Sunday, January 30, 2022

DREAM VENTURES IN OLDER LIVES

When you were still in the working world, did you ever wonder what your life would be like when you were older or after you retired?

Did you ever think after you retired you might take up a long-desired interest you simply did not have time to thoroughly explore during your regular wage-earning professional career?  

Have you pursued such an interest, maybe engaged in something else, or might in the future?   

Perhaps there's an interest which you wish you could take up but seems unlikely you"ll ever be able to do so?

I don't know if the person described here thought about those questions, but when he retired, he was motivated to pursue further his deferred interest in playing the drums.

Harvey Leff,   aka "Styx", and others in the Physics Department at California State Polytechnic University - Pomona, near where I live, came together while still working and formed a musical group -- Out-Laws of Physics (audio recordings on the link).   They performed just for fun for their colleagues, then commemorated another with original Styx lyrics and raised scholarship funds.  Amazingly to this Physics professor and his department cohorts, their music was greeted with appreciative enthusiasm.  They were a resounding success asked to perform more on occasion.

Eventually, Harvey retired; was thoughtfully gifted by his wife,  Ellen, with a drum set.  He continued practicing and playing, taking some drumming lessons from a professional drummer jazz musician in the ZZAJ group I've enjoyed and written about.  Harvey's university musical group and he had evolved --  to paying jobs playing country, folk, pop, jazz and all sorts of music entertaining a growing number of fans.  

I met Harvey and his wife, Ellen, interesting and fun-loving people, at the free Sunday afternoon jazz concerts I started attending after my husband's death years ago.  Later, I enjoyed attending his group's appearance at a popular local restaurant that regularly features live music.

This delightful and personable couple eventually moved to a Portland, Oregon retirement community offering all levels of care to be closer to their twin sons and families.  They've become very active in their community.  Ellen chairs the movie scheduling group, also line and folk dances while Harvey and their sons have formed a musical group, the Leff Trio.  He also drums regularly with a local Portland jazz sextet.  He seems to have plenty of gigs, in that music world terminology, to keep him busy.

"Sing, Sing, Sing" -- Leff Trio.              
  (One of their numerous tunes listed on the right side bar of this You Tube link).


Here's another video of the Leff Trio performing "As Time Goes By":


Even if we are unable to fulfill long held dreams, much less don't achieve the recognition from enjoyment Harvey has given others, I think he would be the first to say the satisfaction, pleasure, fun he has been having is worth all his efforts.  He might also say that what has unexpectedly developed musically for him is simply the icing on life's cake!

Some of us may not explore our life's dream ventures in our older years for a variety of reasons, including due to complicating circumstances in our lives.  Still, anything can be possible for many!  We never know what may develop whatever our situation unless we investigate and experiment with what gives us joy.

26 comments:

  1. Yes together with my late wife a plan was drawn up, investments made and we were looking forward to doing some things together for many years when fate decided otherwise. Serious family issues followed by multiple cerebral and cardiac infarcts for my wife made me change our plans to simply live one day at a time nursing my wife to stay alive. My late father having lost his second wife moved in with us and I had to look after him too. Totally twelve years went on these matters, and I had no further inspiration to proceed with the original plans as I too developed my own health issues. I am now content to live in the present and not worry about having missed out on my ambitions.

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    1. All too often many of us as we age find what we may have looked forward to doing when we ceased working are thwarted from doing so, due to unexpected circumstances such as you describe. We each adapt in various ways to best provide us happiness and pleasure in other ways just as you describe doing and I, too, am doing.

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  2. I didn't have any career thoughts after retirement but really wanted to play more. I enjoyed water sports, skiing and scuba diving while working but when I retired I wanted to try other things. I took up kayaking and bought a motorcycle at 65. I had only ridden a cycle behind a boyfriend, never drove one. I also wanted to spend more time gardening which I did. Age has taken these past times out of the picture but it was really fun while it happened.

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    1. Glad you had some years when you could enjoy some of your dream activities.

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  3. I’m about 15 years from retiring at this point, but don’t have any huge ambitions for when I do, assuming health and money are both good. Go to museums? See my friends more? That’s about it. I love Harvey’s story, wonderful to hear of dreams realized.

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    1. You have time to develop some dreams for what more you may want to do after you retire, or maybe you'll just see what happens when you finally do.

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  4. I had some vague plans of a second career, possibly, after I retired. But I found that I liked being retired quite a bit. I did a little freelance writing/editing, but it wasn't lucrative or steady enough to pursue. Instead, I took over all my aging mother's medical concerns, and once she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, this has become a bigger part of my life.

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    1. Often it seems caregiving other family members becomes a focus and need for many after retirement and sometimes even before as first occurred for me.

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  5. This is a really good, uplifting post. Glad that he is doing so well.

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  6. I always love it when you comment on my blog. Thanks. In less than 2 weeks I will celebrate my birthday...I will be 89 and it doesn't seem possible. Believe it or not I am in better health than I have been in some of the earlier years ! I started blogging in 2006 after reading an article about "elder retirees" get great pleasure out of blogging ...and, if I'm not mistaken I think you were lauded in that article.

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    1. 89 sounds like a good number. Glad you are in better health than you have had in some earlier years. I started blogging in 2006, too, though I was still working part time then.

      What you write usually makes me think, then I can get carried away sometimes with comments I write.

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  7. Loved listening to the Leff Trio! Thank you so much!

    During my working years, I could not imagine being able to retire due to financial limitations. I could picture being semi-retired but always needing to work in order to pay my bills. If I ever were to be able to fully retire, I simply envisioned myself having more time to do those things I was already doing in my limited free time -- reading, walking, yoga, getting together with friends, and my art work.

    I never expected to find that I could live comfortably on a $1000/month Social Security check, but that is what has happened. I never expected to be given an autoharp and to learn to enjoy playing it. That has been a sweet surprise. My autoharp is currently at an autoharp repair shop so that it will have new strings and felts and will be like new!

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    1. Interested how things have worked out for you -- that you have been able to continue what gives you pleasure and have had a surprising to you musical instrument enhance your life.

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  8. I had plans and it's true what they say -- if you want to make God laugh, make plans. I don't think I could have planned the life I have now, it evolved. But I wouldn't trade it for anything!

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    1. I would agree that often how our lives evolve can often be quite different from what we might have planned.

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  9. I am one of the lucky ones that when I no longer had to make a living doing the "grunt work", I was able to realize some long held ambitions and dreams. And this latter part of my life has given me enormous joy and satisfaction. But it does take guts and letting go.
    Love the music today.

    XO
    WWW

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    1. Wonderful that your dreams materialized.

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  10. It's great to hear when it all works out like this.

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  11. My mother's recently deceased husband wished never to retire. And, in a way, he didn't. He was still working p/t into his early 80s. He even did a bit of work during his cancer treatment when well enough to do so.

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    1. He's a good example of how some people's wish is to continue working through their older years as did I, not retiring until I was 79 after having started a new profession midlife.

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  12. I don't have any great ambitions I'd like to pursue so my retirement is very humdrum. But I regularly read of others who've done all sorts of extraordinary things in their retirement - sky diving, getting degrees, running marathons, opening bookshops, you name it. Retirement certainly doesn't have to mean mindless vegetating.

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    1. Some people choose to live through their older years as you are doing, engaging in whatever gives them pleasure everyday including maybe not doing much of anything.

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  13. Dear Joared, this posting trying spoke to me. In 1989, Dulcy, the beloved cat with whom I'd lived for 17 1/2 years died and amazingly gave me a book about our relationship--how she'd trained me and how we'd come to the deep love that bonded us. I was 54 at the time and Crown published "A Cat's Life: Dulcy's Story."

    For years afterward, I wanted to be published again. Longed to be . . . to have my dreams of writing--dreams I'd had since childhood--come true until I was no longer able to write. I spent nearly three decades trying to interest an agent in representing my writing. No success with that.

    Then in 2018, when I was 82, I self-published "Prayer Wasn't Enough: A Convent Memoir" about my nearly 9 years in the convent back in the 1960s. A number of people have read the book and monthly maybe 4 or 5 copies still sell on Amazon.

    Always I say a "Thank you" when a copy of "A Cat's Life" or "Prayer Wasn't Enough" is purchased by someone. A "thank you" that someone else in our world is meeting the sweetness of Dulcy and coming to appreciate the wonder of feline love and a "thank you" that readers are discovering through my writing what life in a convent used to be like and about the immaturity that can cause such great pain when we try too hard to be perfect.

    I continue now (I"ll be 86 in April) to write. It is the passion that keeps my heart young and my spirit soaring.

    Thank you for the two videos. I sang along while listening. Joy.

    Peace.

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    1. Glad that you’ve had the satisfaction of writing and had some published books fulfilling your desires. Now with blogging you can continue your passion writing there, too.

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