Share

In September of 2024, Sue Strickland walked into a flight attendant open call knowing exactly what was about to happen. The room was full of younger, thinner women – the ones you picture when you think “flight attendant.” Sue was 60, a self-described “thicker person,” and she had exactly zero illusions.

She got the job. Here’s how.

Meet Sue

Sue is a worker bee. Originally from Michigan, she taught elementary school in a Detroit suburb for 30 years. Once she had her pension locked in, she retired at 51.

She then pivoted to higher education administration, first in Ann Arbor, and then in Utah, after her husband’s job moved them west.

But the Utah university job had stopped being fun. She wanted to go part time; they kept stalling. Meanwhile, the Social Security math was looming – she needed a lower income anyway. And then her husband Kahle said something that lit a fuse: after they retired, they wouldn’t be able to travel much.

Sue did not like this one bit. Her daughter had just moved to Dallas. Her first grandchild was on the way.

So she went looking for work that checked every box: lower income for Social Security purposes, a built-in way to get to Dallas, and something that actually felt like an adventure. She saw the open call listing for flight attendants from a large regional airline – the airport being seven minutes from her house – and was immediately intrigued. She’d noticed on recent flights that some of the flight attendants looked more like her – older, not super skinny – and thought maybe things were changing in the airline industry.

Reading the Room. Literally.

At the open call, the airline projected their core values on a PowerPoint slide. Safety was at the top of the list. When the other applicants were asked why they wanted to be a flight attendant, they talked about wanting to work with people. Sue talked about safety – and backed it up with 30 years of fire drills, lockdown protocols, and keeping small humans in one piece. She was one of the very few who advanced to training.

It was a very Sue move.

The Training That Almost Broke Her

Training lasted five weeks in Salt Lake City, and it was brutal. Sue later learned that her airline’s program was considerably stricter than those of other airlines – rigorous exams, 40 competency tests, and a dress code so detailed it specified earring length (no longer than one inch). The schedule started at a different time every day, by design, to mirror the unpredictability of actual flight schedules.

The militant tactics rattled some of the younger trainees. Sue, with decades of work and life behind her, saw it for what it was – just a strategy – and kept going. She got 100% on her first exam. When the memorization load got intense, she drew on her teacher training to develop study techniques and shared them with her cohort. Thirty-eight people started and 33 finished – an unusually high graduation rate. My hunch is that Sue deserves some credit for that.

Then came five days of in-flight training: about 15 actual flights. This part was rough in a different way.

She told herself it was a clash of learning styles. She almost quit. Kahle talked her off the ledge, suggesting she give it a week. She got through it. And when the self-doubt crept in, she had a mantra ready: “I’m at the age where if someone says no to me, that’s fine. I don’t care.”

Remember, Sue is a worker bee.

One thing worth noting: as grueling as training was, it was “Equal Opportunity Terrible.” She never felt singled out for her age or size – some of the instructors were bigger than she was. Being an older, larger flight attendant was entirely fine.

Hitting Her Stride

The first few months were hard. New flight attendants start on Reserve – on call 12 hours a day, 4am to 4pm, with no say in the schedule. Sue was based out of Dallas, which she’d wanted since her daughter was there, but getting to the airport on short notice was stressful enough that she eventually got a crash pad with other flight attendants near the airport for a few months. And as the low person on the seniority totem pole, she worked Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Then, a few months in, something shifted. She found her footing. She discovered the tight-knit camaraderie of the flight attendant and pilot community – people who travel together, lean on each other, and just get it in a way outsiders don’t. She liked the overnights: nice hotels, sometimes dinner with the crew, sometimes a quiet night in with a crochet project. And she found, maybe most unexpectedly, that she loved the passengers.

A few stories capture what Sue brings to this work. Mid-flight, a toddler was getting squirmy in his mother’s lap. Sue offered a clear plastic cup for him to play with – a trick she’d used flying with her own granddaughter. It worked like a charm. When the plane landed, the passenger across the aisle stopped her on the way out. “He said, ‘What you did was amazing. I’ve never seen a flight attendant go that extra mile.’”

An older woman struggled down the aisle, wouldn’t make eye contact, and didn’t respond when Sue asked how she could help. Sue got her bag into the overhead bin anyway, flipped up the armrest so she could slide easily into her seat, and told her to let her know if she needed anything. The woman ignored her. As she exited the plane, she stopped and said: “You’re a good one.”

Then there’s this, from Captain Ben:

The Trade-Offs

Sue has been flying for a year and a half. Her monthly schedule is 18 days on, 12 off. Now that she has a little seniority, she stacks her trips – flying six days straight to bank a full week at home. She’s built exactly the travel life she wanted: her daughter and grandchild are in Dallas, the airport is seven minutes away, and she and her husband get to Dallas and back to Michigan regularly to see family.

It hasn’t been without costs. Flight attendants only get paid for time in the air, which means a lot of unpaid hours. The work is physical – turbulence throws flight attendants around causing bruises, and eating well on the road is nearly impossible. Planning bigger trips, like Europe, is tricky when schedules come out just ten days before the following month.

But in the end, Sue got all the things she went looking for: some income, free travel, and a job that keeps her on her toes, literally. And Kahle, the husband who told her she couldn't travel? He's her biggest cheerleader.

Random Rec of the Week

⏳ I have been texting the link to this Substack article to my loved ones like crazy all week and now I am sharing it with all of you. Fittingly given this week’s story about Sue, it is all about the importance of enjoying life in your 60s. In a nutshell, statistically speaking, the average healthy 60-year old has 12 good years before their mobility and energy take a major nosedive. A must-read for people interested in intentional living as we age. Carpe diem, baby!

Humans vs Retirement

Your 12 Good Years

Here’s a number that should change how you think about retirement: 12…

Read more

a month ago · 2569 likes · 305 comments · Dan Haylett

New or Catching Up?

• New subscribers: hello and welcome! This newsletter is about late midlife reinvention: my adventures living somewhere new for a month every year, profiles of people making bold life changes, and enthusiastic takes on movies, Broadway, and the Oscars.

• My newsletter is 100% unpaid: all recommendations and links are simply things I genuinely enjoy.

• Recent posts: Rome Reckoning: Hail Caesar!, Happy Nesting in New York City, Retirement Under a Microscope.

• All past articles are collected here.

• HAVE YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW HAD A BOLD MIDLIFE PIVOT, LIKE SUE? Help me shine a light on their story. Email me at: alicejmorgana2 at gmail.

Clicking the little heart button 💗 at the top of a post or email, commenting, and sharing can also help this newsletter reach more people (because that’s how Substack’s algorithm works). In addition I would be so very grateful if you would forward this to someone who might enjoy it as I try to increase subscribers.

THANK YOU to Sue Strickland, for generously sharing your story and photos, and to my friend Lisa Bell, who suggested I profile Sue and then introduced us. Thanks, as always, to all of you for reading and engaging. Until next time!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Share

Happy Tax Day! For those new to this newsletter: this is the second part of a two-part post about our Happy Nesting month in Rome this past winter. The first post covered initial impressions. This one is, well, a reckoning.

Day 3: A Realization

Three days into our 30 days in Rome, Hugh and I looked at each other and said the same thing: we miss having a dog. Not just Sasha specifically – though of course we missed her – but the scaffolding and structure dog ownership provides during a month away from home. The walks around the neighborhood. The rhythm of feeding times. The way a dog makes a strange place feel like home faster than anything else. After seven years of Happy Nesting, it turns out the dog wasn’t just along for the ride. She was helping us find our footing.

We had no idea how prescient that observation was about to become.

Days 5-6: The Calls

Five days in, our 25-year-old son Spencer, who was house- and dog-sitting, reached out. Sasha was having trouble walking. The next day, he reached out with more urgency. He took her in for an emergency vet visit.

I will always remember that we were on a guided tour of St. Peter’s Basilica when they called. We bailed on the tour and took the call seated on a built-in marble bench at the cathedral entrance. The situation was dire. She was in pain and her labs showed kidney failure. The vet sent Spencer to an emergency hospital. Several hours later, we learned that Sasha had developed what appeared to be end-stage Lyme disease. Hospitalization would be expensive and was unlikely to work, and she was clearly suffering. There was nothing to be done. We put her down.

As Sasha was our dog, we felt terrible that Spencer had to shoulder this alone. He never should have had to do that.

What made the loss especially brutal was that we’d had no warning – Sasha was in the pink of health when we left. And we had just begun the trip, with 24 days still ahead. Hugh and I were in Rome, thousands of miles away, knowing we’d have to grieve there, and then grieve all over again when we came home to an empty house. Which is exactly what happened.

Days 7-30: Rome with a Broken Heart

I want to be honest about the rest of the trip without being maudlin about it, because Rome genuinely delivered in a lot of ways.

The best of it was time with our friends Ken and Colleen, Ann Arbor friends who happened to be in Rome at the same time. Having companions who knew the city well – its art, its church history, what you’re actually looking at when you’re standing in front of something – changed the experience entirely. Several long dinners together at our respective rentals were among the best memories of the whole month.

And we toured lots of museums, monuments, and neighborhoods. Many of Rome’s greatest hits are well-known, so I’ll skip those and focus on the less obvious.

• Two Day Trips: Ostia Antica, the ruins of an ancient Roman port city, and Tivoli, where Hadrian’s Villa and Villa d’Este are both extraordinary.

  

• Two Food Markets: Mercato Trionfale and Testaccio Market – the real thing, as opposed to the touristy Campo de’ Fiori market where we were staying.

• Two Museums: The Capitoline Museum, which in addition to its famous works currently has a terrific temporary exhibit about Cartier jewelry and its classical influences; and the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, a former Renaissance mansion with an audio tour narrated by an actual member of the Doria-Pamphilj family. Don’t miss the 1650 Velázquez portrait of Pope Innocent X – widely considered one of the greatest portraits ever painted.

  

• Two Activities: A choral performance at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and an Italian cooking class.

  

• Two Travel Tips: Rick Steves’ audio tours are easy to download and not too long. And AI is seriously your best friend when traveling – it can find the nearest public bathroom, identify a building you’re walking past, and explain the provenance of art you’re standing in front of, all in seconds.

I’ve come to think of Rome a bit like taking medicine. It definitely wasn’t as fun as, say, our month in Sedona. But it will make us better in the long run. Rome taught us a lot. Our interest in classical history, the Renaissance, early Christianity – all of it deepened. When we are older and grayer (than we currently are 😆) we may not be able to go on long hikes. But we will be able to watch a documentary on classical history. Hugh has long been a serious history nerd. But our trip rekindled my interest in the classics.

And then – best of all – we took a vacation from our vacation and went to the Cinque Terre for the weekend. It was off-season, so we booked rooms the day of, cheap and easy. Hiking is all about the weather, and we didn’t have gear. We were lucky the weather held; if it hadn’t we would have taken the train back to Rome. We hiked all five villages, 7.5 miles total but super hilly – a legit workout. After weeks of navigating Rome’s chaotic, cobblestoned, tourist-choked streets, being on a trail above the Mediterranean felt like coming up for air. Hugh and I were back in our element. One thing we noticed right away was how quickly we fell into conversation with people – fellow hikers, coffee shop workers, restaurant owners. In Rome everyone has their guard up. In less populated areas, and particularly out on the trail, people take time to chat. I don’t think that’s an observation about Italy specifically – cities and less populated places have this dynamic everywhere. On our first morning hiking, mid-second-breakfast, we met a young couple and discovered that the woman had gone to Skyline High School in Ann Arbor, where our kids went. Of course she had.

Back Home

We flew home dreading what was waiting: an empty house, Sasha’s box of chew toys, dog treats in a ramekin on the counter, her leash on the hook by the door.

It was exactly as hard as we’d expected.

We didn’t wait long. We started looking at dogs at the Ann Arbor Humane Society and pretty quickly found this guy.

We named him Caesar – partly to redeem our month in Rome, partly because it made us laugh. He is, it should be said, not remotely Caesar-like in personality. He is a complete softie. A one-year-old pup with a lot of energy and absolutely no imperial ambitions whatsoever. Although I personally think he has a regal look to him, especially around the ears.

A new dog is a lot of work, especially a young one. But we have the time now. That’s the whole point of this chapter.

What Rome Taught Us

The clearest lesson from Happy Nesting Year 7: no more month long international trips without our dog. Which, practically speaking, means Happy Nesting months in the U.S. going forward. We’re more than fine with that. This country has no shortage of places we haven’t explored, and apparently we need a dog to explore them properly. You can’t have everything. We can’t have lots of international travel and the daily joy of a dog. When push comes to shove, we prefer the daily joy of a dog.

This was also my first Happy Nesting month as a fully retired person, which changed the shape of the time in ways I hadn’t anticipated. In prior posts I’ve made the point that we’re not tourists – we’re there for a month. In Rome, we were tourists. A month of being a tourist is a long time, and I don’t think I’m built for it. Next time, I want a neighborhood gym, a regular coffee shop, a familiar trail. A routine. A dog to walk.

There’s a version of this story where Sasha’s death ruined Rome. “Reckoning” is a heavy word. But it really was one – a clarification of what matters most. And here’s the thing: Rome was already teaching us something before that phone call came. We’d figured out on Day 3 that we’d been doing Happy Nesting with a secret ingredient all along.

Caesar is that ingredient now. He has no idea he’s named after an emperor. He doesn’t care. He just wants his morning walk.

So do we.

Random Rec of the Week

📚🎧 Now that I am spending lots of time walking Caesar, I am continuing with audiobook recs. Viola Davis’ autobiography Finding Me is flat-out fantastic, and she is, unsurprisingly, a wonderful reader. The first half, recounting a childhood of hunger, abuse, and trauma, is tough. The second half, about her slow and steady rise through the acting ranks, first as a journeyman actor and then eventually as a marquee star, is super fun. I loved all the Hollywood insider info. An interesting and engaging read.

New or Catching Up?

• New subscribers: hello and welcome! This newsletter is about late midlife reinvention: my adventures living somewhere new for a month every year, profiles of people making bold life changes, and enthusiastic takes on movies, Broadway, and the Oscars.

• My newsletter is 100% unpaid: all recommendations and links are simply things I genuinely enjoy.

• Recent posts: Happy Nesting in New York City, Retirement Under a Microscope, Oscars Review: Expected Winner, Unexpected Tearjerker.

• All past articles are collected here.

• Have you or someone you know had a bold midlife pivot, like Nick, Laurie, Susan & Bonnie, Corky, Tom, or Scott? I’d love to shine a light on their story. Email me at: alicejmorgana2 at gmail.

Clicking the little heart button 💗 at the top of a post or email, commenting, and sharing can also help this newsletter reach more people (because that’s how Substack’s algorithm works). In addition I would be so very grateful if you would forward this to someone who might enjoy it as I try to increase subscribers.

Thanks, as always, to all of you for reading, hearting, engaging, etc. Until next time!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Share

Welcome, MRxPros who subscribed after attending yesterday’s "Happy Nesting" webinar. I'm so glad you're here! Today’s post is a bit of an origin story detour: it's about the travel experiences that shaped me before I became the person who eventually landed in late midlife reinvention mode. For a more typical taste of this newsletter, check out Downsizing: Less is More or Go When They Want you to Stay: Why I Retired When I Did. Back to normal next week.

When I was 22, I traveled around the world by myself for six months. When I wrote about it recently in this newsletter, a number of people asked: where did you get the gumption to do that at 22?

The answer is that I applied. Twice.

Where I Started

I grew up in a Connecticut suburb of New York City. My father died when I was 10, and after that we were on the poorer end in a wealthy town. My mother struggled to pay the bills and save for college - an act of sacrifice for which I’ll be forever grateful. Like many children of the 70s, I didn’t travel much. I went to Disney World a few times before my dad died. We went to Vermont or Maine once or twice. That was about it.

Application #1: Oman

In 1983, the summer before I started college, my high school American Government teacher Mr. Kraut was contacted by the U.S. Embassy of the Sultanate of Oman. They were looking for young Americans to represent the United States and travel to Oman for the country’s “Year of Youth.” He suggested I apply, and I did.

The following fall, during my freshman year, I learned I was one of nine young Americans selected. I would be flying to Oman, all expenses paid.

There were 450 youth from 45 countries assembled - all Western or developing nations. (Given that the Soviet Union had supported Marxist movements in Oman in the past, Communist bloc countries were pointedly excluded by the pro-West government.) For 11 days, we participated in a whirlwind of activities. We toured historic forts and ancient markets. We saw a camel race. We marched in a parade to commemorate Oman’s National Holiday. The highpoint was tea at the Sultan’s palace.

Two experiences stand out. First, the ancient souks with their maze of covered passages and overwhelming sensory detail were mysterious and magical. Second, as Americans during the apotheosis of the Reagan years, we were, frankly, the popular kids. The fact that our American flag pins were the most sought-after trading commodity among the delegates was evidence of this. Everyone wanted one.

When I got back to college, I never recovered from missing almost two weeks of calculus. The C+ was totally worth it.

Application #2: Kenya

My Oman adventure sparked an interest in other countries and cultures. The following summer, I got an internship at a nonprofit think tank in DC that analyzed the economic impact of corporate investment in places like South Africa (which was then under apartheid). There I met someone who had done a study abroad program in Kenya through St. Lawrence University. He suggested I apply, and I did.

In the spring of 1986 I set off on my next grand adventure: a semester in Kenya with thirty students from universities across the U.S.

The program was interdisciplinary and immersive. We took classes in Nairobi, hiked Mount Kenya, and observed wildlife on safari at the Masai Mara. For part of the time we were housed in the suburban neighborhood of Karen – named after Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa – and each of us completed one-month internships throughout the country.

We had homestays with three different Kenyan communities: urban families in Nairobi, rural Luo villagers, and nomadic pastoralists. The nomadic pastoralists we stayed with were the Samburu ethnic group.

And it was during the Samburu homestay that I got to know my now-husband Hugh. Two students were assigned to each Samburu community cluster. But there was an odd number of women and men on the trip, so one pairing needed to consist of a man and a woman. That pairing was Hugh and me.

We spent three days together walking around with cows, goats and Samburu herders. We were told not to bring any books (”cultural baggage”) so we could soak in the experience. Unbeknownst to each other, we both cheated and snuck in books. Hugh is 6½ feet tall, and as such was a rather tight fit sleeping in the cramped, smoky Samburu huts.

One night, our Samburu host woke us up in the middle of the night. She kept asking us something in Swahili. Finally we understood: she wanted to know the time. Then she had us go outside. A baby calf had just been born. This was a seismic event in her world, and it was moving and meaningful to bear witness to her joy.

In addition to learning all about Kenya and finding my person, I found a tribe of my own. Prior to this semester, I had typically been friends with one or two individuals at a time. This was the first time I felt part of a group. And this group has stayed strong over the years. For the last forty years, seven of us have gotten together every year or two.

After the program ended, we traveled overland through East Africa. Our destination was Victoria Falls, which is in Southern Africa on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. We discovered that traveling overland in Africa was difficult and time consuming without a vehicle. We ran out of time. We got as far as Malawi, and then flew back to Nairobi.

The Pattern

By the time I graduated college, I’d been to Oman, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Malawi. I’d met people from dozens of countries. I’d learned I could handle uncertainty, discomfort, and adventure.

Given this, after graduating from college, traveling around the world at age 22 didn’t feel crazy. It felt like the next logical step.

Life is random. A high school teacher gets a call from an embassy. A study abroad program accepts your application. A friend group decides to travel overland through East Africa.

But randomness only works if you say yes. If you send in the application. If you go even when your calculus grade suffers. If you choose the risky route over the safe path.

Oman taught me the world was bigger and more fascinating than I’d imagined. Kenya taught me I could thrive anywhere and find my people in the most unexpected places. By graduation, I was someone who said yes to new experiences.

That’s where the gumption to travel solo around the world came from. Not from being naturally brave, but from learning - through two random opportunities - that new adventures and experiences were worth pursuing. Gumption isn’t something you’re born with. It’s something you build, one random yes at a time.

Random Rec of the Week

📚🎧 I’m getting back into audiobooks, where the narrator is arguably as important as the writer. My favorite audiobook series is the late, great Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching books, narrated by the incomparable Stephen Briggs.

Terry Pratchett wrote forty books in his beloved Discworld series, which sold millions of copies (though he’s more popular overseas than in the U.S.). I prefer the Tiffany Aching series - technically children’s books - to his adult novels. I have listened to the entire series multiple times.

There are four books: The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, and I Shall Wear Midnight. (A fifth, which I haven’t read, was published posthumously with help from Pratchett’s daughter.)

Start with The Wee Free Men, the first and best in the series. The books follow young Tiffany Aching as she becomes a witch. They’re magical, hilarious, and deeply wise. Highest recommendation.

New or Catching Up?

• New subscribers: hello and welcome! This newsletter is (usually!) about late midlife reinvention: my adventures living somewhere new for a month every year, profiles of people making bold life changes, and enthusiastic takes on movies, Broadway, and the Oscars.

• My newsletter is 100% unpaid: all recommendations and links are simply things I genuinely enjoy.

• Recent posts: Happy Nesting in New York City, Retirement Under a Microscope, Oscars Review: Expected Winner, Unexpected Tearjerker.

• All past articles are collected here.

• Have you or someone you know had a bold midlife pivot, like Nick, Laurie, Susan & Bonnie, Corky, Tom, or Scott? I’d love to shine a light on their story. Email me at: alicejmorgana2 at gmail.

Clicking the little heart button 💗 at the top of a post or email, commenting, and sharing can also help this newsletter reach more people (because that’s how Substack’s algorithm works). In addition I would be so very grateful if you would forward this to someone who might enjoy it as I try to increase subscribers.

Thanks, as always, to all of you for reading, hearting, engaging, etc. Until next time!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Share

We spent March of 2025 in Brooklyn - Happy Nesting Year 6. It was my turn to choose the location. Originally from the NYC suburbs, I’d always wanted to spend a solid amount of time in the city near friends, family, and Broadway (I’m a major fangirl). I was initially worried about finding accommodations since NYC restricts short-term rentals through platforms like Airbnb and VRBO. Fortunately, a friend was game for an apartment swap. We stayed in her pre-war one-bedroom apartment in Clinton Hill and she stayed at our house in Ann Arbor. Problem solved! And the excellent thing about this arrangement was that I felt free to buy pricey Broadway tickets because we weren’t paying rent. 🙃

Pro tip for anyone planning to visit NYC for theater: we stayed in NYC in March and not February. Do not go to see shows in February because this is when many theaters are dark, as they are switching over for the new season of shows.

Being a Tourist in Your Own Hometown

I’ve been visiting New York my whole life, but a month-long stay allowed me to do things I’d never done on quick trips. The standout was a hard-hat tour of the Ellis Island hospital.

We learned how immigrants were quarantined - remember that scene in THE GODFATHER PART II when young Vito is held for smallpox? The nurses were remarkably ahead of their time. There were hand-washing stations powered by foot pedals, separate quarters for different diseases, and other innovative infection control protocols.

Our tour guide told us a great story about a relative of someone on a previous tour who had immigrated through Ellis Island. Like Vito in the movie, someone marked an “X” on his jacket in chalk when he was initially evaluated. He thought it probably wasn’t good to be singled out, so while he was waiting in line he discreetly turned his jacket inside-out, hiding the “X” and avoiding quarantine.

Clinton Hill is close enough to Manhattan that taking the subway in and out didn’t eat up too much time. Brooklyn has long been New York City’s most populated borough, with lots of restaurants, parks, and fun things to see - like the NY Transit Museum. Spending a month in Brooklyn gave us a chance to explore it properly.

We spent lots of time walking through all the different neighborhoods. I had not spent much time in Brooklyn beforehand, and loved the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and Prospect Park. One day we happened to be walking through Williamsburg during Purim, the Jewish holiday. Everyone was in costumes, carrying food they’d made for parties they were attending. It felt like being in a different country, right in our own city.

Broadway Bonanza

2025 was a tremendous Broadway season. So many strong musicals opened that they all, unfortunately, cannibalized each other’s sales. Most closed without recouping their investments, but I saw all the shows I could reasonably fit in and had a ball.

My favorites that are still running were MAYBE HAPPY ENDINGS and OPERATION MINCEMEAT (both musicals) and OH MARY! (a play). I also loved Nicole Scherzinger’s extraordinary performance in SUNSET BOULEVARD. I saw 5 musicals, 3 plays and 1 opera. Here is a link to the write ups of the shows I saw.

Fitness Options Galore!

NYC has lots of exercise options, many of which have inexpensive introductory offers! I tried “The Class” in Tribeca (the most pretentiously named exercise, well, class, ever). This program, based on somatic training, encourages everyone to get a little unhinged and flail around like a crazy person. I went to three live Peloton classes (with Ally, Denis, and Matty, respectively) which was so fun. I found a good yoga studio in Park Slope. And then of course, we walked a ton - over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan, and we used the Citi bikes.

Dog Day Afternoon Morning

We had a wonderful time walking Sasha - our dear, recently departed dog - in Brooklyn. We were near Fort Greene Park, where dog owners convened each morning before 9 am for off-leash hours. Dog owners chatted over coffee while the dogs ran around like maniacs. Total mayhem, but in the best possible way.

Family Time

Our kids came to visit, which was fun. We went to tourist destinations like Katz’s Deli and saw various other sights and shows.

My daughter and I shopped for her wedding dress at Kimera, a lovely (and reasonably priced!) boutique in Brooklyn. This was one of my best memories of the entire month.

The COVID Complication

Unfortunately, halfway through our time in Brooklyn, Hugh came down with a serious case of COVID. He was ill for two weeks, and wound up spending the bulk of our remaining time in NYC in bed. Despite the apartment’s small size, I miraculously didn’t get sick. I trudged on without him, going to shows with friends and family. Not gonna lie, this was a major downer. It was obviously hard for Hugh and hard for me to see him so ill.

What I Learned

Brooklyn was a mixed bag.

This was a Happy Nesting month where our experiences diverged. For me, our month in Brooklyn felt like coming home. The pace, the energy, the crowds all feel natural to me. I had a wonderful time - Broadway, friends, family, plus the chaotic Fort Greene mornings watching all the dogs go crazy. But even before Hugh got COVID, he wasn’t connecting with the city the way I was. And then COVID knocked him flat.

It taught me something important: when I’m the only one excited about the destination, it becomes my trip, not our trip. Happy Nesting works best when we’re both strangers in a new place, figuring it out together.

Random Rec of the Week

📖 A MARRIAGE AT SEA by Sophie Elmhirst is a gripping nonfiction book about a couple whose sailboat sinks, leaving them adrift in a lifeboat for 100 days. There’s nothing like a good shipwreck story, and I couldn’t put it down!

New or Catching Up?

• New subscribers: hello and welcome! This newsletter is about late midlife reinvention: my adventures living somewhere new for a month every year, profiles of people making bold life changes, and enthusiastic takes on movies, Broadway, and the Oscars.

• My newsletter is 100% unpaid: all recommendations and links are simply things I genuinely enjoy.

• Recent posts: Retirement Under a Microscope, Oscars Review: Expected Winner, Unexpected Tearjerker, Roman Holiday: the Concept vs. the Reality.

• All past articles are collected here.

• Have you or someone you know had a bold midlife pivot, like Nick, Laurie, Susan & Bonnie, Corky, Tom, or Scott? I’d love to shine a light on their story. Email me at: alicejmorgana2 at gmail.

Clicking the little heart button 💗 at the top of a post or email, commenting, and sharing can also help this newsletter reach more people (because that’s how Substack’s algorithm works). In addition I would be so very grateful if you would forward this to someone who might enjoy it as I try to increase subscribers.

Thanks, as always, to all of you for reading, hearting, engaging, etc. Until next time!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Share

I’ve always said there’s the concept of a farmer’s market, and the reality of a farmer’s market. The same can be said of Rome.

Three weeks in, here’s where we are.

The Concept

When Hugh and I decided to spend Happy Nesting Year 7 in Rome – our first month in Europe since I retired – we had a concept: cobblestone streets, endless cappuccinos, strolling past ancient ruins, learning about thousands of years of history at a relaxed pace. The good news is, much of this is true!

The Reality – The Good News

Coffee Culture!

The coffee culture is real and it is glorious. We rotate between two places near our apartment. The first is a tiny, simple (arguably dumpy) café/bar run by two women. We think they’re sisters. They welcome everyone warmly. But don’t order a cappuccino in the afternoon! Hugh made this mistake and got the side-eye, as afternoon cappuccino is a big no-no here (it’s not The Italian Way, more on that in a bit). The second is fancier, with better pastries.

Gelato!

Not gonna lie, given that I have a massive sweet tooth, having gelato every day is probably my favorite thing about this place. Given that the appeal of gelato is pretty self-explanatory, I’ll move on.

Artichokes!

I grew up eating artichokes but they’re expensive and rarely good when I buy them in Michigan. Here they’re in season – cheap (1 euro!), plentiful, and delicious. We have artichokes every night, dipped in melted butter and salt. One night, we had two artichokes each!

Our apartment!

Is far and away the best we’ve had in 7 years of Happy Nesting. Airy, comfortable, with excellent lighting. We are on the top (4^th) floor, there are 82 steps to climb every time we come in, which is great exercise and encourages us to remember to bring all our stuff. (There’s a tiny elevator but we’re being disciplined!)

The Italian Way!

I learned about The Italian Way from my friend Colleen. It is a whole system of unwritten rules/societal norms influencing virtually every aspect of Italian life. To just cite one, there is a very specific cadence to Italians’ days. They all eat lunch at 1. They have gelato mid afternoon. They have a drink at 6. They eat at 8. On Sundays, the Grandmas go to early church service and go home to prepare the family meal. The rest of the family goes to church at the regular time. Then everyone eats the big meal and spends the day together. Hugh and I like to go to various parks on Sundays and watch extended families hang out and enjoy being together.

Lots to Learn!

And yes, we have learned lots about ancient Rome, Catholicism and the Renaissance, the Big Three tent poles of Rome, history-wise. We have taken day trips to ancient ruin sites outside of Rome which have been fab. We have been to many museums, ruins, and churches.

The Reality – the Hard Parts

The Chaos

Rome is LOUD. Rome is CROWDED. Rome never sleeps. We are in the heart of Rome, Campo De’ Fiore, which is convenient since most destinations are close by, but challenging because there is a large, touristy farmer’s market we have to navigate whenever we go anywhere (the reality of the farmer’s market). Although February is in theory “off-season,” the reality is that so many people come to Rome that there really is no off-season, just varying levels of on-season.

Those picaresque cobblestone streets? They are uneven, and hurt your feet. Furthermore, they are jam packed, as cars, bikes, motorcycles, and above all people choke the narrow passageways. When walking along said scenic streets, everyone is constantly having to move out of the way of the cars inching their way along.

A close friend of mine, also here for an extended period of time, was robbed. On a bus, in full daylight. A coordinated group surrounded her – there was nothing she could do. Now I’m hyperaware every time I’m on public transit.

The In-Between

All of my prior Happy Nesting posts have been retrospective. I write about places well after we’ve left, aided by hindsight and distance. Hindsight smooths over the tough times.

Right now I’m smack dab in the middle of the tough times.

This is our first Happy Nesting month since I retired. Although I don’t miss working, I miss the structure and socializing that work provided. My biorhythm is at odds with Romans’ – I’m a lifelong morning person in a city that stays up late. I joined a yoga studio where classes are in English (and super hard!), but exercising at 6:30 pm is a challenge for me.

We’re not tourists – we’re grocery shopping, cooking at home, doing yoga, trying to establish routines.

But we’re not locals either. We don’t speak Italian. We’re navigating a culture and cadence that doesn’t match ours. We’re figuring it out as we go.

The Unexpected Heartbreak

And the kicker is, one week into our stay here in Rome, our beloved dog Sasha died unexpectedly. Even before this happened, we were missing her terribly, along with the routine of taking care of a dog when we’re living someplace new. Our son Spencer had to manage putting her down. I’ll write more about this in a future post, but this loss has unquestionably cast a pall over our time here. I strive to keep this newsletter upbeat and cheerful given how much stress and sadness there is in the world. But this month has been tough.

What I’m Learning

I don’t have any tidy conclusions yet – I’m in week three of four. What I know is this: not every Happy Nesting month feels like a triumph. Some months are hard, especially with unexpected loss.

Rome is teaching me that I need more structure than I thought. That retirement means creating my own rhythms on these months instead of having work create them for me. That the dream of living somewhere and the reality of living somewhere are always different – and that’s okay. The dream gets you on the plane. The reality teaches you something.

After six years of Happy Nesting, I thought I had this figured out. Turns out, Europe is different. The time difference matters. The cultural rhythms matter. The language barrier matters. And suddenly losing our darling dog matters most of all.

But if every Happy Nesting month felt easy and perfect, what would be the point? We’re doing this to stay flexible, to keep learning, to avoid calcifying.

Rome is doing its job. Even if it’s harder than I expected.

Random Rec of the Week

📺 I have recommended this before, but the more I watch THE WIRE, the more I am flabbergasted by how good it is. Most shows have about 5-10 characters you need to keep track of. THE WIRE has at least 20. The investment in all the characters is well worth it. The show is about the drug street scene in Baltimore, but there's really so much more to it. There are 5 seasons. Each season looks at the problem, and how intractable it is, from a different lens. Season 1 was drug runners in the inner city, Season 2 was the docks, Season 3 was cops and politicians, and we're now on Season 4, the schools. We bought the whole series since we don't have HBO and it was money well spent.

New or Catching Up?

• New subscribers: hello and welcome! Happy Nesting is my exploration of how late midlife can be a time of joy, growth, and discovery.

• My newsletter is 100% unpaid: all recommendations and links are simply things I genuinely enjoy.

• Recent posts: The 2025 Oscars are Coming!, How to Pack for a Month: Bring Your Baggage, Feel the Fear and Ski Anyway.

• All past articles are collected here.

• Have you or someone you know had a bold mid-life pivot, like Laurie, Susan & Bonnie, Corky, Tom, or Scott? I’d love to shine a light on their story. Email me at: alicejmorgana2 at gmail.

Clicking the little heart button 💗 at the top of a post or email, commenting, and sharing can also help this newsletter reach more people (because that’s how Substack’s algorithm works). In addition I would be so very grateful if you would forward this to someone who might enjoy it as I try to increase subscribers.

Oscar Recap Shameless Self Promotion Alert!

Monday morning I’ll post my annual recap of Sunday’s 2025 Oscar ceremony, an annual tradition I have been doing for (gulp) 13 years now! Time flies!

Thanks so much for reading. Until next time!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Share

Greetings from Happy Nesting 7.0, Rome! Next week I’ll be reviewing all 10 Best Picture nominees in advance of the Oscars on March 15, the Ides of March! (How’s that for a Roman reference? 🏛️) But today? Let’s talk turkey packing.

After 7 years of month-long Happy Nesting trips, plus countless business and other personal trips (my Delta app tells me I have 976,637 “Lifetime Miles Flown,” a Pyrrhic victory if ever there was one), I’ve learned a few things about packing for extended stays. Here’s my point of view.

Baggage vs. Luggage

“Baggage" as a metaphor represents the burdens that we carry, often hindering personal growth or relationships. Nowhere is this metaphor better illustrated than in Wes Anderson’s iconic movie THE DARJEELING LIMITED. In it, three brothers carry around very heavy, ornate, Louis Vuitton suitcases (which were specially designed for the movie) as a symbol of all the family dynamics they can’t escape. At the end of the movie (spoiler alert), they lose the baggage, an indication that these burdens have eased. I went to a fabulous Wes Anderson exhibit last Spring in Paris when I was there on a business trip. Here is a pic of me with the actual baggage from the movie.

With all due respect to this and other baggage metaphors, I contend that baggage – literal baggage – can be a good thing. For this year’s trip to Rome, Hugh and I brought two large suitcases we checked, plus our computer bags for the plane. Yes, I know everyone swears by carry-on only. But here’s my reasoning:

1. A month requires more stuff. Just accept it.

2. Back injuries are real. Lifting heavy carry-on bags into airplane overhead bins is a major source of injuries. So I check my bags and pack what I actually want to bring.

3. When we are Happy Nesting in the U.S. we drive to most destinations anyway, so portability is less of a concern.

4. Most of all, baggage has benefits! Sometimes what you bring and carry around centers and grounds you, especially when in an unfamiliar environment. Sometimes, stuff is good!

Pack for Your Priorities

If coffee matters (more on that in a bit), bring your system. If you hate being cold, pack layers. If music centers you, bring a speaker. Pack clothes that are practical and make you feel good.

Because here’s the thing about travel: if you don’t bring the stuff you need, you’re going to pay for it. Either literally – by buying what you forgot – or figuratively – by being uncomfortable when you’re away from home.

For our month-long trips, the stakes are higher since we’re away from home for so long. One thing that helps me make sure I don’t forget anything is that I have developed a master packing list over the years. I keep a hard copy of this list in each of my suitcases and review it every time I pack for a trip of any length.

What I Always Bring

Clothes for Warm and Cold Weather
Coats double as blankets, and air conditioning can be freezing, especially in places like Florida. Here in Rome, the weather is highly variable, as is the heating. Clothes for both warm and cold weather are essential.

Robe & Slippers
My slippers in particular give me more joy than I can adequately explain. I have worn Haflinger slippers for 25+ years (different pairs). I wear them when I drive on our many road trips. And this particular pair is special, as my son’s dog Copper chewed one of my slippers last summer because he was nervous about the July 4^th Fireworks. Wearing these slippers makes me think of my family and grounds me.

Comfortable Clothing
I wear the same clothes over and over when I travel, so I don’t need a lot of clothes. I bring washable clothes in which I feel confident and comfortable. Dark colors don’t show stains. My standard uniform: jeans, hoodies, plus one or two nice outfits for going out.

Exercise Clothes
My current exercise of choice while in Rome, for a variety of reasons, is yoga, which is not my typical go-to. My gym shorts look a bit odd in the sea of Lululemon 20somethings. But who honestly cares?

The Essentials: Shoes, Bags & Hats

• Shoes: Shoes are arguably the most critical item of the whole shebang. Given that we are walking ~8 miles a day, comfortable sneakers are obviously essential. But here’s what’s not obvious: bring a second pair of walking shoes. Even the most comfortable shoes become uncomfortable if you wear them every day. And then there’s the challenge of finding comfortable yet stylish shoes or boots. Here is what I brought.

  

• Bags: Over the years I’ve learned to appreciate the value of bringing multiple bag options. Fanny packs may be dorky but they are hard to pickpocket and they leave my hands free. Totes are good for groceries. And backpacks work for overnights.

• Hats: I always bring a baseball cap for sun and a knitted beanie for warmth. Hats keep you warm and protected.

Non-Negotiables: Coffee, Tech, Health & Beauty

Coffee: A Cautionary Tale
For each Happy Nesting month up until now, I traveled with my Chemex coffee system – glass carafe, filters, measuring cup, the works. I even brought it to Costa Rica in a suitcase, carefully wrapped in foam peanuts to prevent breakage.

For our Rome trip, Hugh gently suggested that perhaps, in Italy, there might be decent coffee available, and maybe I could be a little more...flexible.

My Airbnb host assured me there were three different coffee systems at the apartment. Reader, none of them were ideal.

So I bought a fancy Italian moka pot. It works beautifully, and it’s much more portable than my glass/breakable Chemex. As much as I hate to admit it, sometimes Hugh is right!

The lesson: Know your non-negotiables. Coffee is mine.

Tech
I travel with a lot of electronics. This includes headphones, e-reader, laptop, phone. It is the world we live in. I bring a regular power strip, then plug all the chargers into a voltage converter. Fair warning: I’ve fried power strips this way before, so tread carefully.

We always bring our portable Bluetooth speaker so we can stream music. I cannot emphasize enough the joy of listening to familiar music in an unfamiliar place. It grounds you when everything else feels foreign.

Health & Beauty: The Brutal Truth
This is what a month of my health and beauty routine looks like. Excessive? Maybe. In the U.S. I just buy what I need as I go. But I didn’t want to figure out Italian equivalents for everything, so I brought it all. I also always bring a spare pair of glasses in case mine break.

I always bring a small pillbox with Tylenol, Tylenol PM, and prescription anti-inflammatories. But I learned the hard way (arriving in Rome with a cold) that I should pack cold medicine and other medications just in case. When you are 30, it’s much easier to power through with a cold than when you are 60.

What I No Longer Bring

For years I brought my printer for work, which always made my colleague Kat laugh. I also lugged a second monitor, webcam, and various interviewing equipment for my work.

Now that I’m retired? None of that. This year I brought more nice outfits than I needed to Rome, leftover habits from when I had to be on-camera for work. Next year: one or maybe two nice outfits is all I need!

The Bottom Line

After seven years of month-long trips, I’ve figured out what actually matters. At the top of the list are coffee, comfy shoes, and stuff from home that brings me joy.

When you’re living somewhere new for a month, it’s not about minimalism. The goal is maintaining the rhythms that keep you grounded. The most important of which are to remain fed, watered, exercised, and above all healthy.

For a short trip? Sure, deal with uncomfortable shoes or mediocre coffee. You’re on vacation. You can tough it out.

For a month? You need your routines. You need the stuff that makes you feel good.

You need, in a word, your baggage.

Bring Your Comments!

When it comes to packing, everyone is an expert, as there truly is no right or wrong here! I’d love to know … what are your packing strategies? Please share them in the comments. I hope to see a spirited discussion!

Leave a comment

Random Rec of the Week

🇮🇹 🏅 ⛸️ 📺 Hugh and I have been watching the Olympics from Rome! Through a combination of the 6 hour time difference, a VPN account, an HDMI cord connecting my computer to the TV, and my mom’s cable login credentials, we’ve been streaming NBC live coverage at night. We watched both nights of the Women’s Figure Skating, which was dramatic and beautifully executed. Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir are tremendous commentators – experts who are at the same time wildly entertaining. Hats off to both of them!

New or Catching Up?

• New subscribers: hello and welcome! Happy Nesting is my exploration of how late mid-life can be a time of joy, growth, and discovery.

• My newsletter is 100% unpaid: all recommendations and links are simply things I genuinely enjoy.

• Recent posts: Feel the Fear and Ski Anyway, From Pharmacist to Life Coach: The Reinvention of Laurie Greenberg, Before Happy Nesting, There was Girl Explorer.

• All past articles are collected here.

• Have you or someone you know had a major mid-life pivot? I’d love to shine a light on their story. Email me at: alicejmorgana2 at gmail.

Clicking the little heart button 💗 at the top of a post or email, commenting, and sharing can also help this newsletter reach more people (because that’s how Substack’s algorithm works). In addition, I would be so very grateful if you would forward this newsletter to friends or family members who might enjoy it.

Until next time!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Share

New subscribers, welcome! Info on the vibe of this newsletter is at the end of this post.

I have cross-country skied for years. Badly. Which was A-OK with me.

Never had a lesson. Never cared about my form. After Hugh and I married 30+ years ago, I bought a book called Cross Country Ski Trails of the Lower Peninsula, which laid out all the DNR trails in Michigan, plus Forbush Corners, a dedicated cross-country ski place. Before kids, we’d drive “Up North” most winters and ski for a day or two.

Then life got busy. With three kids four years apart in age, skiing was sporadic. We took a few downhill ski vacations, on which Hugh and I – being too old and cautious to actually learn downhill – usually found a cross-country trail at or nearby the resort. We skied maybe once every year or two.

Years passed. Our kids left home. Suddenly, we had more time.

In fact, as recently as 2025 I skied Hartwick Pines without incident. My own skis, no problems, arms raised in triumph because I’m such a cheeseball. Happy as a clam.

Five Degrees and No Water

This past January, Hugh and I decided to go cross-country skiing in Michigan’s snowbelt in Grayling.

We loaded up the car, drove three hours north, and arrived at Hartwick Pines State Park, which had a crazy amount of snow. However, we had packed three sets of poles and one set of skis.

Not to worry! Forbush Corners Nordic Center, fifteen minutes away, rents skis. We drove there, rented a pair for me, and headed back. We have skied there in the past, and it is a beautiful park with ungroomed trails and loops of 3, 5, or 7 miles.

It was 5 degrees out. Undeterred, we set off.

As long as we were moving, we were fine. We kept going at the 3-mile turnoff. Then at the 5-mile turnoff. Hugh checked in: was I okay? I was.

Until I wasn’t.

The final miles were hilly. And that’s when I noticed: my rental skis had no traction. They flew downhill and slid backward uphill. My own skis had never done this. But rental skis are a gamble – and this pair was the wrong bet entirely. I started falling on the hills. I got cold from the falls given how much snow there was. (Remember the 5 degrees.) Panic crept in.

Here’s what we didn’t have: water, snacks, extra layers in case of a mishap, reliable cell service.

You know those stories about woefully unprepared people who get into serious trouble in the wilderness? We were those people. We made it out fine – eventually – but out on that trail, shivering, sliding, and falling, it hit me: we could have been in real trouble.

Mount Hood, Where There’s Always Snow (Except When There Isn’t)

A few weeks later, I was in Oregon with my BFF Bridget for a trip to Mount Hood. When we’d originally made the plans, I’d asked: “Will there be snow?”

Bridget scoffed. Of course there’d be snow. It’s Mount Hood! There’s always snow!

The day I flew out of Michigan, there was so much snow at home that the roads were terrible, causing me to nearly miss my flight. Then I landed in Oregon to discover that Mount Hood had barely any. Which meant the trails hadn’t filled in. Which meant the trails were icy and much hillier than usual. We also misread the trail map and hit a steep hill. All of which is to say that, as in Grayling, I fell. A lot. Since we were at a well-populated Nordic ski center with lots of people over a holiday weekend there was little risk of succumbing to the elements. But I was worried about hurting myself falling, and in fact hurt my shoulder during one of the falls – a reminder that at 60, falls have consequences they didn’t at 35.

Feel the Fear, Make a Plan

I didn’t want to stop skiing. Cross-country skiing is one of the best things about Michigan winters – it transforms the long gray months into something to actually look forward to. It’s great exercise. It’s accessible. It gets you outside.

But I didn’t want to ski scared either.

So a few weeks ago I booked a private lesson with Jim Szczygiel, a ski instructor who does it all – downhill, classic cross country, skate skiing, he’s even certified for adaptive skiing. We met at Huron Meadows Metropark in nearby Brighton, Michigan. Jim was a fantastic instructor who didn’t try to change too many things at once. 90% of the lesson was about stance. Flex your ankles, bend your knees, lean forward instead of backward, keep your weight in your toes. The goal: if I fall, fall forward. Be closer to the ground. He also taught me how to safely get up from a fall, which is not unimportant!

Two hours with Jim greatly eased my anxiety about getting out there again.

Here’s what I realized: at a certain point, “I’ve always done it this way” isn’t a good enough reason to keep doing it that way. My self-taught, form-free skiing style worked fine at 35. At 60, on a trail with 5-degree temperatures, no cell service, and the wrong skis to boot (ha!), it nearly got me into serious trouble.

The Balance

There’s a tricky balance here, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

On one hand: preparation matters more as we age. Bringing water, an extra layer, a charged phone. Maybe – and I’m genuinely considering this – a satellite communicator for remote trails. These aren’t signs of weakness. They’re signs of wisdom.

On the other hand: fear is a terrible reason to stop doing things you love. The goal isn’t to eliminate risk. It’s to manage it thoughtfully, get better at the skills you need, and keep going.

Getting a lesson wasn’t admitting defeat. It was the opposite. It was saying: I want to keep doing this, so I’m going to do it better.

That feels like the right approach to a lot of things at this stage of life, not just skiing.

Random Rec of the Week + Bonus s*** show of a Travel Tale

✈️ 🇮🇹 Hugh and I are actually in Rome now on Happy Nesting Year 7, more on that to come. We arrived one full day late. On our original flight, which left from Atlanta, the toilets stopped working several hours into the flight. So the plane had to turn around, landing in Boston very late that night. Then we repeated the flight the next night, this time from Boston, this time with working toilets.

🎬 🍿 Long way to say I had a good amount of time with the Delta movie console. Hugh and I both watched WEAPONS, a horror movie which is very well plotted and has a superb opening. I’ve never been hugely into horror as I find it too scary, but a plane turns out to be a great venue. It’s hard to get truly freaked out when flight attendants are scurrying up and down the aisles.

New or Catching Up?

• New subscribers: hello and welcome! Happy Nesting is my exploration of how late mid-life can be a time of joy, growth, and discovery.

• My newsletter is 100% unpaid: all recommendations and links are simply things I genuinely enjoy.

• Recent posts: From Pharmacist to Life Coach: The Reinvention of Laurie Greenberg, Before Happy Nesting, There was Girl Explorer, They’d Never Met. After 512 Miles on the El Camino, They Had Everything in Common.

• All past articles are collected here.

• Have you or someone you know had a major mid-life pivot? I’d love to shine a light on their story. Email me at: alicejmorgana2 at gmail.

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find this newsletter. 💗 In addition I would be so very grateful if you would forward this to someone who might enjoy it.

Until next time!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Share

New subscribers, welcome! Info on the vibe of this newsletter is at the end of this post.

Girl Explorer

When I was 22, I traveled around the world for 8 months by myself.

It was the late 80s, back in Ye Olden Times, when the Internet had not yet been invented. No GPS, no TripAdvisor reviews, no Uber. I had a Round the World airline ticket (costing $2,500), a money belt containing $5,000 in American Express traveler’s checks, and a backpack. That was it.

As readers of this newsletter know, I am now 60. For the last 6 years, my husband and I have spent a month every winter “Happy Nesting,” living somewhere new.

These two adventures, separated by 38 years and an ocean of life experience, are more connected than I realized.

Getting Going

After college, I worked two jobs to save up for my trip: secretarial temp by day, video store clerk by night. The Round the World ticket was a collaboration between United Airlines, Cathay Pacific, and PanAm. I could go anywhere these airlines went, as long as I went in one direction, for one year. I chose my stops up front, but the dates were open-ended.

Then, as now, I wrote a newsletter. Every month, I sent or faxed a typed letter to my mom, who xeroxed them and mailed them to 50 friends and family. I called it “The Adventures of Alice, Girl Explorer.”

Here’s what I learned out there.

Finding Your Person

The best experience of my entire trip happened within the first few weeks. I was in New Zealand’s North Island, standing in a queue of hitchhikers outside Taupo. (New Zealand is famously safe for hitchhiking.) I joined up with a random English dude in line named Clive.

We became fast friends, and traveled together during the remainder of our time in New Zealand. We backpacked for three days in Craigieburn Forest Park, initially wandering around in a cow pasture for a few hours before finding the trail (no AllTrails 🤪). We hiked the famous Milford Track in nonstop rain while a few woefully unprepared nurses had to be helicoptered out. We navigated youth hostels, rental cars, glaciers, and other adventures.

After New Zealand, Clive went on to the U.S. and I went on to Australia. I never developed as close a friendship with anyone else on the rest of my trip. Clive set the bar too high.

But I learned something essential: solo travel forces you to be open. You talk to strangers. You say yes to invitations. You trust people you just met because you have to.

When Things Go Sideways

The worst experience came much later, flying from Kathmandu to Delhi. The plane arrived late in the evening. I was supposed to stay with the parents of a college friend, but I arrived too late to reach their neighborhood from the airport.

I got on a bus heading to central New Delhi. By midnight, the bus still hadn’t left. I started considering the logistics of finding accommodations in the middle of the night in a strange city. Alone. Panic set in. I started to cry.

Then fortune smiled on me.

A Tibetan woman who imported black-market clothing from Kathmandu to Delhi took pity on me. She said I could stay with her at a Tibetan guest house. We arrived around 4:30 am and woke up two old Tibetan men sleeping in their underwear. They took our arrival with equanimity. They unrolled a mattress, and my new friend and I slept on the floor.

In the morning, over Tibetan butter tea, I figured out I was staying in a Tibetan refugee camp. The Tibetan woman, who didn’t know me at all, had taken care of me.

I learned that when things go wrong – and they will – strangers usually help. You just have to let them.

When You Have to Pivot, Pivot!

In Burma, visas were only issued for seven days. Time was of the essence. I joined up with a group of travelers and rented a vehicle for the week. On our first day, the vehicle hit a cow. Both were mortally wounded. I figured out an alternate way to get around.

I was in Burma during Thingyan, the Burmese New Year, which is celebrated by a giant water fight in which everyone sprays water on everyone else for two straight days. Foreigners are targeted in a major way. I got drenched. Repeatedly. For 48 hours.

I learned: you can’t control everything. Adjust. Keep moving.

The Gift of Less

I carried everything I owned on my back. One change of clothes. A few books I traded along the way. Toiletries. My journal. That was it. That was enough.

I learned: freedom comes from traveling light. I didn’t know it then, but I was learning lessons I’d use decades later.

Then and Now

When people ask how we started Happy Nesting, each Winter spending a month in a new place, I usually explain that our kids had left home and we wanted to stay flexible and curious as we aged.

But the truth goes back further. Some of the lessons I learned at 22 have stayed with me.

Then: I learned to trust my gut in unfamiliar places.
Now: We move to a new city every year without knowing anyone.

Then: I figured out how to make friends quickly as a solo traveler.
Now: We lean into communities – Geezer Night at home in Ann Arbor, co-working spaces in Colorado Springs, off-leash dog hours in Brooklyn.

Then: I discovered that having less meant carrying less.
Now: We downsized our house from sprawling to small. Our Happy Nesting rentals are simple.

Then: I learned that when things went wrong – and they did – strangers help. You just have to let them.
Now: When things go wrong now – and they still do – we take a breath and figure it out.

Then: I wrote “The Adventures of Alice, Girl Explorer” to process and remember my experiences.
Now: I write this Happy Nesting newsletter for the same reason.

What’s Changed

At 22, I traveled to see the world before I settled down with a “real job.”
At 60, I travel to engage and remain flexible and adaptable.

At 22, I was alone by necessity and budget.
At 60, my husband and I navigate new places as a team.

At 22, travel was a pause before “real life” began.
At 60, Happy Nesting is real life.

At 22, I was proving I could handle anything, especially as a woman traveling alone.
At 60, I’m reminding myself I still can.

Full Circle

In September of 2024, I met up with Clive and his wonderful wife at a restaurant in London. We’d stayed in touch, but it had been quite a few years since we’d seen each other.

Maybe that’s the real lesson. The girl explorer didn’t disappear when I got older, settled down, had kids, built a career. She was just waiting for the right season to come back out.

Turns out, she never really left.

Random Rec of the Week

📺 This week’s recommendation may be known to many of you, but what the hay. Every year I rewatch the six-part BBC miniseries “Pride and Prejudice,” starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. It is a faithful adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel. It is also perfect.

New or Catching Up?

• New subscribers: hello and welcome! Happy Nesting is my exploration of how late mid-life can be a time of joy, growth, and discovery.

• My newsletter is 100% unpaid: all recommendations and links are simply things I genuinely enjoy.

• Recent posts: They’d Never Met. After 512 Miles on the El Camino, They Had Everything in Common, Our Month in Colorado Springs, Location is Everything: How Julia Roberts Stole the Golden Globes.

• All past articles are collected here.

• Have you or someone you know had a major mid-life pivot? I’d love to shine a light on their story. Email me at: alicejmorgana2 at gmail.

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find this newsletter. 💗 In addition I would be so very grateful if you would forward this to someone who might enjoy it.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

Golden Globes post new subscribers, welcome, I’m so glad you’re here! Info on the vibe of this newsletter is at the end of this post.

Hello Colorado Springs!

We spent the February of 2024 Happy Nesting in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We alternate choosing locales every year and it was Hugh’s turn to pick. It was our fifth year Happy Nesting. It was also, in my humble opinion, our best.

We lived in a neighborhood of small houses about a mile from downtown. The house was within walking distance to a large community park which contained, much to our surprise, the National Fallen Firefighter Memorial.

Our AirBnB was inexpensive. It took dogs and, like many dog-friendly rentals, had profoundly uncomfortable furniture. I was working early in the morning interviewing people in Europe and my home office setup was not kind to my back. This wound up being a good thing, as I shall explain shortly.

What We Learned & Discovered

• Connecting with old friends is so worth it. The primary reason Colorado Springs wound up being one of our best Happy Nesting years was that we were able to connect with a number of beloved friends and family members while we were there. We visited with a high school friend, a college friend, a friend from our 20s, a friend from our 30s, and our much-beloved niece! Because of this, our month in Colorado Springs was the most social Happy Nesting experience of them all.

• Hiking in the winter is not only feasible but super-fun, provided one has good weather and gear. An abundance of great hiking trails were within a 20 minute drive of Colorado Springs, which was fab. Hugh hiked most days, and I joined him on weather-permitting days when I wasn’t working. The wonderful thing about Colorado, as opposed to Ann Arbor, Michigan where we live, is that when it wasn’t snowing, it was sunny! The key to hiking in Colorado, we learned, is:

  • Respecting the weather, making sure we went to areas that didn’t have an insane amount of snow, or were difficult to drive to in icy conditions. Comments on the AllTrails app are very helpful in sussing this out.

  • Wearing those little microspikes (there are lots of brands) over hiking boots for traction. They ultimately hurt my feet after several hours but they are very helpful, especially when going downhill.

  • Hiking poles, I am a believer!

    

• Coworking spaces are the bomb. As mentioned previously, after a morning of interviewing on camera (my job prior to retirement), my back was screaming. It motivated me to discover Epicentral Coworking, a wonderful coworking space downtown. I would work in the morning, walk to the coworking space at lunchtime, and work there in the afternoon. I loved having casual chats with people at the open tables, especially since I discovered a tribe of fellow movie fans! It was the best coworking space I’ve ever been to, with weekly happy hours and regular planned activities, communal work tables (where there was a no-phone-call policy) and, crucially, enough ”phone booth” rooms that this policy was actually feasible.

  

• Traveling with an older dog can be dicey. I have written about this before, but our older dog, Satchel was at the end of his life and the two day drive each way, plus an unfamiliar house without carpet, was tough on him. We considered having him put down in Colorado Springs but honestly didn’t know how to do this in a city where we didn’t have a relationship with a vet. We wound up putting him down the week we got back to Ann Arbor. The heartbreak of having a dog. 😢

• It’s fun and interesting to live in a totally different place. Ann Arbor and Colorado Springs both have a number of institutions of higher learning and get cold in the winter, but the similarities end there. First of all, there’s the matter of size. Colorado Springs is the second largest city in Colorado, with a population of ~500,000 (Ann Arbor’s population is ~100,000). There is a strong military presence due to the Air Force Academy. We discovered the Marigold Bakery which has exceptional cakes. I joined a chain gym for the month, Vasa Fitness, and enjoyed working out alongside all these muscular military dudes. Vasa Fitness is also the only gym I have ever been to that had … wait for it… a FITNESS CINEMA!

  

  Every day, they played a different well-known movie on a continuous loop in a dark room filled with cardio machines. Genius! Vasa’s Zumba classes is also where I discovered my deep and enduring love of dance cardio.

In Summary

In retrospect, Colorado Springs felt like a perfect snapshot of this season of our lives – mobile but rooted in relationships, active but increasingly aware of our limits, and joyful. We climbed thousands of steps, made new routines, revisited old friendships, and said goodbye to our beloved dog not long after returning home. Happy Nesting has always been about experimenting with how and where we live, but this month reminded me that the real measure of a place is how fully we inhabit it: the people we see, and the moments we treasure, even as we know they won’t last forever.

Random Rec of the Week

🎬 🍿 Like Julia Roberts at the Golden Globes 😃, I recommend the movie SORRY BABY, by Eva Victor. It is a quiet movie about – full disclosure – surviving sexual assault, but it is done in a thoughtful way that is interesting and reflective and surprisingly funny.

Thank You!

Thank you all for reading, commenting, and sharing! Until next time!

New or Catching Up?

• New subscribers: hello and welcome! Happy Nesting is my exploration of how late mid-life can be a time of joy, growth, and discovery.

• My newsletter is 100% unpaid: all recommendations and links are simply things I genuinely enjoy.

• Recent posts: Location is Everything: How Julia Roberts Stole the Golden Globes, Take Me Out to the Third Base Side of Home Plate, Hear Me Out: Why Photo Albums are So Worth It.

• All past articles are collected here.

• Have you or someone you know had a major mid-life pivot? I’d love to shine a light on their story. Email me at: alicejmorgana2 at gmail.

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find this newsletter. 💗 In addition I would be so very grateful if you would forward this to someone who might enjoy it.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

New or catching up?

• New subscribers: hello and welcome! Happy Nesting is my exploration of how mid-life can be a time of joy, growth, and surprising discovery.

• My newsletter is 100% unpaid: all recommendations and links are simply things I genuinely enjoy.

• Recent posts: Trust Your Gut: How One Woman Reinvented Her Life on the Open Road, There’s no place like Oz, How to thrive in retirement.

• All past articles are collected here.

• Have you or someone you know had a major mid-life pivot? I’d love to shine a light on their story. Email me at: alicejmorgana2 at gmail.

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find this newsletter. 💗 In addition I would be so very grateful if you would forward this to someone who might enjoy it.

Share

Subscribe now

Season’s Greetings

I hope that, whatever and with whomever you celebrate, you are having an enjoyable and peaceful holiday season.

Holidays are typically spent with family – and, as with most things, there is the concept of family and the reality of family. For many the holidays are also a time of loneliness and loss. So for all of you out there who are struggling, I see you.

This week’s topic may seem a little strange given this holiday stress-and-sadness shoutout, but stick with me. I promise it will make sense by the end.

I ❤️ Photo Albums

I assemble real, physical photo albums – with printed photos. I have done this most of my life.

I have many hobbies, but in all honesty making photo albums gives me more joy than almost anything else, except possibly hiking. And since it doesn’t require good weather, mountains, equipment, or fitness, it turns out to be an excellent retirement hobby!

When I mention this hobby, people often get a little anxious. They feel bad that they have thousands of photos living on their phones or somewhere in the cloud, most of which have yet to see the light of day.

Where To Begin

As I used to say in the world of work, if you do everything, you do nothing. The same is true with photos.

Back in the days of film, we took pictures of the things that mattered. Seeing a photo required paying to get it developed, which meant we were selective. We thought about what we photographed.

Today, we photograph everything, from our parking spaces to our grocery lists to our meals. The smartphone, which has created an infinite number of photos, has paradoxically killed physical photos because, well, Where To Begin?

According to Mixbook, only 18% of Americans have printed a photo in the last three months, and almost one-third have never printed a smartphone photo. Despite the enormous volume of digital images, printed photos are disappearing.

Which is why I thought it might be useful to share what I do, why I do it, and what I’ve learned along the way. In this post, I will:

• Explain the photo album making process I developed

• Share a few practical tips

• Connect the dots between photo albums and their surprising emotional benefits –including how they can ease family stress and sadness.

My Photo Album Making Process

• Two to four times a year, I print several months’ worth of photos at CVS. This is surprisingly affordable, as there always seems to be a 50% off promotion. I usually pay about 20 cents a photo.

• I keep a folder system on my computer with all my photo orders, which makes it easy to retrieve images later. (This also motivates me to back everything up regularly.)

• I place the photos into physical albums designed for 4x6 prints. Over time, I’ve learned that less is more, so I don’t include every photo I print. I also occasionally print enlargements and add them to our family’s “Wall of Fame.”

• I create “highlights” section intros, typically at the start of every season, to document family events. Here is an example from back in the day.

• A few days ago my daughter Porter – who is new to photo albums – and I spent a good part of the day assembling albums of her wedding: one for her, and one for me.

  

  

Practical Tips

• Start in the here and now. If you eventually want to back up and document prior years, that is fine, but starting in the past is much harder. Reconstructing timelines takes time, even with calendars and emails to jog your memory.

• Photograph ordinary life, not just vacations and pets. This is a lesson I learned the hard way. Once our kids left home, most of our photos were of our dogs or trips. The implication of this is that life at home is not photo-worthy. To some extent, the opposite is true. It is the moments at home, birthdays, family dinners, friends coming over, walks around the neighborhood, that matter. For example, Hugh and I were close friends with Sam and Sue for many years. Sam was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed away a few months after his diagnosis. December 26 was the five year anniversary of his passing (holiday sadness). I have no pictures of Sam, never having taken pictures the many times we had dinner together. I regret this deeply. Sue now comes over for dinner most Sundays. I learned my lesson, and have many pictures of Sue!

  

• If you don’t have a photo, borrow one. Sometimes we are too busy living our life to document living our life. This is a good thing! I’ve used photos from hotel websites, TripAdvisor, and friends’ phones. At family gatherings, I always ask everyone to send me their pictures. When my son Hugh got his dog Copper at the Winston-Salem Humane Society, this was one of the most meaningful and memorable experiences of his life! Of course he sent us lots of pictures, some of which are in our family photo album.

  

• You do you. I prefer the tactile experience of putting physical photos into physical albums. But kind of like the axiom that the best diet is the diet that works for you, the best photo display system is the system that works for you. If it is a digital picture frame, that’s great. If it is books printed from Shutterfly or Apple Photo, fab. It may take a little trial and error to figure out what is sustainable but this is time well spent. Back in the day I made a few digital photo books but ultimately decided I prefer physical books.

• Consistency helps. In the beginning I had a variety of photo album styles and sizes. I eventually migrated towards the same photo album format which is much easier to view, store and organize.

Why It’s Worth It: the Benefits

• Photos are tangible evidence of who we are and what matters. Printing, organizing, and displaying photos of loved friends, family, and pets helps us value and appreciate them.

• Photos help us remember! Let’s face it: as we age, details fade. I was going through a photo album from our 20s and saw that Hugh had been Best Man at a friend’s weddings back in the day, a fact both of us had forgotten. The physical photo reminder caused Hugh to reconnect with his friend.

• Photos strengthen positive emotions. Here’s where I circle back to challenges with the holidays. Photos of our loved ones can help ease feelings of pain and loss. My father died when I was 10 over the holidays (more holiday sadness). He wasn’t always super kind to me. But this family picture, taken shortly before he died, makes me remember the good and gloss over the pain. It’s revisionist history, in the best way.

  

  My friend Bridget shared this reflection.

  

Random rec of the week

🎬 🍿 I am busy these days watching all the awards-show-contender movies, which I will write about in my annual Oscars post in March. My favorite so far is Song Sung Blue, about a Neil Diamond tribute act. Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson are both wonderful, Hudson especially. It’s a rare movie that lives comfortably in the middle: not a blockbuster, not an art-house movie. And it’s set literally in the middle of the country, Wisconsin!

Give Peace Photo Albums a Chance

I know a lot of people feel overwhelmed by their photos. I’m here to tell you that it’s worth the time and effort. Making photo albums has enriched my life in ways I didn’t anticipate.

They help me remember and value past events. They keep me connected. They soften loss. And they remind me of the grace and beauty of everyday life.

As always, thank you for reading, commenting, and sharing. Until next time!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

New or catching up?

• New subscribers: hello and welcome! Happy Nesting is my exploration of how mid-life can be a time of joy, growth, and surprising discovery.

• Recent posts: How to thrive in retirement, Fall Broadway roundup, my unexpected embrace of the cold plunge craze.

• All past articles are collected here.

• Email me at: alicejmorgana2 at gmail if you’d like to contact me directly.

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find this newsletter. 💗 In addition I would be so very grateful if you would forward this to someone who might enjoy it.

Share

Subscribe now

A little about Sedona

Our third year Happy Nesting was spent in Sedona, Arizona. It was Hugh’s turn to choose the locale, and Hugh is a man who loves to hike. It took two days to drive out and two days to drive back, with our dogs in tow.

Sedona is known for its stunningly beautiful and unique red rock scenery. As a result, this small town (population ~10,000) receives an influx of visitors, including hikers, mountain bikers, off-road Jeep tour-goers, spa lovers, crystal people, and even vortex seekers. According to this article citing the Sedona Chamber of Commerce, Sedona receives 3 million visitors a year!

Where we stayed and what we did

Typically, people go to Sedona for 3 days. We were there for thirty. There are an abundance of hikes in Sedona, adjacent Oak Creek canyon, and nearby Flagstaff. We had a chance to explore many of them. Hugh really honed his AllTrails prowess, at one point navigating a successful bushwalking and river crossing to connect two separate trails.

Sedona largely consists of very expensive vacation homes and small homes owned or rented by the people who actually work in town. There’s not much of a cohesive community. We stayed in West Sedona, a neighborhood of working people.

Our rental was well located – walking distance both to the supermarkets and a trailhead where we walked our doggos.

That said, Sedona, like many Western cities, is not a walkable town, with few (if any) sidewalks. It’s also, strangely, not a particularly drivable town, due to the space constraints from the beautiful buttes, the lack of zoning, and the aforementioned crush of tourists. There are effectively two main roads. 89A in particular can be a parking lot, and we learned to time our errands to avoid peak traffic. Traffic got so bad that Sedona introduced a shuttle system right after we left, in March 2022.

It’s a nice place to visit …

Even though Sedona’s a bit of a weird place because of the population dynamics I just described, we had a wonderful month. There were two main reasons for this.

Takeaway #1: Hikers are happy!

Hiking is a happy hobby. Unlike, say, sports, where one person (or team) is going to win and the other is going to lose, everyone wins. Everyone’s out and about, enjoying nature. Endorphins are popping. Arizona is sunny. Life is good!

Unless a trail was jam packed, almost everyone said hello when walking by. We had a number of interesting conversations with random strangers we met on various hiking trails. As opposed to, say, an airplane, where people 6 inches away from one another go to extreme lengths to avoid making eye contact, let alone say hello, people are really happy when they hike! And super friendly as a result.

Takeaway #2: Reconnecting with old friends is 100% worth the effort!

We connected with some friends of ours who had moved out to the Phoenix area years beforehand. We saw them several times over the course of the month, including one memorable night in which we all wound up drinking way too much and having a surprisingly animated conversation about the character Samantha from Sex and the City. Other friends came to visit for a few days and that was wonderful as well. One of the high points of these Happy Nesting months is having the time and opportunity to catch up with old friends who live far from us.

Random Rec of the week

📖 Bruce Holsinger’s Culpabiity is a well-written, well-plotted and thought-provoking novel about AI, specifically the algorithms used in self-driving vehicles. Given AI’s increasing prominence in our day-to-day life, it is worth checking out.

Thank you all!

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving holiday. Thank you all for your continued support. I formally launched this newsletter on September 1. Since then, the subscriber count has slowly and steadily grown to its current 284. Hooray for all 284 of you! Until next time!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

New or catching up?

• New subscribers: hello and welcome! Happy Nesting is my exploration of how mid-life can be a time of joy, growth, and surprising discovery.

• Recent posts: Fall Broadway roundup, my unexpected embrace of the cold plunge craze.

• If you are reading on a computer or tablet: all past articles are collected here.

• Email me at: alicejmorgana2 at gmail if you’d like to contact me directly.

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find this newsletter. 💗 In addition I would be so very grateful if you would forward this to someone who might enjoy it.

Share

Subscribe now

Three retirement tentpoles

A few months in, I am loving retirement. The ability to shape and control my day is a welcome change from my previously highly scheduled life. Those of you still in the working world may wonder – how will I spend my time in retirement? I remember being a little anxious (and Hugh was very anxious!) about how I would fill my days.

For those of you pondering retirement, let me reassure you: FINDING STUFF TO DO IS NOT A PROBLEM. From the reading I have done, as well as my own experience, there are three tentpoles to a happy retirement:

1. Hobbies and activities that interest and engage

2. A reason to get up in the morning

3. Sustaining personal connections

These three tentpoles shape how I spend my time and structure each week.

Tentpole #1: Hobbies and activities

Exercise the body

I am fortunate that I am one of those weird people who actually likes to exercise. In addition to Jazzercise and the cold plunges I have written about, I do yoga, lift weights, and have just gone back to tennis after a ~20 year hiatus. I discovered I have to completely redo my forehand grip and swing. This is going to take some time! I don’t care all that much about getting better at tennis, but I care very much about avoiding tennis elbow, which my current flailing-around approach is sure to cause.

Exercise the mind

I’ve joined a monthly film discussion club. I signed up for a knitting retreat weekend in Maine that my friend/former client recommended. And I read, watch movies, go to plays, and enjoy our Happy Nesting month where we live in a different place every winter.

Volunteer exploration

Over the past few months, I’ve explored a wide range of volunteer opportunities. They including branding work for a theater, restocking supplies at a food pantry, fundraising for a dedicated bike path (Ann Arbor’s mini version of the High Line in NYC), and completing training to be a hospice volunteer.

I have loved meeting and getting to know the people associated with the many worthy charities in the Ann Arbor area. In particular, I want to commend the Hope Clinic in Ypsilanti for the services they provide to the needy, and the many churches, groceries, restaurants, and volunteers who stock the food pantry, especially during this time of SNAP uncertainty. They are heroes.

Everything else

I have more time to walk the dog, read, work in the yard, get together with friends, watch TV, go to church, do crossword puzzles – all of it. My life is now vastly less scheduled. I used to live and die by the calendar. Every morning I would write down all my calls for the day on a little index card, and dutifully cross them off after each one finished. It has been an eventful Fall. Our daughter got married in October, which was a time of great joy. I was fully present for this. I have more space in my life.

Tentpole #2: A reason to get up in the morning

When I was working I was a stickler for defining the objective before embarking on a new project. My reasoning? It doesn’t make sense to go down the path of doing something unless you know where you’re going. When I retired and started this newsletter, I frankly didn’t follow my own advice. My objectives were unclear. I wasn’t sure where it was going, or why or I was writing.

The good news is that it worked out! I write this newsletter to have a reason to get up in the morning!

• I love puzzling over topics, jotting down ideas, and reaching out to people for possible profiles.

• My self-imposed goal of one article a week provides structure, meaning and accountability.

• Writing publicly has made me more intentional about retirement. It forces me to really think through what I’m doing and why.

Tentpole #3: Making and sustaining personal connections

One wonderful unintended consequence of this newsletter is that it has helped me here! So many of you have reached out! There have been comments, LinkedIn messages, emails, texts, phone calls, and even a few in-person meetings (looking at you, Mary!) I’m giving a virtual talk to a group of market research professionals in April about Happy Nesting. Since one of the downsides of leaving a job is losing the social connections from the workforce, this has been a very welcome benefit. Thank all of you for reading and engaging!

Random Rec of the week

📱Given I am now part of the Substack universe, this week I’d like to recommend my three favorite newsletters. All three of these writers have paywalls – these journalists write for their livelihood, whereas I write for the fun of it.

• Elizabeth Holmes, So Many Thoughts. Elizabeth decodes royal fashion - what the outfits mean, why certain items and/or brands are selected, the thought that goes into rewearing an item, jewelry, the whole shebang. Her most recent article on Meghan Markle’s cover for Harper’s Bazaar pulls back the curtain on how negotiations work with high-profile celebrity profiles. It’s much more interesting than the actual article!

• Anne Helen Peterson, Culture Study. (She just moved her newsletter to the Patreon platform.) I initially discovered her because I was obsessed with Peloton and she had this super thoughtful and interesting series on instructor Ally Love. She writes about cultural issues – her deep dive of Alabama rush culture is not to be missed – and she does a fab job engaging a large community of like-minded women. A number of her readers just subscribed to my newsletter after I posted the link on her “classifieds.” Thanks for joining!

• Jessica Yellin, News Not Noise. Most news is presented in an incendiary and/or anxiety-producing way. Jessica describes current events in a calm, clear and collected fashion, and also hosts occasional subscriber-only live zoom sessions to help her readers interpret and understand a big news event.

With gratitude

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you lovely readers. My husband Hugh is busy smoking 80 (!) turkeys for the good people of Ann Arbor. Turkeys from his BBQ restaurant sell out weeks in advance. It boggles my mind every year that he does this. I hope your Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving brings you peace and joy. I am so very grateful to all of you for reading this newsletter. After all, you have become my reason for getting up in the morning!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Catch-up corner

• Last week’s post: Go when they want you to stay: why I retired when I did (thanks Philly for this idea!)

• Bookmark All my articles in one place

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find this newsletter. 💗 In addition I would be so very grateful if you would forward this to someone who might enjoy it. (An ice bath aficionado? 🥶)

Subscribe now

Share

Happy Nesting recap

One of the over-arching questions of this newsletter is what motivates behavior change. I spent my professional career looking at this and I’m still puzzling over it in retirement. I have many thoughts on this topic so stay tuned for future posts! My Happy Nesting spiel, which loyal readers have heard already, is that living in a different place for a month rewires our behavior and has led to a host of interesting behavior changes, both big and small. But honestly, sometimes behavior change comes from something more serendipitous. Which leads me to this week’s topic: cold plunges.

Why I am the last person to get into cold plunges

I am the opposite of an early adopter. I have had the same preppy clothing style (cardigan + white shirt with peter pan collar peeping out) since High School. I am typically the last person who embraces a new, buzzy trend. As I have written in the past, I go to Jazzercise! And I have never been one for jumping into a cold spring during a hike, that is more my husband Hugh’s jam.

And yet. I am an enthusiastic, avid adopter of the cold plunge craze.

How it happened

In the Fall of 2024, Hugh and I vacationed in Japan. We had a ball. We spent time in Tokyo and Kyoto and in between went on a bike trip exploring the countryside in Nikko and Toyama. Japan has a long and storied history of communal bathing in public hot springs known as onsen. Several of the hotels we stayed at had onsen, as well as cold plunge tubs. After biking 30+ miles a day, my leg muscles were screaming. At the suggestion of our tour guide, I went in the onsen, and then took a short dip in the cold tub.

I felt amazing after. My whole body was alive and alert, yet at the same time relaxed. I had never felt this way before.

And that would have been the end of it, if it weren’t for the fact that my gym in Ann Arbor installed two cold plunge tubs this year. They also have various heating rooms, including a steam room, dry sauna, and hot tub. I had retired. I had time. I even had a friend who let me use her locker to stash my bathing suit. Why not give it a go?

I started slow. I went in the steam room for 5 minutes, to get really hot and, well, steamy. Then I went in the cold plunge tub, at first for only about 30 seconds. But slowly and steadily I built up tolerance. I currently stay in the tub for 5 minutes – although full disclosure I keep my shoulders and hands out as you can see in the photo. I typically take cold plunge baths two to three times a week.

Triggers to trial

Breaking it down, this behavior change was triggered by:

1. Away from home on vacay, I was open to learning about an important element of Japanese life. In so doing, I discovered cold plunges.

2. Back home, the biggest enabler was access, as the considerable logistical barriers associated with cold plunge tubs were removed since my gym had acquired them.

3. The payoff – feeling amazing for several hours afterwards – is absolutely worth the frosty, frigid 5 minutes.

In the excellent book Dopamine Nation, researchers found that cold-water immersion increases dopamine levels both during the immersion as well as afterward. This makes sense to me! Cold plunge benefits purportedly include improved circulation/reduced inflammation, reduced muscle soreness, increased metabolism, improved mental health, and reduced stress. Who knows if all this is true. What I do know is that I love it!

Back to behavior change

Maybe what really sparks behavior change isn’t willpower or discipline, but curiosity – trying something and discovering it feels surprisingly good and we want to feel it again. Cold plunges were never on my radar, but now they’re part of my rhythm. Maybe the trick is just being open to new experiences.

Random Rec of the week

📚 This week’s recommendation is writer Curtis Sittenfeld. Her current book is Show Don’t Tell, a collection of timely and thought-provoking stories. Hugh and I have had a number of lively conversations about one in particular, all about “The Mike Pence Rule” (google it). She also has a delightful novel called Romantic Comedy, about the trend of schlubby-looking comics from Saturday Night Live dating hot actresses/models, and Eligible, a modern update of Pride and Prejudice.

Many thanks!

As always, thank you all for reading and engaging with this newsletter. If you have any suggestions for future posts, email me at alicejmorgana2 at gmail dot com. Have you tried a cold plunge or adopted another habit that surprised you? I’d love to hear about it.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Watching lots of Broadway shows in NYC this week so my next post will be about the current crop of shows. Until next time!

Happy Nesting recap

Hello new subscribers! Happy Nesting is my exploration of how mid-life can be a time of joy, growth, and surprising discovery. For the past 6 years, my husband Hugh and I have spent a month each winter living someplace new. We embark on a brand-new adventure every year, and learn as we go.

Shameless self-promotion!

If you know someone who might enjoy Happy Nesting, please share their email with me (they can always unsubscribe) so I can add them to the distribution list. I’m so grateful for this growing community of 226 readers! My email address is alicejmorgana2 at gmail.

Subscribe now

Share

Why I retired when I did

Two metrics typically motivate retirement: money and age. The elephant in the room when it comes to retirement is, of course, personal finance. Retirement is its own kind of algebra - a mix of estimated spend, anticipated income, Social Security, Medicare supplemental premiums, and other calculations that can make your head spin. My friend Melissa recommended the book How to Retire by Christine Benz and it is very helpful!

I was fortunate to have the option to retire early. But I did think long and hard about whether it made sense to retire at age 60 instead of the more typical 65.

Although deciding when to retire wasn’t simple, five motivators pushed me forward.

Motivator #1: getting over myself

I am someone who has always had an ego about work. I am not proud of this. Like many who find meaning in their jobs, I worried about who I’d be without mine. I wanted to retire early enough to re-forge my identity and, quite honestly, get over myself. A book that I read that was very helpful in figuring this out is From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks. The book argues that as we age we gain wisdom, but we may need to channel it differently. I wanted to come up with a new way of channeling my wisdom - in my case, this newsletter and the many volunteer opportunities I am currently exploring.

Motivator #2: good health can be fleeting

A lot can go wrong in your 60s, health-wise. I wanted to have agency over how I spend my time, especially given I currently have health, energy, and intellectual curiosity. Who knows how long this will last?

Motivator #3: go when they want you to stay

One of my favorite children’s books is What’s for lunch, Charley?

The theme of the book (which is out of print), other than don’t eat too much lunch 🤣, is “go when they want you to stay.” I was fortunate to have a meaningful job and work with lovely colleagues and clients. I spent a decade thinking about what will get people with diabetes to adopt various therapies and technologies. While I’m not sure I cracked the code on that one, I had largely achieved my professional goals. To quote the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City,” I’d gone about as far as I could go. It was time to go somewhere new.

Motivator #4: 3-D people

I worked from home for the bulk of my career, mostly with people who lived all over the country. My job required considerable travel, in the last few years much of it international. In the past I enjoyed business travel because I got to hang out with actual, three-dimensional people (as opposed to virtual, zoom people). Although business travel was fun and energizing earlier in my career, it had become onerous and stressful. I wanted to spend time with living, breathing people. Without having to get on a plane. So far, in retirement, I have hung out with real, live people in lots of places, including soup kitchens, tennis clinics, the steam room at my gym, and knitting and film clubs.

Motivator #5: The power of Happy Nesting

To go back to the theme of this newsletter, I don’t think I would have retired early (or, as a prior article mentioned, downsized) if I hadn’t spent a month in a new place every year for the last 6 years. Our month long adventures made me more courageous and willing to take the leap into the big, bold, unknown world of retirement.

A work in progress

Several months in, I am figuring it out. Rewiring my go-go-go brain to calm down, center, and smell the roses, takes time. The advantage of work is that it provides a clear treadmill. Designing a new treadmill is work. Retirement, I’m learning, is a creative act - a chance to restructure how life fits together. It’s behavior change, in real time. Thanks for being part of that discovery with me.

This week’s random recs

MOVIE🍿 Last night I went to a screening of the 1944 classic film noir movie Double Indemnity, as I am a fan of All Things Billy Wilder. What a script!

TV 📺 Hugh and I have been watching Season 1 of The Wire, which is frequently hailed as the greatest TV show of all time. I’m not sure I’d go that far (my faves tend towards high school classics, My So-Called Life, Freaks and Geeks, and Friday Night Lights) but it is excellent. There are a lot of (almost entirely) male characters, and it takes time to get into the swing of things, but it is a complex, layered show about cops and robbers in inner-city Baltimore.

Next week I’m off to NYC for a dose of Broadway so stay tuned for an upcoming critique of the current crop of new shows. Last season, as I wrote in a prior post, was extraordinary. We’ll see what this season brings!

Have you or someone you know had a mid-life pivot?

I hope to interview other people and shine a light on their stories, similar to my recent profile of my friend Scott. Once again my email address is alicejmorgana2 at gmail.

Many thanks!

As always, thank you all for reading this newsletter. Last week’s post on traveling with dogs generated a number of lively comments which were super fun to read.

I’ll leave you with all the (subscribe/share/comment) buttons. I appreciate each and every one of you!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find this newsletter. 💗 In addition I would be so very grateful if you would forward this to someone – given this week’s topic probably a 🐕🦮🐕‍🦺🐕 person – who might enjoy it.

Share

Subscribe now

Happy Nesting recap

Hello new subscribers! Happy Nesting is my exploration of how mid-life can be a time of joy, growth, and surprising discovery. For the past 6 years, my husband Hugh and I have spent a month each winter living someplace new. We embark on a brand-new adventure every year, and learn as we go.

We bring our dogs

We are dog people. When our kids were in elementary school we got Satchel, a husky mix. Some years later, we got Sasha, a hound mix. Both were acquired from the Ann Arbor Humane Society.

We typically bring our dogs with us on our months away, as the photo collages demonstrate (apologies if you are reading this on a phone and the labels are too small!). The one exception was Costa Rica, when my brother watched them.

Here is a brief account of our dogs’ experiences over six years of Happy Nesting.

1. Placida, FL. New/tropical smells everywhere. Sasha has an encounter with an alligator. Satchel is still going strong.

2. Asheville, NC. As I wrote about last week, we enjoy walking the dogs in a scenic, eclectic neighborhood. Satchel’s back legs are starting to weaken and he has trouble with the hilly terrain.

3. Sedona, AZ. Our rental is walking distance to a trailhead. We have a lovely time on our walks, surrounded by Sedona’s iconic red rock scenery.

4. Nosara, Costa Rica. The dogs stay with my Mom and brother in Connecticut while we are out of the country. While my Mom’s kitchen floors are being redone, Sasha walks on the freshly varnished floors, oops! During the first week we get lots of calls from my brother about how to take care of the dogs, which causes us to realize – our dogs (but perhaps dogs in general) are a lot of work!

5. Colorado Springs, CO. Satchel is sadly and clearly at the end of his long life. He is slow and addled and very weak. At one point he falls off a ledge in the back yard and hits his head, hard. We consider putting him down, but don’t know how to do this in a place where we don’t have a relationship with a vet. We say goodbye several days after we get back to Ann Arbor. He lived to be 17 years old, which is astonishing for such a big dog. The heartbreak of owning a dog is their eventual death.

6. Brooklyn, NY. We stay on the 8^th Floor of a prewar apartment building in Clinton Hill. Sasha sniffs her way through Brooklyn. Every morning, we go to off-leash hours at the Fort Greene park, where she retrieves her ball.

What did our dogs think of it all?

In prior posts I have written about how Happy Nesting changed us. But an arguably more interesting question is, how did Happy Nesting change our dogs? As my friend and former colleague Erik would say, the “brutal truth” is that we have no idea, we are not dogs! Every dog owner, and we are no exception, is constantly thinking about what his or her dog thinks of the various experiences to which they are being exposed. For example, do they want to get in the car to go to the grocery store? They might like the drive there, but they might not like being stuck in the car when we’re shopping.

My daughter Porter recommended the podcast No Such Thing, which had a great episode about this topic, titled: Are Suburban Dogs Happier Than City Dogs? They interviewed a dog expert, Alexandra Horowitz, who heads the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College and is the author of Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know. She makes the argument that owning a dog in the city requires the owner to be more intentional, and dogs in the city, on average, are arguably better cared for than dogs in the suburbs because of this.

Takeaway 1: Sasha got more attention in the city than the suburbs

The biggest differentiator in terms of our various Happy Nesting locations was New York City, a ginormous metropolis, verses our other suburban stays. And Horowitz’s observation that dogs in the city are arguably better off because their owners need to deal with them more rings true to me. We typically walk our dogs one long walk in the evening when we are in Ann Arbor, and let them out to do their business in the back yard periodically throughout the day. When we were staying at the non-NYC monthly rentals, we walked them twice a day. In New York City, we walked Sasha three times a day because we couldn’t just let her out, we had to take the elevator down to get outside.

And back to that dog park. For our NYC month we did an apartment swap with my friend Jessica, she stayed in our house in Ann Arbor and we stayed in her apartment in Brooklyn. Jessica told us that the Fort Greene dog park had off-leash hours before 9 am. And I didn’t believe her! I thought – there’s no way that in New York City, dogs can run around freely in a giant melee. But it was true! Every morning, there are tons of dog owners/hipster Brooklynites hanging out, chatting with thermoses of coffee, as their dogs run around in a frenzy. It winds up being a self-selecting group – if you have a dog that is aggressive with other dogs, you are not going to take your dog to an off-leash dog park. In our month in NYC we saw only a few minor skirmishes, the dogs (and their owners) all made it work.

Takeaway 2: Traveling with dogs is hard on everyone

As dog owners know, traveling with dogs is a lot of work. You have to find hotels that take dogs. You have to pay dog fees (which I respect, obviously cleaning a room with dogs takes more time than cleaning a room without dogs). You have to stop and walk them along the way.

We are “buy and hold” car people, and even though our children had long since flown the coop (hence Happy Nesting!) we still had our van, which was incredibly useful for transporting 2 dogs long distances. We removed the middle row of seats and put the dog bed there, you can see all the terrible photos of our dogs on these cross-country ventures. For three of the locales (FL, AZ and CO) it took two days to get there, and two days to get back. I can definitely say that traveling with an older dog is not ideal. Satchel was very stiff and did not like being stuffed in a car for several days. Sasha, the “needy chick” dog, seemed to like being so physically close to us in the van … but who knows?

Back to my original question…

We greatly enjoy our Happy Nesting months, although the first week, in which we have to figure it all out (like where to get food, where to exercise, and, yes, where to walk the dogs) is work. Do our dogs like these adventures? Would they rather be home? We’ll never know. But I suspect Horowitz is right: because we’re away from our regular routines, we spend more time with them. In the end, that may be all that matters.

Postscript: Satchel’s service

If you have gotten to the end of this post (and if you have, you are probably a dog person to your core) after Satchel passed our family had a memorial service to honor his memory. Given that at the time we were in Massachusetts, Vermont, North Carolina and Michigan respectively, we conducted the service via Zoom. This wound up being a perfect platform, as we were all able to share both memories as well as photos of Satchel.

This week’s random movie rec

Hugh and I both greatly enjoyed the movie Blue Moon, one of two new films currently directed by living legend Richard Linklater. Blue Moon is about Lorenz Hart, the lyricist who worked with songwriter Richard Rogers for many years prior to Rogers unceremoniously dumping him to work with Oscar Hammerstein. The movie takes place the night the Rogers & Hammerstein masterpiece Oklahoma! opens, at Sardis, where Hart nurses drinks as well as grudges. It is a well-written and highly entertaining movie, and I hope Ethan Hawke gets a Best Actor nomination for his fantastic work.

Many thanks!

Thank you all for reading and commenting on this newsletter. I am having a blast writing it, and my weekly posts provide structure to my post-work life. @Mike and @Maggie, thank you in particular for your comments and encouragement last week!

Subscribe now

Share

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find this newsletter. 💗 I also appreciate referrals, since I am promoting this newsletter via good, old-fashioned, word-of-mouth!

Share

Subscribe now

Happy Nesting recap

Hello new subscribers! Happy Nesting is my exploration of how mid-life can be a time of joy, growth, and surprising discovery. For the last 7 years my husband Hugh and I have lived in a different place every year for a month during the winter. We embark on a brand-new adventure every year, and learn as we go.

All about Asheville

I am continuing my Covid chronicles from last week. We spent the Winter of 2021 Happy Nesting in Asheville, North Carolina. We selected Asheville because we have lots of family in Western North Carolina and it was a time (at least in Ann Arbor Michigan) when you could only comfortably hang out indoors with family. Our three adult kids were initially home for a time, but they had gone back to their Regularly Scheduled Lives. We spent two months in Asheville instead of the customary one because we craved conversation and interaction with loved ones.

We lived in the Kenilworth neighborhood of Asheville, which is known for eclectic architecture, including cute bungalows and a mix of multi-family homes in a variety of styles. The area has rolling hills, ravines, and lots of old trees.

Our AirBnB was quirky, owned by an artist. Her sculptures were all over the house, as you can see (in addition to our adorable doggos).

My mother-in-law was having lots of health problems, so it was good that my husband was around during that time to help. We saw our in-laws as well as other family members.

What we learned & discovered

• Hiking in cold weather is great, and in many ways preferable to hiking in warm weather. It offers three significant benefits: 1) better views due to the lack of foliage, 2) no bugs, and 3) few/no people since everyone thinks it’s too cold to hike. (Compared to Michigan in Winter, Asheville is a walk in the park (tee hee), weather-wise!) Hugh hiked most days, and I joined him on days in which I wasn’t working. I got hiking poles at long last. They are a game changer!

  

• We like bluegrass music, and discovered WNCW, a fantastic public radio station in Western North Carolina. We have been listening to it online ever since.

• Our AirBnB had, of all things, a pasta-making machine! Hugh figured out how to make homemade pasta, which became a fun hobby. (COVID was, after all, the era of making everything from scratch!)

• As I have written before, we prefer diverse neighborhoods. I think we first discovered this in Asheville. Where we live now, while by no means as scenic as Western North Carolina, is similar to Kenilworth in that it is eclectic and diverse and fun and funky.

Honestly the truth of it is because we were in Asheville during the pandemic, we didn’t discover nearly as much as we typically do because much of the city was still only partially operational. So it ended up being one of our less insightful adventures -not because of the city, but because of the times.

About the new mom and the tree

We went on a long up-and-back hike in the Black Mountains, heading towards Mount Mitchell. We came upon the distinctive-looking tree pictured at the beginning of this post. On our way back, we climbed the tree and took a break. Along came a woman - barefoot, in a flowing dress, carrying a basket and a baby. She looked like Little Red Riding Hood... but with a baby. She told us she was on a pilgrimage to this very tree, planning to bury her new baby’s placenta at its base. We asked her to take our photo, she kindly obliged, and we left her to commune in peace with her baby, her placenta, and the tree.

Asheville postscript

Since our time there, Asheville has suffered greatly. Hurricane Helene’s aftermath devastated much of the city, particularly the River Arts District.

And yet. Let me pause and sing Asheville’s praises. It’s a wonderful small city: beautiful, temperate, and home to a seemingly infinite number of brewpubs. A staggering number of breathtaking hikes are located within a 30-45 minute drive. The downtown area was not impacted, so there’s still lots to explore. Restaurant-wise, for the high end I suggest my sister-in-law’s fave Cúrate, for the low end my son Spencer’s fave White Duck Taco. If you’re planning to visit, check out my friend Bethany’s travel itineraries. She’s created guides for Asheville - and Nashville also - for $10 a pop.

Random movie rec

The new Paul Thomas Anderson movie One Battle After Another is excellent. I have seen it twice in the theater - a rarity for me - and loved it both times. It is well filmed, well acted, and surprisingly fun and funny to watch given the subject matter. Simply put, it’s got a propulsive plot. And the soundtrack is great, especially the use of the classic Tom Petty song “American Girl.” I will have more to say about this movie when I write my annual Oscars and Movie Reviews in March but wanted to encourage all of you to go to the theater and see this movie!

I appreciate you!

Thank you all for reading and commenting on this newsletter. It means so much to me, as writing is obviously a solitary endeavor. @Ellen and @Jo-Ann, thank you in particular for your comments and encouragement last week!

On deck - traveling with dogs! 🐕🦮🐕‍🦺🐕

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find this newsletter. 💗 You can also forward this to a friend.

Share

Welcome! Happy Nesting is my exploration of how mid-life can be a time of joy, growth, and surprising discovery. Each week I unpack experiences which led to the unexpected perks of this new chapter.

While last week I wrote about the joy of dancing like nobody’s watching, this week I’m reflecting on something heavier: how the COVID pandemic shaped our family — especially my Aunt Mabel — and what I’ve learned to carry into mid-life.

The pandemic was obviously devastating for many people: tragic deaths, the lingering shadow of long COVID which impacts many to this day, and brutal social isolation. Parents of young and school-age children and Seniors had an extraordinarily difficult time. I was working on a project in which I interviewed physicians who worked in Assisted Living Facilities and Nursing Homes and it was heart-wrenching to hear how lonely and isolated Seniors were. To highlight an example close to me, I am going to shine a light on my great-aunt Mabel.

The story of Aunt Mabel & the pandemic

I will start by explaining how amazing she was. “Aunt” doesn’t adequately describe our relationship, as when I think of my immediate family I think of my brother, my Mom (my Dad passed away when I was 10), and Aunt Mabel.

As you can see from her photo, she looked like the Queen of England – especially the hair. She had grace and elegance. She believed in supporting your family, working hard, treating people fairly, and showing up. She was “Old School,” in the best possible way. Like any good leader, she led by example. When we were around Aunt Mabel, we were all on our best behavior.

Aunt Mabel never considered herself a feminist. Absolutely not. But in her quiet, polite way, she upended pretty much all the rules of her generation. Aunt Mabel never married. She never had children. I believe this is why she lived so long and so well – less stress 😏. She was a career woman at a prominent New York bank, the first female officer. A true New Yorker, she walked to work from her apartment on the Upper West Side to Midtown – over 100 blocks, round trip – most days. She never learned to cook.

I travel to New York City frequently, prior to my retirement for work, and also because I have friends and family in the area and I am a Broadway fangirl. I usually stayed with Aunt Mabel. She was sharp as a tack, interested in what I was doing, and happy to share what she was up to. She was up to quite a lot – exercising with other Seniors at church, auditing classes at Barnard, and learning about the lives of the many wonderful doormen in her building. I would go off and do my thing, and come back fairly late at night. Aunt Mabel would be waiting up for me when I got back. In later years, if it was Monday, she would be watching “Dancing with The Stars,” a show she loved.

When the pandemic hit, she had groceries delivered in and didn’t leave the apartment, except for when a minister from her church took her to get her vaccinations. My Mom and brother checked in on her from time to time, delivering food and supplies. They celebrated her 100th birthday in her apartment.

Aunt Mabel won the battle – she didn’t get COVID – but lost the war, passing away in the Fall of 2021 at the age of 101. Because she never left her apartment, she became very weak, although perhaps she became very weak because she was 101! Here is a photo from the last time I saw her, a few months before she passed.

The rest of my family & the pandemic

I tried to look up the impact of the COVID pandemic but aside from the obvious points – education and social engagement suffered, hello! – it is hard to get a definitive read on the impact of the worldwide lockdown. And the truth of it is, different areas experienced COVID very differently. Ann Arbor Michigan, while not as locked down as New York City, was pretty strict. The public schools were online for a solid year.

Given all the stress, sickness and sadness, I feel a bit guilty admitting that for my immediate family, lockdown had some benefits. Most notably, our three adult kids came home and lived with us for about six months. Our daughter was teaching at a private high school and taught her students online. Our two sons were in college, and they also took classes online. While there were absolutely some challenges and conflicts that resulted from everyone being under one roof, having this unexpected and extended period of time with our adult children was a gift.

We did all the things. We played Euchre. We started a garden. We baked. We biked. We did jumping jacks in the garage. We bought a Peloton.

Work-wise, we were lucky. I was already doing quite a lot of work via Zoom, so my job was mostly unchanged. My husband was able to quickly set up an online ordering system for his BBQ joint, and the Ann Arbor community was extraordinarily generous in their support of his and other local restaurants.

We leaned into our neighborhood. One of our neighbors, a lovely fellow named Ken, set up a portable pickleball net in his cul-de-sac. 🏓 EVERY NIGHT. Neighbors brought lawn chairs and beverages, played pickleball, and chatted. With everyone home and no kids’ or work activities to drive to, we slowed down and got to know one another.

The pandemic pause

The pandemic provided us with the unexpected gift of stillness. No errands, no travel, no haircuts, no trips to the gym. It was a time of reflection, introspection, and personal growth. I had always been a rather scheduled person (and still am, to some degree) but it was affirming to know I could just … be. I remember thinking at the time – I will handle retirement just fine! 😏

For Aunt Mabel and many others, the pandemic was a time of immense solitude. In contrast, I was able to socialize with my kids and neighbors. I found family, community, and a stillness I didn’t know I needed. As I navigate mid-life, I carry these lessons with me.

How did the pandemic change your perspective on home, work, or stillness? I’d love to learn your story.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading this newsletter! As I try to grow subscribers to this fledgling enterprise I will start where I began - if you know of others who would be interested in these random musings about mid-life 🤣, please forward this email.

Share

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find this newsletter. 💗 You can also forward this to a friend.

Share

Welcome! Happy Nesting is my exploration of how mid-life can be a time of joy, growth, and surprising discovery. Each week I unpack the unexpected perks of this new chapter. This week’s post is about a small, yet very meaningful part of my life, which is my newly discovered love of dance.

To be clear – I am a terrible dancer. I am not flexible, graceful, or super skinny. I can’t follow complicated steps. I have been in a step aerobics class at the county Rec Center for over twenty years, but that’s about it.

My journey towards dancing becoming a meaningful part of my life started, of all places, from a newspaper article. In January of 2023 the New York Times featured an article about “Geezer Night” in my hometown of Ann Arbor Michigan, where every Friday night a bunch of older people dance their a**es off at a bar downtown to live music.

Although I had lived in Ann Arbor for 30+ years, I had never heard of this! Off Hugh and I went. We had a ball! Everyone dances like crazy, nobody cares how well/poorly others dance, and it is very inclusive. Many folks dance without a partner or in same sex friend groups. We saw G, who works at the Kroger, has a Mohawk, and usually sports a Superman tee shirt. We saw Corky, whose daughter grew up with mine and sold me my minivan back in the day.

We are now regulars. If we are free on Friday night, we go. We show up when the band starts, typically at about 6:45. We dance our way straight through the first set and leave at the break. The article noted that after the first set many patrons head out to the alley for a weed break, and this is true! Michigan legalized marijuana in 2019 and Ann Arbor has a staggering number of weed dispensaries, which is fine – live and let live! – but not our jam.

So I started dancing on a regular basis at Geezer Night. But wait, there’s more. Our fourth year of Happy Nesting (2024) was in Colorado Springs. Living in a different place for a month forces us to rewire the nuts and bolts of life, including where and how to exercise. I joined VASA Fitness for a month, a huge chain gym with lots of classes, including Zumba. Off I went. I had a ball!

When I got back to Ann Arbor, I looked up dance cardio options in Ann Arbor. I discovered Jazzercise. It’s a 30 minute walk from my house, a lovely route past the best coffee shop in Arbor.

I broke up with my forever gym. Despite it’s terrible branding that I have written about, Jazzercise is about as fun as exercise gets. In the beginning I stayed in the front of the room so that I could see the steps and follow along (back to the fact that I am a terrible dancer). But – gaining WISDOM from aging! – I ultimately realized that the joy I get from Jazzercise is by dancing, well, like nobody’s watching. I moved to the back. I don’t always follow the steps, sometimes I flail around like a crazy person. Being a rule follower about Jazzercise just seems a bit silly, as it’s really about moving and enjoying music and having fun. Jazzercise fills my heart with joy.

Triggers to my incorporating dance in mid-life were many, including:

• Discovering and enjoying Geezer Night

• Letting go of any ego or self-consciousness about my dancing abilities

• Happy Nesting in Colorado Springs, where I started doing dance cardio because my regular gym routine was disrupted

• Finding a dance cardio studio I loved in a convenient location

• Gaining wisdom in mid-life, understanding that the joy I get from dancing like a crazy person is something to be celebrated.

If you know someone who’s navigating mid-life by embracing something new, feel free to forward this along, or have them contact me at alicejmorgana2 at gmail.

Share

I’d also love to hear — what unexpected joys or hobbies have you discovered lately?

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading and supporting my newsletter!

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find this newsletter. 💗 You can also forward this to a friend.

Share

Happy Nesting recap

Greetings! As my prior article outlines, for the last 6 years Hugh and I have rented for a month during the winter – a new and different place each year. The idea is to “flip the script” and remain flexible and adaptable as we approach mid-life and beyond. We call it “Happy Nesting” (We’re not empty! We’re happy! Let’s reframe the narrative!). My goal with this newsletter is to break down Happy Nesting in lots of different ways and explain how it led us to significant behavior change.

Up this week: downsizing

Going small is big!

The overarching goal of my newsletter is to dig into what motivates behavior change. This is something I have been working on through my entire professional career as a (newly retired) market researcher. What causes people to buy a new product? What causes doctors to prescribe new drugs and devices? What causes people to exercise/eat well? Lasting, meaningful behavior change is hard.

Never are the barriers higher for behavior change than in the fraught world of real estate. It is very, very hard to move. There are significant emotional, logistical and above all financial burdens.

I know in my heart that the only reason we downsized so early and so dramatically was because we had spent every February over the prior four years renting a very small house or apartment. I would have been too scared to move if I hadn’t had a sneak preview of the benefits. In our four years Happy Nesting, we discovered:

• We really like being in a neighborhood where we could walk or bike to a coffee shop or gym or whatnot.

• The smaller the residence, the easier it is to clean and maintain (ok this is an obvious point but living it by staying in smaller places for protracted periods of time is different from grasping it intellectually).

• We like living amidst a diversity of ages, incomes, and ethnicities. Despite being in mid life, we like being around families with young kids. We are not ready for prime time a retirement community (at least not yet!)

We had lived in our house for 24 years. We raised our three children there. We had three dogs over that time. Old Boy, who grew into his name, passed away a few years in. Then we got Satchel and, later, Sasha. We knew and loved our neighbors. We biked to our community pool. It was home.

When we moved to our sprawling abode, we had 3 small children, 2 home businesses, a live-in au pair, and an employee who came to the house every day for one of the businesses. We needed space. And for a time, we used it.

Those days were long gone. Two of our kids had finished college and the third was a Junior in college. While I still worked from home, Hugh now owned a BBQ restaurant. Whole rooms went unused most of the time. Staying in a house that was right-sized for the handful of days in which our children were home seemed … wrong-headed.

Ann Arbor has historically very low inventories for houses, and we were looking in the Spring of 2023, at the peak of the market. We expected the search to take 2 years. It wound up taking 2 months as we found our new home surprisingly quickly. And then our old house also sold incredibly fast. So within the blink of an eye, we moved.

This newsletter is not about real estate transactions, it’s about behavior change! Having said that, I offer a few tips for those of you considering downsizing.

1. Moving from a big house to a small house is not for the faint of heart. It is a ton of work. First of all, nobody wants your furniture. We sold some of it, but most of it we donated, took to the dump, or got rid of for pittance via Facebook marketplace.

2. I have never been much of a packrat, but at the same time … if you have a lot of space, you amass a lot of stuff. So we had to go through the process of getting rid of most of it. To quote Finding Nemo, just keep swimming. We had a staggering amount of … water bottles (?). And vases. And art/photos in frames. And cleaning products. And much, much more.

3. Our kids all visited the month before we moved. We were pretty brutal, telling them the age of dedicated bedrooms where they could store their stuff indefinitely was over. Take your stuff or we’ll toss it. The son who was still in college was allowed one Rubbermaid storage container.

4. A colleague recommended that I say goodbye to the old house by going through each room, one by one, and taking some time to think about and honor my memories. I found this process moving and meaningful.

My husband loved the move from Day 1, thrilled that we were now 5 minutes from his restaurant and enjoying the new vibe, especially as our house vaguely resembles a treehouse. For me, it took more time. The first few months were an emotional roller coaster, as I felt displaced and unsettled. But I got there!

What we learned

For us, less truly is more. We live differently in a much smaller house. Our behavior has actually … changed! 🫢

• We walk to coffee shops.

• I walk to and from Jazzercise several times a week.

• Now that Hugh is so close to his business, he comes home for lunch.

• We walk our dog near a nearby school and enjoy watching Rec & Ed kids’ soccer matches.

• We now use all the rooms in the house.

• We put the TV in the basement, to discourage watching it! (Works like a charm).

• When we have people over for dinner, I can do the dishes when visiting, as the kitchen table is right next to the sink. Guests literally pass me their dishes. Unloading the dishwasher is similarly a snap, as everything is within one or two steps.

  

By sharing our experience, please know that I do not mean to sound dogmatic or bossy. As I said in the beginning, real estate is a tough topic. Everyone needs to do what is right – and affordable! – for them. I just know that if I hadn’t had several years spending significant time in much smaller spaces, I wouldn’t have been brave enough to move and would still be in a vastly oversized house!

Once again, THANK YOU FOR READING. Three posts in, I am greatly enjoying my retirement hobby. Please feel free to let me know of any topics you’d like me to cover, and/or let me know your thoughts about downsizing. I plan to interview retirees in future posts to shine a light on others’ experiences (not just my own). Until next week!

Leave a comment

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find this newsletter. 💗 You can also forward this to a friend.

Share

Subscribe now

Happy Nesting Recap

Greetings! As my prior article outlines, for the last 6 years Hugh and I have rented for a month during the winter – a new and different place each year. The idea is to “flip the script” and remain flexible and adaptable as we approach mid-life and beyond. We call it “Happy Nesting” (We’re not empty! We’re happy! Let’s reframe the narrative!). My goal with this newsletter is to break down Happy Nesting in lots of different ways and explain how it led us to significant behavior change – in my case, retirement. I thought the best way to explain the whole idea was by starting by detailing one of the months.

Nosara, Costa Rica

We spent February of 2023 in Costa Rica. It was our fourth Happy Nesting locale (the first three were Placida FL, Asheville NC, and Sedona AZ). We chose Costa Rica as our first international destination because the time change is relatively modest, there is an infrastructure for tourists and good number of Americans there, and we had been there before. We thought it wouldn’t be too complex. According to various sources, between 70,000 and 120,000 US citizens currently reside in Costa Rica. (Not sure whether that counts the snowbirds, maybe that explains the wide range). Costa Rica’s “Pura Vida” lifestyle, fab weather, beautiful beaches, and laid back vibe are all significant draws for people looking for a more relaxed pace of life. We stayed in Nosara, in the Nicoya Peninsula. The area is known for its beautiful beaches and world-class surfing and yoga. It is even one of five fabled blue zones!

What We Did

We didn’t have a car. We rented bikes and walked or biked everywhere, including to the grocery store. We stayed in a small apartment complex in Playa Pelada which had a private pathway to the beach.

It was interesting and fun to meet the other residents, many of whom are regulars, and come for an extended period every winter. Most people in the apartment and surrounding community went to the beach every night to watch the sunset, which was convivial and wonderful. We saw the Superbowl (in Spanish) with some of them at a nearby bar.

We loved waking up to the sounds of monkeys and birdsong. I took lots of yoga classes at The Bodhi Tree.

It was beautiful. We swam in the ocean every day. We slowed down.

On the downside, although Costa Rica is justly heralded as a natural paradise with lots of endemic species, the country doesn’t offer much hiking. There are no hiking trails such as those that abound in mountainous regions in the U.S. and Europe and are easily found on AllTrails (since we love to hike, this matters to us). Most of the nature areas are relatively small and involve engaging a guide to point out the wildlife. Furthermore, once you head into the interior of the country, the roads are too steep to bike. Our rides therefore were mostly limited to perimeter roads. Hugh got sick. There was very little to do at night. We streamed a lot of movies and TV shows. We prefer a bit more cultural stimulation. Frankly, we got a bit bored.

What We Learned

A Natural Woman. I learned that I like to be outside for a good chunk of the day, in nature, every day. I like to walk or bike to places, like this lovely coffee shop.

I don’t like being in a car. I want to be in a walkable neighborhood.

Woo Woo Wonderland. Many Americans in Costa Rica are on various breaks of sorts, working remotely, or just plain working on themselves. Although we respect and encourage these journeys, we tend to prefer communities that are less tourist-oriented and populated by people who actually live and work there full time. We like a diversity of residents – both ages and types of people.

Small is Beautiful. Our apartment in Costa Rica – as well as the rentals we stayed at during our prior years – was much smaller than our house back in Ann Arbor. We liked the smaller footprint and lower maintenance. We liked being physically closer to our neighbors.

Behavior Change Ahead!

We spent a good amount of time during that month talking about downsizing. When we got back, we started looking at real estate in Ann Arbor. Within a few short months we bought and moved into a much smaller house, in a walkable neighborhood, with a diversity of residents. Major life transition!

In my next post I will write about downsizing and the impact this has had on our lives.

In the meantime, tell me, how has the physical setup of a vacation rental impacted you? I offer my own personal (silly and vain but true) example. In my house in Michigan, my bathroom was on the second floor. I always forgot to put on eye cream in the morning before I went to the gym and never wanted to schlep back upstairs to do it. The apartment in Costa Rica was on one floor and as a result I put on eye cream every day!

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading and supporting my newsletter!