After much consideration, I have decided to semi-retire from my work. I decided this a little more than a year ago, after being told by my financial planner that I was set financially for retirement. For the past year, I’ve been checking out options to keep me busy. I attended some retirement lifestyle seminars, and the major theme I took away from them was that you ought to find “fun & fulfilling” things to do with your time. I’ve been lucky enough to find three places at which to volunteer that meet those requirements – in the theater, at a history museum, and with animals in need.
Now, having said that, although the two things I am currently doing for work (career counseling and officiating weddings) have been “fun & fulfilling”, I have been doing them for quite a long time (career counseling for over 35 years and officiating for over 22), and I don’t want to keep doing them at the same pace or even in the same way. So, with my career counseling I have already cut back to two half-days a week, and I’m announcing today that I am cutting way back on weddings starting immediately.
For the past decade or so, I’ve been performing 80-100 weddings per year. This year it was over 100, and I way over-extended myself. And, I believe it was showing up in my performance and was definitely taking the joy out of it for me. So, this coming year I plan to do many fewer weddings, and only in specific places at specific times. I love performing weddings and this, I believe, will help me to get back to enjoying them more while providing me more opportunities to do my other volunteer work, live a more balanced life, and enjoy my time more fully.
I’m really looking forward to this next phase of my life, and I plan to keep performing weddings on a limited basis for as long as it’s benefiting couples, and it remains, again, “fun & fulfilling”, for me. And know that although you won’t be seeing as many wedding ceremony entries in my journal from now on, I will still be here ready to perform a ceremony for you or someone you know if needed. Thanks for reading!