life changes – Deb Sinness, Author

This past year has been so busy with family and traveling that writing has taken a backseat. It’s been two years since I retired and life has been a whirlwind…finding new love, remodeling and setting up a winter home in Tucson, buying the Scamp and planning camping adventures in 13 states, getting married, and vacationing in North Carolina, Maryland, and the Canadian Rockies. Whew, I get tired just reading the list of things we’ve accomplished!

After the pandemic started, I couldn’t wait to retire. Who knows how much time we have left on this earthly plane, I thought, so I set a retirement date and put my plan in action. It has turned out far better than I ever could have imagined…I’m living the dream.

The trouble is whenever you move or do something different, you always bring yourself with you…the good stuff and the quirks and habits that don’t serve your greater good. When I worked, I lived a very structured, routine life that carved out time for writing. That has been my biggest struggle in retirement.

I don’t have a routine. It’s hard to structure your day when each one can be different, depending where you are and who you’re with. Could I have made my writing a priority to the exclusion of others? Yes, but I felt it was a higher priority to go with the flow and see what life brings.

For now, we’ve settled back in Tucson and I’m trying to write a little every day…even if it’s just one or two sentences. It keeps it top of mind and gets the writerly juices going again.

The one thing I have made a conscious effort to do more of is read, whether through Audible, Kindle, my library app, or my favorite, a book I can hold in my hands. I use Goodreads to keep track of the books I’ve read and last year I finished 22.

This year, I set a goal of 25. I just finished the 24th, The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter to Them. Published in 2006 and edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen, it contains essays from authors in alphabetical order. Since it was published 17 years ago, there were many authors I didn’t know, but included such notable authors as Anne Lamott, SARK, Carol Higgins Clark, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Patricia Cornwell, and Frank McCourt.

Loaned by my friend Steph who shares a love of books about writing, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I found it a fascinating read and put many of their suggestions on my GoodReads “To Read” list. I also found some of their choices surprising. For example, Patricia Cornwell, who writes a series about medical examiner Kay Scarpetta solving crimes lists Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the book that changed her life. She cites Stowe may be an ancestor on her father’s side of the family. The title of her essay, “The Original Sin,” is powerfully brought home at the end of the essay where she writes, “…our shared belief that all unfairness, harshness, and inevitable violence are born of the same original sin: the abuse of power, the ultimate result of which is enslavement, impoverishment, suffering, and death.”

I was disappointed to see that none of the authors mentioned, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, though one of the editors mentioned it in the appended list she “reads, rereads, and always keeps near at hand.” That was the book that changed my life.

While taking undergraduate classes at Mira Costa Junior College while I was in the Marine Corps, the book was required reading in my Philosophy 101 class. A holocaust survivor, Frankl writes about daily life in the Nazi death camps. What I found so compelling was his comparison between those who had a woebegone attitude and those who remained hopeful, helping others the best they could. I had always felt like my life would be colored by the stigma of my mother’s mental illness.

Frankl spoke of men who didn’t define themselves as prisoners but looked forward to a better life. I remember thinking when I first read the book, if he can survive something like that, what I’m going through is nothing. The book helped me understand that my attitude impacted the quality of my life more than any other external factor. Man’s Search for Meaning is still my favorite and is on my bookshelf today.

What is the book that changed your life? If you’re retired, how have you found meaning in your post-work life?

Just after the 2020 New Year, my daughter and I opened a time capsule from 2000 we had created with her father. It was eerie how it had seemed like yesterday, yet two decades had elapsed since we had buried that duct tape-wrapped plastic tote on Y2K near a tree next to our A-frame cabin at Lake Nacimiento.

Little did we know when dropped mementos like the circa 2000 Sony phone, my published poems, and letters to ourselves in 20 years how drastically our lives would change six months later. I reflected on our two decade journey and was amazed at how different our lives were. My daughter suggested creating another time capsule for the next 20 years but I declined. Maybe I wasn’t sure I’d live another 20 years, or maybe I feared I would be inviting another seismic shift.

Both 2000 and 2020 involved major moves. Moves we never saw coming at the beginning of those years. Even if we had tried to guess, it would have been a blind shot in the dark. In the Summer of 2000, we moved to Michigan where I’d live for 20 years. In the Fall of 2020, I’d move back to North Dakota, the place of my birth, childhood, and teenage angst.

Each move happened quickly, without much warning or time to consider other options. In 2000 (the dot com gold-rush days), my ex was offered a “once in a lifetime opportunity” with stock options. With dreams of retiring and returning to California, we were all in…then 9/11 happened, our dreams turned to dust, and life was a scramble. This year with the pandemic, the ending of my third marriage, and my daughter’s move to North Dakota, my day job was the only thing keeping me in Michigan. When they gave approval to telework remotely, all systems were go and “Operation Move” was on.

I could never have guessed what was to come for the next 20 years in 2000, just as I couldn’t have guessed what would happen this year, much less the next 20. The pandemic complicated everything yet without it, I wouldn’t have been approved for remote telework.

Now, after 45 years of living away, I’m home…literally and figuratively.