Baby Boomers have comprised a huge blip moving through American demographics and culture. We expanded maternity wards and schools, changed workplaces and are now remodeling late middle age and retirement. We are the first generation to have a reasonable probability of living longer after the end of our first career than that career lasted, creating a new period of life unplanned for by the basic societal norms. Jane Pauley’s new book, Your Life Calling Reimagining the Rest of Your Life deals with this phenomenon. It is based on a combination of her television segments about people reimagining their lives, research and advice of experts and her personal recollections.
Each chapter includes material from her personal experiences and information on someone who has radically changed their life with expert opinions on a certain issue. For example one chapter reminds readers that each huge journey begins with one step and another encourages readers to imagine big. She brings in stories of her parents, her years here in Indianapolis and her years advancing her career and raising her family. Each of these reflections seemed so very Hoosier and accessible to me and hopefully other Indianapolis readers. Her recollections of her mother playing the organ in her church reminded me of my first church where a mother was the organist.
The stories of reinvention are fascinating and inspiring. One lady turned her knitting hobby into a successful business. Another man became a professional sandsculpturist — I didn’t even know that profession existed! A third story focused on a man who built a brick oven in his back yard and ended up owning a pizzeria. These life reinventors are portrayed as ordinary people. Think of the people around you and you’ll see more examples. Personally, I have been an attorney, housewife and mother. Now I’m having the time of my life as an independent bookstore owner.
Pauley writes the book in an easily read conversational style, seamlessly weaving the various elements in each chapter. The book is interesting enough to read in one or two settings or can easily be read in segments. Inspire a hopeful and imaginative reinvention of life by gifting it to someone entering this new later and elongated stage of midlife.
The book is available at Bookmamas.