We're experiencing the first days of retirement angst.  Kate will shift to After Hours Care in December and her income will fall.  We've planned for it, balanced our budget with cuts in spending and saving, yet she's been a high earner most of her adult life and all of our married life.  The come down, even with forethought, has made her anxious.  Self-doubt is cruel, its triggers so often invisible, or covered with a thicket of rationale.  Like anything else though, recognition is the first step toward resolution.

This must be a familiar process to those headed toward retirement.  An ounce of uncertainty becomes a pound of angst.  We will work our way through it together, as we have so much else in the past 17 years, and we will grow stronger for having done it.  Ain't love grand?

Tried to volunteer for the Amy Klobuchar today, but the location I recalled from the phone conversation didn't have any people.  In fact, I found two places that were Wells Fargo office buildings on Main Street, but, no campaign.  Maybe I misheard, or the caller misinformed, either way, I didn't help.  Of all the DFL candidates she needed the least help, and, of all the candidates she is the one furthest from my own politics.  She sits on the center, perhaps a bit to the right.

A beautiful day nonetheless and now I'm off to the grocery store.

Saw an advertisement for asset-based planning for congregations vs. need-based planning. 

 It occurred to me that Kate and I might pursue an asset based planning process for the next time, that is, the time after she no longer works at the clinic.  We would look at all the skill sets we have, the friends and professional relationships we have, the property and financial resources we have at our disposal, the family and their relationships.  From these we would decide what's next.  We would not move from a suspicion of scarcity, plans to live just so we can live; rather, we would move from a recognition of the assets we have and how we might deploy them for ourselves and the good of the community.  A different model than the finish line model of retirement.  May have some merit.

Also, I changed this blog from West to What's Next.  This  reflects the reality that our decisions about the next phase of our lives is a process, one with no definite conclusion at the moment.

Kate's illness (see blog for mid-May, 2006) and hospitalization caused me to have a serious rethink about this move.  I'm now leaning more toward staying here.  Support system (friends) and support system (medical) seem, at least right now, to outweigh the virtues of Boulder and being near Ruth.

Then there is the new information about Pecos County Texas.  And the forty acres we own down there.  Gives me a foothold in the West, at its southern extreme, that is both new and fascinating.  It may be an embellishment on this whole tale.

The ties here have begun to loosen, and, at the same time become more dear.  I looked out the study window, saw the hosta, our boulder wall, the grown maples and Austrian pine and I realized I could feel this kind of affection for a mountainscape, too.  I felt disloyal to the house, the yard, even the hosta, yet, I also felt liberated from a sentimental attachment.  Be here, now has come to mean be here in Minnesota now, as you  will be able to be wherever you end up later.  It is difficult for me not to focus on this completely, yet we know we have at least 3 more years here.  It will take that long for Kate's retirement.  Any earlier and we lose benefits, most acute:  my health insurance.  Still, that gives a definite time period and helps us focus on what we need to do to sell the house, get our financial and legal affairs here in order.  

A sag today on this decision.  The gray sky, the rain, the lush green.  Going into the Art Institute, thinking about doing research in the library and the prints and drawings center.  Talking to Alison and realizing that these relationships will turn fleeting, erased by the high plains.  The general sense of at homeness I feel here.  Crossing the Mississippi, which will be far away.  The curve of 610 as it arcs into 252 headed toward Minneapolis.  All the miles, over all the years, for all the reasons.  Memories.

I looked at houses on the web and they all seem too expensive.  Hoping, today, that this move might go the way I hope Michael Servetus might, a possibility, but one that, for some reason or another, does not come to pass.

And yet.  Ruth.  And Michael Servetus, a challenge, a chance to re-flex some muscles, to continue my Liberal's Way.  And Boulder has a UU congregation also in the hunt for an interim.  Which means a new minister in a couple of years.  Hmmm.

The Rocky Mountains.  Wild.  Tall.  Filled with new adventures.  Closer to New Mexico, Chaco Canyon, Idaho, Montana.  Yellowstone.  A new literature to read.  A new place.  

Seems the Kate and I have come to a meeting of the minds. We're heading west as soon as we can make the stars line up.  With two provisos:  1.  That we can get a new mortgage; and 2.  That Jon and Jen plan to stay somewhere in Colorado for a good while.

This is a move closer to family rather than a move west, though a move to Nederlands (see above) outside of Boulder would have other perks as well.  We want some acres and countryside, mountains would be a bonus, though they will be close since a lot of Rocky Mountain National Park lies within the county limits of Boulder County.

In the end I realized that the ties which bind me to grandchildren and children are stronger than the substantial ones that bind me here:  friends like the Woollys, 30 years of history, the Minneapolis Art Institute, other cultural institutions, and, this home we've spent so much time and money adapting to our needs.

The Vectra will need a new home, Kate's quilting work area, and my study/computer areas, not to mention those places to sleep, cook, relax, but we can do with less space. 

A big decision, but one made for good reasons.  Westward, ho!