# The Great Life Redesign: Why I Chose Not to Wait for "Someday"

Living a retirement lifestyle now

There's a peculiar paradox in the American Dream – we're taught to work ourselves to exhaustion for decades, accumulating things and stress in equal measure, all while postponing our actual living for some mythical future date called retirement. But what if we've got it all backwards? What if there was a way to live a more deliberate and joy-infused life right now? There was a moment after a walk with my husband where we said goodbye to a friend who passed away too early and quite unexpectedly that changed us and changed how we operated our lives for several weeks. The thoughts about the meaning of our one precious life lingered as the week unfolded and my life returned to “normal”. But I could not shake the feeling that there was a bigger message for me to hear.

The Awakening

It hit me a few days later on a random Tuesday, watching the sunrise through my office window, another 10-hour day ahead. I was doing everything "right" – building the retirement account, maintaining the house, accumulating the trappings of success. Yet something felt fundamentally wrong about waiting another decade or two to really start living. And who was I to think the same sudden end to my life couldn’t happen to me and at what point do we postpone living?

The Math of Joy

Nobody tells you about the American lifestyle: the cost isn't just financial. It's paid in time, health, and life force. When I sat down and calculated the true cost of maintaining our "successful" life here, it was staggering:

- High healthcare costs despite having "good" insurance

- Long working hours to maintain our lifestyle

- Precious time spent maintaining possessions

- Minimal vacation time compared to other countries

- Constant tradeoff between earning and living

The hustle culture is alive and thriving. As a recovering perfectionist and people-pleaser, taking my eyes off future goals and not ticking things off my to-do list was hard. Receiving more joy, rest, and stepping off the well-worn hamster wheel was a terrifying thought. But we started doing some research, and I started having a recurring dream ( or was it a vision) that would set our course for a change in life.

The Dream that Changed Everything

Being a student of psychology and a therapist, I know dreams carry significant meaning. There have been periods in my life where dreams changed my course in life, and this one was no different. Night after night, I found myself overlooking the ocean, the location mysterious yet somehow familiar. This dream persisted for several months until I shared it with my husband. While he was skeptical at the significance of this dream or vision at first, something about it compelled us to take it as a signe and search for this mysterious place.

The Global Perspective

Research led me to a startling revelation and one I was not expecting to find: many countries offer a quality of life that Americans pay a premium for, at a fraction of the cost. Places where:

- Healthcare is affordable and accessible

- Fresh, organic food is the norm, not a luxury

- Walking and outdoor activities are built into daily life

- Work-life balance isn't just a buzzword

- Community and connection thrive

- Stress isn't a status symbol

- Views of the ocean are not limited to the ultra wealthy

The Great Unlearning

The hardest part wasn't the logistics, which I will get into in future posts, it was unlearning decades of conditioning about what makes a "good life,” because what I was learning bumped up against everything I previously thought. I had to question everything:

- Why wait until 65+ to enjoy extended travel?

- Why accept minimal vacation time as normal?

- Why keep upgrading to bigger spaces we don't need?

- Why postpone joy for a future that isn't guaranteed?

Couple all the above with losing friends to premature and unexpected deaths and others with unexpected health crises, it lit a fire under us to figure out how to infuse life now with more play, more adventure, more travel, and be okay… no. to be completely open to receiving some of the blessings in life we had worked so hard for. The “someday” would be sooner than we thought. But could we afford to be so bold with our decisions?

But this isn't just about financial mathematics – it's about life mathematics. How do we want to spend our precious days? What memories do we want to create? What stories do we want to tell?

The revelation was simple yet profound: we don't need to wait for retirement to live a life we love. By reimagining our relationship with work, location, and possessions, we can create a life that feels like "retirement" long before we reach traditional retirement age.

The Invitation

This isn't about escaping or running away – it's about running toward a life that makes more sense. It's about questioning the assumptions we've inherited about what makes a good life and having the courage to choose differently.

What if retirement isn't a date but a way of living? What if we could weave work and life together in a way that doesn't require postponing joy? What dreams are in your heart or in your mind that are gentle and persistent nudges to sprinkle in more passion, fun, and adventure?

The choice is yours: Wait for someday, or create your someday now.

This picture is me with the sea view much like in my dream… or vision calling me here.