Target Your Passion
Simple Guide to Seniors’ Successful 2nd Careers
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
I've heard that if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. Do what you love!? BUT, what is it?! Our heart's desire is to do something meaningful, to make a contribution, and make our mark in the world.
At the end of our chosen careers, regardless of how they were chosen, we no longer consider ourselves as useless as those people did, who were in the workforce before us. We are no longer ‘the elderly.’ We are an active, vibrant group of senior citizens whose loves, energetic and creative lives don’t stop with our careers at retirement. We’re unable to just sit and do nothing after fifty or sixty years of making a living, having a career and being busy raising a family. Our passion doesn't necessarily include the need to complement our income, nor does it need to consume every spare moment of our time. And it doesn’t need to encompass any of what we had done in our careers, although it might. We can continue to live our lives, this time on our own terms.
Many of us were clear about what we wanted for a career. We went to school to get a degree so that we could pursue the career choice we made. We worked diligently throughout our lives and believed we had made a difference – or not. At times our profession became tedious; so, we either persevered or changed companies and/or locations. Sometimes we changed companies so that we could advance in our chosen field. So many of us fell into a job, and/or a career path and just stayed with it because it was safe. It was what we knew best at the time. Many of us didn't know much about ourselves except what was presented to us as a guide for our lives, a guide which we may or may not have followed. Some of us chose a career path we followed, some of us changed paths, sometimes several times.
We knew we needed to support ourselves and perhaps a family, or even an extended family. As time went on, we got into a rut. We worked, we vacationed, we bought and sold our own homes, cars, furniture, as time ebbed and flowed by us. In short, we lived our lives. Life was familiar, and familiarity was comfortable. Some of us developed hobbies, some did not. We were too busy making a living to make a life. What did we leave in the background? Because it truly is in the background, it wasn't lost completely.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
General “how to…” for seniors looking for retirement options, or younger readers as a guide for friends and/or family members. It can even be used for those in transition between jobs.
About the Author
She’s a combination of interests, abilities, experiences, cultures and families. Born into a military family, she spent her entire childhood moving around the country and lived overseas in England as a young child. Experienced in the “find a need and meet it” school of upbringing in a very large family; as the first born she found herself learning to become very resourceful. She married a military man and those skills became quite useful in rearing her own family.
Some of the reasons, including moving frequently and traumas in her childhood and teen years, she lost more jobs in her first three decades than most people had in a lifetime; among them were baby sitter, office/file/payroll clerk, bookkeeper, typist, retail/direct sales, receptionist, cashier, collector, program developer, administrative assistant, etc... She was alternately applauded, criticized, brow-beaten, harassed (once, literally chased around a desk), ignored, and mentored in various jobs. During those years she organized offices, developed a way to track collection income and print out necessary management reports for a bank, set up electronic means to track production for a clothing manufacturer, researched trucking archives, authored an employee manual and developed a reference manual for rehab health workers.
Through these experiences, or maybe because of them, the idea for this book was born. She realized that those in her time of life (retired or bordering on retirement, regardless of the circumstances), some with no way to support themselves, many with a life similar to her own, or those just looking to fill expanses of time, needed to have some way to fulfil that goal.
Thus, this book was written. None of the stories written here are based on person, alive or deceased. Those written about in this book are a complete figment of imagination.