A new way

My first blog entry. I have mixed emotions about this process. Not exactly clear where I'll go with it, but I think it is all a part of being on the brink of something life changing. I have been working very hard for nearly 43 years in a job that pretty much defines me as a person; a job that consumes far more of my life than it was ever intended to; than I ever should have allowed. A job that in recent years and months has caused me to make the word "overwhelming" a frequent part of my vocabulary.

"I feel overwhelmed."
"The workload is overwhelming."
"The stress is overwhelming me."
"The hours overwhelm my personal life and I get nothing done for myself."

I need to make a change--the kind that terrifies me because of its immensity. I need to retire, to move, to slow down, to find a new way of knowing and seeing myself. I remember the last time I sought a new way of seeing myself. It was tough, painful, scary and lonesome in the early '90's when I turned my life upside down by moving alone to Germany. It turned out to be an enormously positive and rewarding experience. Today's search for a new way will take me back home to Virginia as a retiree; older, wiser, less frightened and not alone. A wonderful man I met in Germany is now part of that rewarding experience, giving me courage to step out into the unknown along with him because he has been living that same life of stress and other's expectations.

Sometimes the way forward is strewn with pitfalls. Earlier this month while working a project in Italy for my public relations job, one of those pitfalls shoved me right over on my face into the asphalt outside an hotel as our group headed to dinner for the last night in a beachside town near Pisa. While my face went unmarked, my left wrist broke and my knees took a beating. Several friends and co-workers went without dinner to stand beside me in the busy emergency room to which a well-worn Italian ambulance delivered me. Several hours later I had been X rayed, bones set (think injured cowboy, leather strap in teeth and straight whiskey pouring down my throat, none of which I had), and casted in enough solid plaster to make the nearby Leaning Tower stand a bit straighter--something I now was having a hard time doing. I knew my immediate future was taking a new way quite different from what I had been imagining.

After a fitful night under the care of a well-qualified, mother-of-seven friend of mine, I was helped into public presentation in the breakfast room where I answered questions from my co-workers and strangers not on scene for my spectacle. Most of us would reconvene shortly at the nearby Pisa airport, our project completed, heading home. Some of us would find that return difficult.

Placed in a wheelchair in hopes of getting priority boarding, I was, instead refused even the right to board due to my recent injury. Too dangerous for me they said. After exhausting the rental car options at the "aeroporto," myself and two others were taken back to the military installation on which we had been working for days. There, the funny and warm rental car manager who had been enjoying a rash of great business from our project, provided us with a BMW and wished us a safe trip. Thirteen hours later, we rolled into my driveway at 1:30 a.m., Sunday, June 7, exhausted and ready to be home.