Katherine P. Stillerman

Retirement: a Journey Not a Destination: Reflections from a Traveler One Year Down the Road Katherine P. Stillerman 1. izdevums

A Baby Boomer and thirty-year veteran of public school teaching and administration, the author set out to disprove the assumption, commonly held by her work colleagues, that retirement must be either a Life sentence or a Get out of Jail Free Pass. She was inspired by Gretchin Rubens' Happiness Project and the work of Robert Raines on creative aging to construct her own Retirement Project for discovering the pathway to personal happiness and fulfillment that would carry her into the elder season of life. Beginning the day she walked out of her office for the last time, she took the next twelve months to work on ten resolutions that she had identified as critical to the accomplishment of her vision for a meaningful and purposeful retirement. Over the months, she gained valuable insight into her past and pursued new pathways and interests for the future. In the end, she concluded that retirement is more like a journey than a destination; more like a construction project than a memory garden; more like a beginning than an ending. The book chronicles the steps in her journey into the first year.