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Making my mark
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
It’s a rainy March day in Laguna Beach where we are spending the winter, and therefore a perfect day to ruminate about what’s next.
We accumulate, build upon, and hone our skill sets as we go through life, hopefully to greater satisfaction with our accomplishments. After retiring, some people are able or prefer to continue to use these skills via part-time work, contract work, or mentoring. Others veer as far away from their working personas as possible, choosing to take up hobbies or passions they had put on hold for the years they were in the working world.
My working world was in hospitality: welcoming guests, creating memorable meals and curating a positive experience. A lot of this remains with me as I try to figure out who I am, and who I will be, in my next chapter.
The aspects of my previous careers (advertising, marketing, writing, innkeeping) that I most enjoyed all center around creativity, so as a rough draft attempt at self-definition, I’ll say I am now the creative director of my life. And with a lifelong love of home design and décor, I’m currently focusing my creative direction on the nesting of our home.
One thing I realized was that twenty years of creating a warm, comforting space that isn’t wholly my own has made me become very territorial about our new house. The areas I shared with guests of the B&B – the downstairs living and dining room, the guest bathroom, and the mudroom – all reflected our personality and taste, and I was happy in them. The guest rooms, by definition, weren’t mine, though in our early years, I had named and themed their decoration for the estates Chris ran when he was a butler, which was tremendous fun for me. This included things like a framed picture of Chris in situ, artwork and a small collection of books in each room related to the area portrayed, and something “butler-y”—for example, Oak Knoll, named for the estate on the Gold Coast of Long Island is also the name of an Oregon-based wine producer, and so in that room I dressed a bottle in one of those wine tuxedos and rooted a philodendron in it. Eton Court, my English-themed room, featured a series of photos of London pubs, a small bookshelf containing a complete hardcover set of Agatha Christie mysteries, and a pub towel as a dresser scarf.
While I loved these touches, about seven years into our tenure I caved to industry pressure at an innkeeper’s conference that stressed that even those of us who ran smaller professional bed and breakfasts needed to be reminded that our guests did not want to feel like they were invading our HOME. Recognizing the truth here, I sighed and removed the personal photographs, books, and tchotchkes. Over the years, the guest rooms became less and less themed, though I refused to change the artwork. They had clean lines and neutral colors, and the guests seemed to like them. Truthfully, I lost much of my interest in them.
I won’t do that again.
I’ve said for most of my life that Laguna Beach, with its artsy history and vibe, is my spiritual home, and in truth, for years I believed we’d retire here. The homes are fairly small, close-set, and vary wildly in architecture – not a single tract home–and every neighborhood has a mix of single-family homes and apartment buildings. Art abounds in public spaces everywhere, from bus benches to murals to sculptures tucked into corners of the parks. Three huge art fairs dominate the summer scene. LCAD, the Laguna College of Art and Design, is increasing its presence each year. And the town is set on a gorgeous stretch of the Pacific Ocean.
But for so many reasons, our little (?) house on the pond is a much better fit for us both. And one of the things I love about it visually was that it was unlike any other house I’d seen; what my friend Alison, with degrees in historic architecture, described as “vernacular farmhouse.” In short, it is a one-off, Laguna-esque house that predates Laguna’s founding by over a quarter of a century. (Did I mention I like old houses?) One that I could make my mark ALL over.
Back to art, one of the things I most love to do while wintering in Laguna is to take fused glass classes from my mentor Maggie Spencer. The fruits of my efforts over the many years I’ve been doing this are scattered all over our Connecticut house, though mostly displayed on shelves in the dining room. One of the projects I tackled this year was designing vanity backsplash tiles for our downstairs bathroom. It’ll likely be a while before I can install them as we plan to remodel the bath first, but I’m excited the tiles will make it unique; nothing anyone else has.
That seems to be the theme running through my head: What can I do to make our place uniquely ours? What can I do to make this project uniquely mine? What kind of story is uniquely mine to tell?
What can I do to make my LIFE uniquely mine?
When will I recognize that it already is?
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“It’s only money”
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
We’re back in Laguna Beach for the winter; a lease we signed before we bought our Connecticut house. We’ve been walking daily from Main Beach up via Heisler Park through North Laguna, where we’ve always rented before this year. The neighborhood is a mix of very expensive oceanfront houses and beachy multi-unit apartments; some of the latter have been slowly morphing into stylish modern apartment units that were never conceived as homes. The proliferation of out-of-state license plates underscores the presence of short-term vacation rentals at significantly higher monthly rates than a year-round lease would bring.
And then there are the cars. You could watch the parade of luxury vehicles on Pacific Coast Highway all day long.
Now, this is Southern California, and car culture is a real thing here. The closest Cars and Coffee Saturday meetup is heavy on Porsches, vintage Jaguars, and Aston Martins (there’s a dealership in the same parking lot). If it’s important to someone to drive a $250K vehicle (looking at you, McLaren owner), then that’s their choice. It’s only money, we say.
But money is something very front and center to you (okay, to me) when you retire. And it’s not like we haven’t faced this epiphany before. You’d think, given our respective and combined backgrounds, we’d be old hats at this.
I still recall the first time Chris fell to earth. It was shortly after he retired from butlerhood and he was planning a new driveway for our home in East Hampton. He wanted tarmac with a Belgian block apron and edging the entire length of the drive. And then he did the math and got a shock. Not so much at what it would cost – he was familiar with the relative price through several projects he’d done for past employers– but at the sudden realization that we didn’t have that sort of ready cash for such a project. For some twenty years in households of the wealthy who bought what they want when they wanted it, it had been his job to procure it. So while he assiduously shopped to get the best price, the check he wrote wasn’t his. Now it was. And WE couldn’t write that check, not without some planning, saving, and budgeting.
Lesson learned: No immediate gratification anymore.
It was a lesson that we somewhat forgot a few years later when we bought A Butler’s Manor. We were running a high-end luxury bed and breakfast, ergo the property had to look and feel great all the time. Nothing worn or tired. Shabby chic was not our style. Linens, towels, beds, guest bathrooms: crisp, ultra clean, fresh, comfortable–always. Something that broke (the air conditioner, a toilet seat, a cable box, the internet, a beach chair) needed to be repaired or replaced immediately because we faced the loss of income (and loss of face?) for every day something was out of service. This resulted in somewhat of a “no budget” world. We still had to consider how to pay for the big things, but if it was in the guest rooms, the common areas, or the garden, it was definitely going to get done sooner rather than later. I realize in hindsight how much this fueled a constant undercurrent of anxiety in me. We had to be perfect. Write the check.
But – crucially – the B&B was our livelihood. So while we never collected a salary, we had the advantage of living in this beautiful place, and we plowed pretty much all of the profits right back into the property. Thus we never were serious about a budget for maintenance, upkeep or upgrades because it wasn’t an option to leave things undone, unrepaired, or undecorated. (Our quarters and backstage areas? Not priority. It took us eight years to bite the bullet on renovating our bedroom to include an ensuite bath and private sitting areas.)
Now that neither we nor our house generate an income, I need to remember that long ago lesson once learned about immediate gratification, which is frustrating — and scary. I realize my fearful reaction is in great part due to the changes that have come about this year as a result of retirement, and that we are still transitioning, mentally and emotionally, to not being breadwinners. I need to reset my mindset around “It’s only money.” because now it’s very definitely about our money.
It has taken us close to a year to get a budget on paper. Partly because we needed the information (what does electricity cost here in the summer? winter?), but mostly because I have resisted being pinned down to numbers, resisted the idea that now we need to evaluate when or whether it’s feasible to make a large purchase such as landscaping or an irrigation system or a new truck or a kitchen remodel, and what that means for the monthly budget of buying much smaller things, like window treatments or shelving.
And, as we sigh at the meticulously restored classic cars with the customized paint jobs and the polished engine blocks, we remind ourselves of the blessings we have, the choices we’ve made, and why owning a Mercedes Benz SL Roadster right now just isn’t one of them.
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(Non) Labor Day Musings
Estimated reading time: 5 minutesSeptember 5, 2022
Today is Labor Day…and for the first time in three decades, it’s not even a notable day for us. Living as we have done in places for which tourism is a chief industry, Labor Day always marked the supposed (if not actual) End of The Season and everyone in the hospitality industry drew a collective breath of relief. Tomorrow we called Tumbleweed Tuesday (picture the tumbleweed rolling across the deserted Old West street) and pretty much every restaurant in the Hamptons will be closed for the first time in fourteen weeks. In our business, we found that the bookings did not lessen after Labor Day, but an entirely different type of guest arrived: usually from farther away than the Tri-State area, and way more laid back than the summer crowd.
Those of you who’ve (voluntarily!) transitioned into retirement ahead of me, tell me: Do people ask you if you miss your work? I can’t imagine that they do…unless maybe the askers are your old co-workers still in the job, who hope you at least miss them.
But probably because A Butler’s Manor was a very personal business, people ask Chris and me if we miss the bed and breakfast (and if we’re planning on opening another one, hahaha). So it comes as some surprise to me to find that I don’t. At all. Twenty years of hospitality resulted in wonderful memories, new skills, and great friends. Don’t get me wrong: We enjoyed being innkeepers and were, I think I can safely say, very good at it. But I didn’t realize how done I was until we closed the business at the end of last October. I didn’t realize the extent to which I needed my own space that couldn’t be invaded or compromised or interrupted by the phone or a knock or a head poked into my kitchen. I didn’t realize how much I needed not to have to talk.
I’m a nester. I fall hard for houses, and spend a lot of time and energy creating the look, feeling, and atmosphere I want, and nearly every living space I’ve ever occupied for longer than a week tends to grow roots in my heart and stay in my dreams long after I’ve moved on. Therefore, I expected that leaving ABM — where I’d lived longer than any other dwelling (including my childhood home!) — would be a huge emotional drain. After all, longevity aside, I had curated that space to not only feel like my home but to make guests feel it was their home. Perhaps because they felt it was their home, it became less of mine, and therefore was easier to leave.
So of course, I jumped into nesting the very first day we took possession of the property. To date, I have repainted walls, woodwork, and even a floor in all but three rooms in the house. I enjoy every single day spent working on a project while playing music as loud as I want…or in complete silence. It’s a continual delight to close the door on whatever isn’t finished at the end of the day rather than to hurriedly clear and clean up so that no evidence of upheaval is visible to anyone except us. And what a luxury it is to have the entire day to work on said project rather than the four hours between the end of breakfast and the start of check-in.
Nope, I don’t miss that aspect of running a B&B at all.
However, a few weeks ago when Chris brought in an overabundance of bounty from the garden (wasn’t that zucchini only 4” long yesterday?), I pulled down my B&B cookbooks and started baking…and realized that there was something I did miss. Twenty years of being able to try recipes, bake cakes, crumbles, muffins, and scones; create gooey French toast and fruit-filled crepes and apple pancakes to feed ten or twelve people at a time let me satisfy my craving for a portion without having an entire recipe to consume. (The joke was that I spent the first five years of innkeeping putting on fifteen pounds and the next ten taking it off.) It’s the baking that is more fun for me, far more than cooking, although I’d like to say I’m a pretty good cook. I just don’t get as excited about dinner as I do about dessert.
If there’s a constant in my dreams of what I might do going forward, it is finding ways to be creative daily. In the years that we ran ABM, in between redecorating a room or setting up a special welcome (for a celebration, say, or a proposal) I got my creative fix via cooking, baking, flower arranging, my breakfast plate presentations, writing the “Chatter from the Manor” blog, and more. My quest now is to find ways to incorporate creativity (and maybe my sweet tooth) into my future.
To begin, I have loads of challenges in updating the house and making it ours. Now facing a fixed budget (!!) and interested in seeing how I can adapt and reuse a lot of what is here, I started by painting a dated brass light fixture brushed nickel and replacing the shades, then painting the glass shade of another fixture to look like art glass. I may replace the fixtures with something else down the line, but in the meantime, I can happily live with these. In the meantime, even though summer isn’t really over, maybe today I’ll start on a wreath for the fall.
Time to redefine what Labor Day means to me!
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Reinstating my blog as I reinvent my life
August 20,2022
It has been nine months today since we closed on the sale of A Butler’s Manor, and about four months since we took possession of our new house in Connecticut. I have thrown myself into the organizing, painting, furnishing, and decorating of our new (old!) house with my usual manic energy, with the result that yes, it’s starting to look like I want it to and feel like home. I’m very excited about what I’ve done so far and plan to share it in more detail. But through a combination of factors, I realized that what I most needed to document is how I am learning to navigate my life in retirement. So I am reclaiming my neglected blog and committing myself to sharing my journey on it.
The hardest part of starting this conversation – and I hope it will be a conversation – is that I don’t know the ending of the story. As a writer who admittedly has concentrated more on blogging over the past however many years, I’ve always been conscious of writing pieces that wrap to a conclusion foreshadowed in the opening. So this is a challenge for me when I don’t even know which way the story will go.
The hardest part of starting this conversation is that I don’t know the ending of the story.
MeSeveral years before we actually made our decision to retire, a very wise friend suggested that I anticipate, read up on, and find ways to mitigate a very real sense of grief at stopping work — specifically, grieving who I was without my career. I knew this to be true because I had already experienced it in 1992 when I left a fairly satisfying career as an advertising and marketing director in SoCal to move to the end of Long Island, where few similar positions existed. I foundered for the first 15 months because I didn’t know how to detach my SELF from what I DID (important point: for pay). I remember a seminal moment a few months after we’d moved and I was arranging for car insurance.
The agent, filling out the paperwork, asked what sort of work I did.
“I-I’m in transition,” I stammered, using the euphemism at the time for Between Jobs.
“Okay, a housewife,” he said, writing it down.
I went home and had a meltdown. A housewife! When at the time I was anything but. Chris and I were living in a small room of a large mansion he was running, with staff who took care of everything except us. I had no home to wife, no salary, no point to my life.
It wasn’t until I began writing and taking classes in publishing and marketing that I came back to life, now feeling I could assign myself a title when faced with the question of what I did. I was a writer. And I spent the next ten years writing a memoir, three novels, and a book on wedding customs before our eventual purchase of ABM absorbed me and my writing time. Then I could also say: I’m an innkeeper. I’m a chef. I have a purpose. The purpose makes a living.
So yeah, I heard her when she said Watch out that you don’t become derailed by grief over the loss of your working self. I sought out blogs from those who had gone before (notably https://kathysretirementblog.com/), where I noted that no matter what pre-planning you may have done, Life has a way of throwing you scary curveballs like illness or incapacitation. (Too scary to contemplate right now.)
So I feel that I came into this transition a little forewarned.
We bought a 120-year old house on 1-1/2 acres of property which had formerly been a retail nursery. The property ticked off nearly all of the boxes on Chris’s and my respective wish lists: water view, no cookie-cutter architecture, proximity to shopping, services, and ferry back to visit friends in the Hamptons, room for a garden, a garage, a workshop. We have a gazebo and wandering flagstone paths through specimen trees and shrubs, a white picket fence in the front, a flagpole over the car park. A wonderful old barn gives Chris his 2-bay garage plus 2-1/2 floors of workshop and project space, as well as space for a craft room for me. The property rolls gently down to a large, river-fed pond. It also came with a 100-foot greenhouse, a smaller 40-foot greenhouse, two hoop houses, a large, deer-fenced raised garden, and a whole lot of space suitable for nursery stock. What will we do with all of that? Who knows? All options are open. And no time frame is hanging over our heads. Years and years worth of projects to keep us both busy and from falling into the “Who are we without our business?” trap.
With my usual introspection and anxiety over what I can’t control in the future, I do wonder if I’m simply prolonging the meltdown by lining up all the projects. When I finish (if I finish) all of these things, will I still need to redefine myself?
Who can relate?
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In My Words 