When I saw Jane Pauley’s book.Your Life Calling in the library last week it was like, yes! This is the right book at the right time! And while it was not exactly what I anticipated, it was nevertheless a good read. See two months ago, I applied for Social Security, more out of necessity than actually wanting to retire. Throughout this past year, the work that I have done for the last 34 years, has just not been there, and I have mostly been collecting unemployment and thinking about how I want to move forward with my life. I really don’t want to go out and find another job doing the same thing that I have done, so when my unemployment insurance ran out, rather than just take any job, I applied for my benefits and upped my hours at Target. So far,it has been a good thing, but I still keep wondering, is this all there really is, or is there something else out there that I would want to do!!
This is what Your Life is Calling is all about, In the book Pauley provides ideas and thoughts about reimagining your life through the stories of those who have done it. Pauley in her Dateline voice, tells the stories of folks like Betsy McCarthy who traded her executive briefcase for knitting needles, Gid Pool, who launched a career as a stand-up comic, Richard Rittmaster, who joined the National Guard Chaplain Corps: Trudy Lundgren who took her home on the road in an RV; Paulie Gee, who opened a successful pizzeria and many more. The two stories that were the mostly inspirational were the Jenny Bowman who established the Half the Sky Foundation which began with the adoption of an infant girl in China and the story of Ken Woods, who was selling his drill rig in Maryland and ended up traveling to Ghana and drilling over a thousand wells, providing thousands with clean water, all at his own expense !
As I look back over the book, while I’ m writing this, I am saying to myself, hey that was a good story and that one was too, and I wish I could do something like that! So I guess I did ‘like the book more than I thought! I think that the whole thing was that the book really wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, a nuts and bolts book on how to reimagine your life, but rather it’s a book that through the stories of those who have done it, what you can do, if you try…. maybe Michael J Fox sums it up best….
“Jane Pauley is a wonderful guide to all the different ways you can open new doors in life, many of which lead to unexpected places. She shows with humor and a great generosity of spirit why the journey to reinvention can come from all kinds of places and produce all kinds of joys”
then there’s Jim Lehrer who writes….
“Well, here it is – finally. The guide for baby boomers on getting from here to there – from a state of panic over how to live the rest of their lives to a state of passion and performance as they do so with grace and pleasure. Read it and then go!!
While I still don’t have a plan about what I am going to do with the rest of my life, this book certainly made me think about what may be possible and that maybe now, instead of doing the work that I HAD to do, I can do the work that I WANT to do! (Figuring out what that is – is still my problem!) Anyway, the book should be checked out by all us boomers!!
Book 30 for 2014
