We’re leaving Florida tomorrow after a mini-vacation of five days. We’ll be back in six weeks. In the meantime, Mary and I will be off to our place on Casco Bay in Harpswell, Maine next weekend. Then, the following week comes Thanksgiving with family, and right after that, she and I will be off scuba diving on the Caribbean Island of Bonaire for two weeks. (Bonaire is a tiny island in the southern Caribbean between Aruba and Curacao.)

Two weeks after returning from Bonaire, Mary and I will be at our Florida home again for a few weeks. Two months after that, we’ll be touring Ireland for a couple of weeks with friends.

(Mary and I are very lucky to be able to have all of our animals and still be able to go away. Two of my sons live within five miles of my house. So they are available if in case of an emergency. We have a mature and responsible house-sitter who lives at my house. She absolutely loves all the animals and has been a horsewoman all of her life.)

Life is good. I’ve worked hard and so has she for so many years. Now, at the age of fifty-six, my body is good shape, and I can enjoy the fruits of my hard work.

I also understand that, for some unknown reason, I’ve been very lucky. Sometimes a person can work hard and make all the “right” decisions, and still end up unhappy with nobody and nothing in their lives.

I have been blessed to always have been able to do things that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. I loved teaching. I loved being a homesteader in Maine. I love working in the theater, and I love my job in sales and marketing…but I love vacations more.

I will have absolutely no problem at all with retirement when the time comes (in about five years). None whatsoever. I know that many people, men in particular, find that retirement is a difficult adjustment. They suddenly feel worthless. They feel like they have too much time on their hands and no way to fill it up.

I’ve never considered what I do for a living as part of who I am. I’ve always tried to do my job to the best of my ability, but it has never been the end-all of my being. My job has always been a means for me to put food on the table and to give me enough money to do the things that I really want to do.

I’ve never been married to my job, even now that I own my own business. When I go on vacation, I never, never, never call into the office. Rarely do I do that even when I go home at night.

I’ve always made sure that I’ve never lived in the same town where I work. That way, it is a clean break when I go home at night. I believe that that benefits my life and my work, because problems at work stay there where they don’t have an effect on my life, and in the morning, I can face the problems after being refreshed by a daily mini-vacation “on the farm”.

My horse farm is twenty-five miles away from my work – about a forty minute commute. (I car pool to work with a friend of mine who works for me.) Work is often hectic, but never unmanageable. I’m always on the phone with customers, scanning the web for new customers, of dealing with internal matters in the factory.

(When things start going south at the office, all I have to do is remember that Mary Ellen is always there at the end of every day, and she, my kids and my grandkids all love me no matter what. That puts things into the proper perspective. Everything else that happens is of little consequence.)

When I go home, I’m surrounded by family, dogs, cats, horses and friends.

When I was teaching, it was the same thing.

With the theater, I limit myself to two productions a year.

Work is work, and life is life…and never the twain shall meet.

When I retire, I’ll have plenty to do with my writing and my theater. And I’ll still have my hobbies like skiing, sailing, horseback riding and scuba diving. (All of those are non-contact sports that I’ll be able to do, hopefully, into my eighties.) I’ll also have my family, my friends and my animals.

I’ve taken great care over the years, beginning in my early twenties, to keep my body in shape. I watch what I eat, exercise daily and don’t smoke. My one vice is alcohol. I love my beer and my Captain and Cokes.

And, of course, I’ll still have my vacations.

Now, I’m no genius, but I do know that, when the end of life is near, nobody ever lamented that they wished they had spent more time at the office.

My work is what I do, not who I am.

My many loves in this life define me.