Both Scott and I turned 50 this year. Neither of us are into celebrating birthdays, and we are still in the midst of a pandemic, so we didn’t throw a big party or anything else extraordinary. I also wasn’t anticipating a mid-life crisis or other inflection point. In fact, I felt that turning age 48 was a bigger turning point for us. In the fall of that year, we became empty-nesters, spent a month in Costa Rica (our longest trip to date) and were set up to embark on a stretch of travel.
We did squeeze in trips to Arizona and the Philippines before the pandemic postponed the rest of our 2020 travel plans. That year was focused on staying safe and finding a new normal amidst the various restrictions. Already set up to work virtually, I threw myself into my work, figuring that we would resume our travels sooner than later.
We’re well over a year into the pandemic. While we have returned to Costa Rica this past July and did a month-long domestic road trip, more traveling isn’t so appealing right now. Working more was a welcome distraction during lockdown but I want to do something different than what I had been doing before. If not traveling more, what would be the focus of our 50’s?
My original “Perfect Day”
Five years ago, I participated in a blog challenge, where you write 10 days in a row. The organizer of the challenge posted prompts, and everyone in the challenge wrote on that same topic. Day 3 happened to be about “Visualizing Your Perfect Day.” Here’s an excerpt from what I wrote then:
My Perfect Day is not scheduled or routine, so I’m definitely not going to make this a time log – with 5a doing this and 5:30a doing that….Instead, I know my Perfect Day includes these essential elements:
- Pancakes (not eating them. I’ll explain in the details section!)
- Piano
- Exercise
- Meditation
- Journaling
- Beach
- Movies and shows
I started with pancakes because I cook them for my youngest once a week (mostly every week but sometimes we’ll go out for breakfast instead). Pancakes, to me, represents the cooking and baking at home activity with the family and for the family. When I’m doing that, it feels like a big expanse of time, even though it’s usually just an hour, sometimes even less. This activity really grounds me, whether it’s actually pancakes or roast chicken or baked pasta (three of my family’s favorite dishes of mine) or something else.
Piano is actually something new on my list because after not playing for almost 20 years, I’ve been planning almost every day for the past year, accompanying my youngest who has taken to singing. I’ve advised her to start a YouTube channel called Young Kids singing Old Songs because she’s really into the standards like Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and Misty! Piano is another activity which makes me feel like a time millionaire – I’m fully absorbed while I’m doing it and time just flies.
Exercise, meditation and journaling are the three activities in my morning ritual. I don’t do these nearly regularly enough, and that would change if I had truly perfect days. I would earmark my mornings always for exercise, plus meditation, plus journaling. I know I’m overscheduled when I miss these too many days in a row because my best thinking time is early AM, and when I choose to work in the early AM, then I know I’ve overscheduled my work!
I’m not at the beach now, so this is the biggest missing piece of my Perfect Day! Walking by the water, standing ankle-deep and looking out, watching the waves crest and fall – I would love to do that most days. We already have our condo in Florida for this purpose!
Movies or live shows is another luxury for me. I probably see something several times a week. And I have 200+ movies queued up in my Netflix account.
As you can see, I haven’t included anything specifically work-related. My Perfect Day includes elements I have now – writing, teaching, coaching, consulting, recruiting, investing. My Perfect Day would include any one of those things, many times more than one. The variety makes it perfect. I’ll just port that part of my work over to the beach!
Rethinking my Perfect Day
When I revisited that old Perfect Day post, I was struck by how many things are the same. We didn’t move the piano to Florida with us, and my youngest is in college, so I am no longer accompanying her on show tunes. However, everything else is still a priority.
I do feel a void where a creative pursuit should be. So far, visiting the beach has taken up the time where piano used to be. We went to the beach 122 times in 2020! I did take some Jazzercise classes, which was sort of like dancing. I also riffed on YouTube with a theater friend of mine on our shared love for horror movies. I’m thinking about teaching myself guitar or getting back into singing or just moving the piano down here.
Another inflection point for me is the balance between work and play. Five years ago, I was definitely 80/20 work/play. I expected this new phase to be 50/50, but I’m finding it hard to stick to that. Part of it is not having travel as part of my play list. Another significant aspect is feeling like I should be doing more. I envy my friends who can do nothing for hours or even days at a stretch and not feel guilty. I need to learn how to do that.
One of the things I’ve recently done to combat the guilt is to flip my schedule so that I don’t even start work activities till the afternoon. So far that has helped me exercise more, read more and be more consistent in my meditation time. A big drawback is that I blog much more easily in the early morning, so figuring out a new writing practice is still TBD.
Rethinking weeks, months and years ahead
Figuring out the day-to-day is still a work in progress. In addition, I want to have more certainty around how I’ll plan upcoming weeks, months and even the next few years. Even a 50/50 schedule of work and play is 20 hours a week devoted to a profession. I have been working on my career coaching business since 2008 – I am itching to do something new. That exploration will be the topic of future posts.
In the meantime, what’s your perfect day?
For more reflections on turning 50, see part 2: Rethinking The Years Ahead
We are Scott and Caroline, 50-somethings who spent the first 20+ years of our adult lives in New York City, working traditional careers and raising 2 kids. We left full-time work in our mid-40’s for location-independent, part-time consulting projects and real estate investing, in order to create a more flexible and travel-centric lifestyle. 
Financial independence and early retirement is not something we originally focused on, but over time realized it was possible. Our free report, 
as a 53 year old who could retire i can’t answer that question right now so i keep going to work at my low stress job. mrs. smidlap will stop working in a month and is much better than me filling her days with activities she enjoys like painting and sometimes just puttering around the house/garden. i don’t know about you but my taste for big/long travel has waned as i’ve gotten older.
here’s to all of us sorting it out.
I never did big/ long travel when I was younger, so I have pent up wanderlust. I guess that’s why I’m raring to go on that end. I also have only had stressful jobs, though I did like the office camaraderie so if I had a low stress job, maybe I would have kept it. Glad you’re making work, work for you
Easy, and its not today when recent surgery has me housebound and restricted to nothing more active than an occasional walk around the house. But pre and post this little forced sedentary interlude it would be a morning run with friends at 5:30AM, then tennis singles with a very tough opponent at 1 PM in 100 deg heat then pickle ball at 6 PM until about 8:30PM. Interspersed with that would be a Zoom board meeting with one of my charitable volunteer gigs or the university I mentor at. Plus cooking a nice meal for my wife and myself. But it could also be a day on the ski slopes or a day catching fish. Or even a day like today reading blogs, doing volunteer work and eating my prescribed bland diet. I have had very few bad days in my life and even today is actually a very very good day.
Lots of active exercise in your perfect day! I grew up in NYC where people walk everywhere so that was my main form of exercise. Now that I’m in a more suburban location I really appreciate the proximity to nature. Sending good thoughts for a speedy recovery!
Turning 50 was fun for me. We went to Tuscany. But from a FIRE perspective, I got more serious.
WOW, Tuscany! That sparks my wanderlust. I can also see why entering a new decade would be a spark to get more serious about FIRE. The traditional retirement age does seem a lot closer at 50 then 40 and of course 30 and earlier.
Nice article! My perfect days starts off with some light exercise/stretching, probably some woodworking in the shop, then some reading, and dinner with wife and friends + some gaming or movie watching to round out the evening. Nice to think about.
Sounds like a very balanced perfect day. I do think it’s a good thing to revisit every so often, and I was shocked to see how similar my ideal day was five years ago to what it is today.
Your perfect day sounds perfect to me!
My perfect day involves writing a great post, spending quality time with both children, playing tennis, having a nice lunch, taking a nap, and spending time with my wife.
I am traveled out. We traveled so much before having kids that I’m glad we don’t have that bug anymore. I think once our daughter turns five years old, we will start to travel and I think it’ll be a lot of fun!
It’s great you’re thinking about these things. Sometimes we just have to stop and reconsider everything.
Sam
I hear you about not wanting to travel so much with kids. When our kids were young travel was mostly road trips and definitely shorter trips. I also hear you about NAPS — love them!