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Trying Out

 Nice way to test-drive a common retirement dream - own and indie bookshop. Is it all that one imagines it would be or is reality too far away from the romance of the idea. Best way to find out is to try it for a few days. I can see this being possible for any kind of dream that a person wants to live once they retire. A good friend of mine spent decades planning her ideal retirement - being a park-ranger at Denali National Park. She ended up being a volunteer for a summer at another national park. It was not quite Denali and she was not a park-ranger. A number of things did not work out quite as planned, so she got to live a distant shadow of her long-cherished dream. And that was not even the worst of it. 

That summer experience as watered-down as it was compared to her aspirations, turned out to be not really what she imagined - she did not see herself doing it for much longer any other place or time. A is now a volunteer helping migrant children who are stuck in never-ending limbo at the US-Mexico border. There was a time when she had strong political opinions on the topic. Now as someone who is seeing reality up close every day, A is surprisingly without any thoughts on what is going on, the rights and wrongs. She focuses solely on helping those children have a better day. It is highly tactical - she collects books, toys and other donations and brings them over to these kids, spends time with them. 

She refuses to think beyond that. By limiting her range of concerns, she had been able to find peace and meaning in what she does, It is not quite the dream of being a park-ranger at Denali but it makes her perfectly happy. It would be great for people to experience the different styles of retirement they could have, see what works best for them. A just lucked into a situation that works well for her even when her dream was never fulfilled. Not everyone is quite as lucky. I for one would love to test-drive my version of being an indie book-shop owner. 

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