R<\/span>ecently I had dinner with an artist friend. Now sixty-seven, he still works daily as a writer, radio personality and teacher. The conversation wandered to my current writing and my musing on the subject of retirement. \u201cArtists don\u2019t retire,\u201d he said simply.<\/p>\n It\u2019s true. Tom Meehan, at eighty-three, had two musicals on Broadway in one season. Today, at eighty-six, he has a new show in the works. Roman Totenberg, an esteemed violinist and teacher, taught \u2013 and performed \u2013 until his final days, well into his nineties. Frank Lloyd Wright passed on at ninety-one with an unfinished building standing in Oak Park, Illinois. B. B. King toured until six months before his death at age eighty-nine. Oscar Hammerstein II lived until he was only sixty-five, but just long enough to see The Sound of Music<\/em> open on Broadway. His final song, \u201cEdelweiss,\u201d was added to the show during rehearsal.<\/p>\n What do we all have to learn from this? Self-expression in something that does not \u2013 and should not \u2013 ever stop. Each of us is creative. Each of us has something unique to bring to the world. We have both time and experience on our side. Retirement is a time to tackle projects and unlock dreams, a time to revisit the past and explore the unknown. It is a time to design our future.<\/p>\n The bedrock tool of a creative recovery is something I call Morning Pages: three pages of longhand morning writing about absolutely anything. They are to be written first thin in the morning and shown to no one. There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages. IU like to think of them as windshield wipers, swiping away anything that stands between you and a clear view of your day.<\/p>\n The pages may seem petty and trivial \u2013 \u201cI forgot to buy birdseed. I\u2019m not impressed with the new dishwashing liquid . . . but they forge the trail for further adventures in creativity.<\/p>\n The pages notify both us and the universe precisely where we\u2019re at. I often think of them as a form of active meditation. Another way to think of them is as a tiny whisk broom that dislodges dust from every corner of our life.<\/p>\n The second major tool of a creative recovery is something I call an Artist Date. It is a once-a-week, solo expedition on which you explore something that interest or entrances you. Expect to meet resistance when you propose to your self-doing something fun. Morning Pages are work, and we undertake the work willingly. We seem to understand the notion of \u201cworking\u201d on our creativity.<\/p>\n Artist Dates, by contrast, are assigned play. And even though we give lip service to the phrase \u201cthe play of ideas,\u201d we don\u2019t always truly understand how fun can help us. Those who undertake Artist Dates report insights, hunches, and breakthroughs. They report a heightened sense of well-being. Some go as far as to say Artist Dates give them a conscious contact with a power greater than themselves.<\/p>\n Plan an Artist Date ahead of time \u2013 that\u2019s the \u201cdate\u201d part of Artist Date. Then watch how your inner killjoy swings into action. Suddenly, there are a million things that should be done instead. Our significant other begs to join us. But no. Artist Dates are to be undertaken by ourselves, alone. When we stick to our guns, we are rewarded by a heightened sense of autonomy.<\/p>\n An Artist Date need not be expensive or exotic . . . The point of the Artist Date is that it is something that feel fresh and exciting to you.<\/p>\n It’s never too late to begin again<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4794,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2016","category-fall-2016-columns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4612"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4617,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612\/revisions\/4617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Morning Pages<\/h4>\n
Artist Dates<\/h4>\n
It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again: Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Midlife and Beyond<\/em>, by Julia Cameron, (TarcherPerigee; \u00a9 2016) excerpt used with permission<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"