Summary

The author reflects on the life choices and health decline of their grandmother, using this as a catalyst for their own determination to maintain an active and fulfilling life as they approach the second act of their own life, which includes plans to move to Spain and work indefinitely.

Abstract

The author is inspired by their late grandmother's experience, who after a heart attack at 58, became increasingly sedentary and eventually passed away at 79 after a stroke. The grandmother's withdrawal from an active social life and her once-loved job as a server is seen as a contributing factor to her depression and decline. The author, fearing a similar fate, is proactive about their future, aiming to avoid the pitfalls of inactivity and disengagement that they observed in their grandmother and other relatives. They express a desire to maintain relevance and purpose, setting work-related and financial goals to support their aspirations. Despite fears of failure, the author is excited about the possibilities that success in their endeavors, including moving to Spain, will bring. They share their journey and insights through their Medium articles and a newsletter titled "Never Retire: Living The Semi-Retired Life."

Opinions

The author believes that their grandmother's inactivity after her heart attack contributed more to her decline than the heart attack itself.
They suggest that a sedentary lifestyle and lack of purpose can lead to depression and a premature fade from an active, fulfilling life.
The author is determined not to repeat the patterns of relatives who have become bitter, agitated, or disengaged due to unresolved traumas or a narrowing of their worldview.
They hold the opinion that maintaining clear objectives and a sense of purpose is crucial for a meaningful life in old age.
The author views their own fears about aging and life goals as similar to those they had in their youth, indicating a consistent drive and set of values.
They see their move to Spain and continued work as a way to avoid becoming complacent or feeling irrelevant.
The author equates success with survival, suggesting that their efforts to achieve their goals are a means of thriving, not just existing.

I’m a Little Scared, But Mostly Excited for the Second Act of My Life

I watched one too many family members fall into sad ruts

I think a lot about my Grandmother. She has been gone for almost 18 years now.

Her longish story short —

At the age of 79, my Grandmother died after suffering a stroke.
Twenty-one years earlier, my grandmother had a heart attack.
So she quit working as a server at an Italian restaurant in my hometown.
Between 1984 and 2005, my Grandmother’s life increasingly consisted of little more than sitting on her chair in her living room watching sports on TV.

Once the highlight of my childhood, the time my Grandmother spent visiting for major holiday gatherings steadily decreased. Dinners and poker games that used to go on past midnight stopped happening. Instead, it was dinner, coffee, dessert, then straight home to sit on her chair.

The number of visits my Grandma made to our house on any other day also decreased to the point where they were effectively zero.

Did the heart attack do so much damage to my Grandmother that she had to quit the very social job she loved?

I don’t think so.

Instead, quitting the job did more damage to her than a heart attack ever could have — she was a tough cookie — leading to a sedentary lifestyle and, ultimately, a state of depression.

You probably have relatives who share the same or some variation of this story.

It’s sad story.

You build a bond with these people in childhood and beyond — don’t tell anyone, but my Grandma was my favorite relative — only to watch them slowly fade away after you move away. As reality would have it, the bond also fades. Or, at least, changes.

Anyhow, I have seen people give up on themselves — on life—more often than I care to remember. If they don’t end up bumps on a log, they wind up bitter, easily agitated and politically extreme, often because of some unresolved trauma experienced during childhood or in war. Every garden-variety encroachment on their comfort zone turns into a personal affront. They become people you no longer like to be around. People you can no longer look up to.

At least this was the case for many of the people I grew up around.

If there’s an admittedly selfish silver lining to these situations, it’s that you learn from them. As you age, you make sense of them. You let go of any anger or resentment. You realize that they did their best, as products of their environment — apathetically chosen, merely accepted or otherwise. You have seen their histories and realize you are absolutely not doomed to repeat them.

Therefore, the fears I have headed into act two of my life — with plans to move to Spain and work forever — aren’t all that different from the ones I had in act one. Sprinkle in a different relationship with my mortality and I still worry about the same things I worried about in my 20s, 30s and early 40s.

I won’t go into a long list of these worries because — in all honesty — I don’t like to dwell on them. But the fact that they haven’t changed makes me feel good about my prospects headed into relative old age.

For example, one of these worries is —

Will I reach the work-related and financial objectives I set for myself and require to meet my goals?

I have always had things I wanted to accomplish. Relatively modest things. And they have always required my work to develop in a way that would help facilitate these things. Because, as you know, work often generates money and you need money to do things.

In watching people who fade away, there’s a common denominator. Sounds harsh, but harsh is often true. They have nothing left to live for. In part, because, for one reason or another, they have put such a tight vice grip around their increasingly provincial world that you could effectively argue, they really don’t have all that much to live for.

If anything, that’s my greatest fear. To wake up and be like, why am I here? Have I become little more than a dust collector?

So I refuse to collect dust.

In fact, I want to be that pickup truck that kicks up dust as it pulls away on another new adventure. Even though I am not a pickup truck kind of guy.

I’m scared that I’ll fail. This has been a — maybe — healthy constant throughout my entire life.

But, more so, I’m excited by the prospects that I’ll succeed. Success, that is, survival gone too far.

It’s this tug of war, which has always been part of my personality, that has me welcoming act two with the same enthusiasm and — hopefully — a wee bit more wisdom than I had in act one.

If you’d like to know more about the journey I’m on, follow me on Medium.

You can also subscribe to my Never Retire: Living The Semi-Retired Life newsletter where I chronicle my big decisions on lifestyle, housing and cost of living, which includes moving to Spain sooner rather than later.