so we can live, work and retire with purpose.
It was late evening and I was exhausted. I turned out the light, said a quick prayer, and waited for sleep to whisk me away. But instead of drifting off, I suddenly found inspiration for a new post, bullet points and all.
My first reaction was, I’ll just write this down in the morning when I’m not so tired. But experience has taught me that half of those thoughts would vanish by sunrise.
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Do you know your purpose?
There’s an old apple tree on our property that, without pruning, has grown into a full-size tree.
Whether from age or burrowing animals, the trunk is hollow near the ground, where it should be strongest. There is even a spot where daylight shows through a hollow area in the middle.
The funny thing is, it still produces what looks like a full yield of apples every year. From a distance, you’d never know anything was wrong. And yet we fully expect the day it finally tips over, because its foundation simply can’t support the weight forever.
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When I was in the corporate world, I was constantly consuming information. Emails to triage, financial projections to build and socialize, and technical content to absorb and translate. It was a nonstop buffet for the brain.
Then I retired. Suddenly my days were filled with travel, helping my parents relocate, and tackling long delayed house projects. After a few weeks, I realized something surprising: I missed the constant ingestion of content. My mind felt like it had taken an extended vacation. My brain was getting hungry.
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Sometimes the things that guide us for decades go dark — and that’s when the real work begins.
Last week we visited the Tarrytown Lighthouse, the cast‑iron beacon that sits in the Hudson River at Sleepy Hollow — yes, the same Sleepy Hollow from Washington Irving’s Headless Horseman. Built in 1883, it guided ships for 78 years until modern navigation made it obsolete in 1961.
Continue readingA quiet milestone in my retirement journey happened today — and it surprised me more than I expected.
It’s been three weeks since my last day of work, and today I finally emptied out what remained in my laptop bag — my modern‑day briefcase. Somewhere among leftover folders, random cables, and a couple of loose coins were the final day‑to‑day artifacts of the professional rat race I stepped away from when I retired.
Continue readingThis week, I’ve been thinking about what it means to leave a lasting legacy — more specifically, what remains after the season we call retirement comes to an end.
We often think of legacy in terms of financial assets passed down to the next generation. But what if it’s more than that? What if our lives were lived in such a way that our lasting impact isn’t just money left to children, but enduring attributes like family strength, cultural influence, and a spiritual foundation?
Continue readingRetiring is a lot like those all‑important school tests — the kind where your score opens (or closes) doors to future opportunities. In many cases, you only get one chance to get things right, and the consequences can last for years.
Continue readingLast Wednesday, I went into work as an SVP and left around 5:30 as a retiree. After a 40‑year career with Bank of America, I officially stepped into the next chapter.
I was the very last person to leave that day. I sent one final email to my manager thanking him for his support, then signed off for the last time. After that, I took a slow walk through the office, just reminiscing.
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True leaders lead in every season, not just the good ones. As the world is currently in crisis and the only news is bad news, your leadership is needed now more than ever! Here are 19 attributes of leadership that you can draw from during this time of great trouble.