The music of your career doesn’t have to stop when you retire, it just give you the opportunity to play some different tunes.

Since there are less invites and the recognition begins to dwindle, at the same time there are less demands, commitments and obligations. As Sherry Lansing, former head of Paramount Studios said about management executives, “People don’t retire, they rewire.”

From my personal perspective as a now ten year retiree, there are three stages you will likely pass through in retirement. None of these passages last a specific length of time. Each person’s stage time is different in length and character.

The first is the Transition. This is the time you decide how you want to live, where you want to live and what you want to do. If you’re smart you started working on this long before the gold-watch day.

For me it led with a few false starts. I tried launching a number of business ventures, none of which materialized. Also witnessed a number of other recent retirees try to start new or competing organizations with little success. I tried some teaching, but found the effort to deliver some understanding about entrepreneurship and marketing to fresh out of high school students very unfulfilling.

I was able to start enjoying some personal travel and fell into what became a multi-year consulting assignment through a former employee. I also took up golf which easily made up for all the frustrations I left behind at the office. About the same time I found out about doing consulting projects for USAID, the United States Agency for International Development.

One problem I have observed which seems to hold back a number of retirees in transition is their difficulty in letting go of their ego and understand they are not in demand any more.

My transition lasted about three years or so and led directly into my Optimum retirement. Life was great. My health was good and afforded me the opportunity to exercise, play golf, go on bike trips and have an active social and entertaining lifestyle. It was at this point, I referred to myself as “a happy has been.” I was traveling sixteen- plus weeks a year on USAID projects as well as personal trips that inked about fifty-five countries on my passport.

The USAID projects took me to Romania, Egypt, Bulgaria, Hungry and Thailand. The mission was to help third-world business people understand and prosper in a free market economy. These four- to six-week projects also provided the opportunity for extended travel in the region.

Writing in Associations Now, retiree Regis Delmontagne—after thirty years with NPES, the Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies—said, “I have happily discovered that there is no need to leave your valuable experience behind when you retire.”

In the last two years my unsolicited Adjustment period began. Although not life threatening health issues started to encroach, I have cut out the USAID projects (I didn’t want to go to Iraq anyway) and cut back on travel, exercise and golf.

Hope to resolve the limiting health problems in the next six months or so and get back to a more active lifestyle, although at a somewhat slower pace. All in all, it is still a good life and very enjoyable.

I still like the music.

What do you think?