Job Hunting When You Don't Really Need a Job

I have worked since I was eleven....if you count babysitting. My first job was helping a neighbor in her in-home daycare center. As a teenager I made a little more money babysitting, I nannied after high school, at nineteen had my first "real" job working as a clerk for a bank, cleaned houses during my college years and over the next almost forty years accumulated a very eclectic mix of career choices that included legal secretary, benefits administrator, childcare provider, optician, bass player and writer -- the career I was always destined for.

Though my job choices have been varied, they were driven by the need to earn a living. That's probably why there's so much variety. I never felt the luxury of taking my time, being choosy and not accepting a job if it wasn't the perfect one for me. I always did what I had to do with what was available in order to support myself and my family.

In this second half, for the first time in my life I don't have to do that. It's a new feeling that I'm discovering is a little hard to get used to. I could choose to not work at all, but I can't see creating that kind of financial hardship for my family. I like having enough money and I prefer to have more than enough money, because to me money means freedom -- to do the things you want to do, to help others who don't have money and to not have to do the things you don't want to do (like take just any job).

So -- I'm out there in the online world of freelance writing opportunities, looking to make money so I can spoil my grandchildren and play unlimited golf, but realizing that this time it gets to be on my terms. I don't have to jump at anything that comes along. I don't have to accept pay that is below what I deserve for the work I deliver. I don't have to modify my schedule to accommodate someone else's.

For anyone else who's in the second half, these are things you need to remind yourself of. Because I found myself jumping a time or two, considering a lower wage and even stressing that I wouldn't be available for one job in particular because I'm currently traveling. But I'm training myself to say "no" to any of the auto-responses I would have made in the past and "yes" to what works for me to make the most of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I have living here in my second half.

That's a luxury money can't buy.