My father retired, suffered from lack of purpose and, depressed, died four years later. He had even started drinking in his final days, though I had never known him to touch a drop of alcohol. He had to retire (company policy), and he had done nothing to prepare for it. In retirement he couldn’t afford the hobby he had engaged in when he took home a regular paycheck, and he had no substitute. All he could do was sit around the house and feel sorry for himself.
With my father’s experience not far in the back of my mind, throughout my career as a lawyer, I feared retirement and thought I would never retire. But as I approached retirement age, I felt burned out practicing law. I wasn’t sure I had chosen the right career path anyway, and I couldn’t see myself continuing to practice law for the rest of my life — what to do?
First on my agenda was to relocate to an area that was pleasant and affordable. I had lived in the Manhattan Beach/Santa Monica, California area most of my adult life, but it was not an affordable place to retire and I wanted to escape the traffic and congestion. I had always loved the beach, so I started looking for a beach community that was less congested and more affordable. I settled on Ventura, and at the age of 63 moved and began cutting back my law practice with a view toward finding something else to do and retiring from the law within two to four years. I had no inkling of what was to come.
In reading about and talking to people who seemed happy in retirement, I observed several distinct paths: doing what my father did, that is, nothing (which a few people seemed to enjoy, but I knew wasn’t for me); engaging in a hobby more vigorously and extensively (golf, traveling, bridge, camping, etc.); getting another job in a different field; doing something totally new and different that did not involve a goal of earning money. I’m sure there are other paths, but those are the ones that stood out to me.
As I observed, read and considered the retirement options and noticed people who were having the time of their lives, I began to see retirement, not as an ending, but as a beginning, an opportunity to start a new life, just as if I was 22 again. I opened my mind to family and new friends in Ventura. That was the key, opening my mind and heart to new possibilities that I hadn’t even considered. All was fair game.
The daughter of my best friend for 50 years had recently given birth to my God Daughter. Mom was struggling trying to work and take care of her daughter. I had spare time as I wound down my law practice, so I offered to take care of her baby a couple of times a week. I hadn’t taken care of a baby in many years, and rarely by myself, but I found the experience tender, loving and invigorating. For the first time I began to see the world, at least in a small way, as a baby sees it, where everything is new and exciting.
My little God Daughter inspired me to write a short story about her. As a lawyer, I had enjoyed writing on legal topics, but I had never written fiction. With my experiences taking care of my God Daughter as a starting point, I wrote a fictional story about an older man who bonded with a baby girl, called “Unexpected Love.” A talented young writer I had met critiqued the story and encouraged me to write more stories. I did, and in the next year wrote a dozen short stories, some based on personal experiences and a few created from my imagination.
During this time I began traveling — to Ireland, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic and Mexico. I found that I had a passion for travel. Intuition, which I had never drawn on before, but which close observation of other fulfilled people indicated I should, told me I needed a different place to thrive in my new life of writing and travel, after a lifetime practicing law in California.
I moved to Boston, a writer’s town. I sought guidance for my writing from my young writer friend, who had also moved to Boston and a great writing teacher that she recommended, Natalie Goldberg, world renown writing teacher and author of “Writing Down the Bones.” After I attended a workshop she taught, she invited me to her intensive program of four-week long writing retreats in Taos, New Mexico, and I began writing my memoir about my three failed marriages.
Reliving my role in the destruction of those marriages was excruciatingly painful. But writing about what I perceived as the greatest failure in my life ultimately healed me. Writing “Digging Deep: A Writer Uncovers His Marriages” brought me peace that I had been searching for. Writing became my passion, indeed, my compulsion. I decided to publish this intensely personal work because I think it will help others to face and deal with issues in their own relationships in these times when couples and individuals are grappling with the new order in relationships.
After three years in Boston, I was ready for adventure and drew on my other passion. I moved to Paris and spent a year in France and Europe, enjoying the thrills and challenges of living in a different culture. After that year I was ready to come home to California and moved back to Ventura two months ago. My book, Digging Deep, has just been published, and I am thrilled that it is selling in the top 5 percent of all Amazon titles. I am happy to be back in Ventura. I need my home, but I will continue to write and travel. I am working as hard as ever writing, so I don’t feel retired, but I have learned to live my passions.
— Boyd Lemon is a retired lawyer, who re-invented himself as a writer, living in Ventura. He recently returned from a year in France and Italy. His memoir, “Digging Deep: A Writer Uncovers His Marriages,” has just been published. It is about his journey to understand his role in the destruction of his three marriages. He believes it will help others to deal with their own relationship issues. Excerpts are on his website, http://www.BoydLemon-Writer.com