Two major events informed me what I was going to do in my senior years, and what pivots I needed to make to survive them happily. It helped me to have a strong business background, a vibrant contact list, the energy and work ethic to be available to clients 24/7 and a law firm flexible and creative enough to give me the time and space to put some unconventional ideas into place.

Considering conventional retirement. The first critical event happened in my 50s when I visited my in-laws in their 55-and-over Florida community. My sentence was one week, and it was a brutal week for the natives.

Suffice to say the experience was less than what I was hoping for on many levels. I knew, then, that anything resembling a conventional retirement was not in my future.