog now looks cleaner and I have a logo. But it can be frustrating dealing with the maintenance of a website. Some things are so easy whilst others need a degree in web development to resolve.

I’ve managed to crash my website twice in the last few days. I’ve restored it quite easily but I live in fear that it will one day crash into oblivion.

Much as it grieves me to say this but I may have to get some professional assistance if I want to get my website looking the way I want it to.

I have also been considering the purpose of my blog. I first started writing it five years ago. Back then it was all about my passion for fitness. My own training and becoming a qualified personal trainer. A few months in I was consumed by a diagnosis of a serious heart condition requiring open heart surgery. Over the subsequent months it focused on my recovery and sadly the death of my best friend who was not so lucky to have a condition that could be fixed.

More recently I have written about preparing for retirement, becoming a professional coach and, of course, fitness. Can all these topics be encompassed by one tagline? Ultimately they are all concern moving into a different stage of life which brings challenges but so many opportunities. It is a time to do things. To concentrate on health and fitness. To have a purpose. After some consideration I settled for this tagline – ‘positive ageing in a world of possibilities’. I hope my blog lives up to it.