Life Goals

A

Aging Pilot

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I'm posting this here anonymously only because there are people on here that likely know me outside the forum and I don't want the topic to somehow come back and bite me down the road as some sort of sign of depression and could use some advice. For those of you in the second half of your life (think mid 40's or later), how did you cope with realizing that most of your major life milestones are already over? Our only daughter is heading off to college next year and most of my life up to this point has been looking forward to and working towards major life milestones (graduating college, getting married, buying a house, getting a masters degree, having and raising a kid, etc). I have no complaints about life so far but always thought that after getting the kid off to college that retirement would be the next major milestone to look forward to.

I thought I would spend retirement somewhere other than where we currently live while exploring and doing new things in a new area that we couldn't do while working full time. I was under the impression that would be the next major life milestone to work towards but my wife seems to have other thoughts as we start to talk more about retirement. We currently own a house that is way too big for two people but it is on a few acres and we spent considerable time and effort over the years on clearing land, building a barn, large greenhouse gardens, raising few horses, goats, dogs, etc. I enjoyed hobby farming as a family and all the horse competitions and events with my daughter and wouldn't change any of it but I now realize that my wife has formed a firm attachment to the house and has no desire to ever sell it or live somewhere new when we retire. I can't stand the snow and cold winters here and don't see how I am going to be able to keep up with all the chores a small farm requires as I get older. Having a small farm will also make it very difficult and expensive to travel in retirement as you need to hire someone to take care of the animals and the property every time you want to go somewhere for more than a day.

To tie this back to flying, 10 years ago I also gave up flying an airplane I spent almost a decade building for all the typical reasons (money was tight at times, family and life took up alot of free time, and the consequences my wife and daughter would have to live with if something bad happened all because I engaged in a risky hobby became much more real). I had thought that maybe after my daughter was done with college that building another airplane or getting the one in my garage flying again and using it to explore the country could be something to look forward to but those risks are still too real for my wife and although she isn't forbidding it, she has expressed that she would be much happier if I chose not to take it up as a hobby again. I am struggling to come up with something to look forward to in the future and just envision every day between now and when I die of old age being exactly the same, in the same place, doing the same things. Although I have traveled quite a bit for work I have always lived in the same 20 mile radius area my whole life and there doesn't seem to be any big life goals to work toward anymore if we are never going to live anywhere else. You pretty much have seen and done everything in the local area after living in the same location for 50 years. I don't really see this as your typical mid life crisis as I truely am happy with life right now. I just don't see anything big or exciting to work toward in the future and am struggling with it. I can't be the only one who has ever had this problem. For those of you currently in the same type of spot or those of you who are older and already retired, how did you deal with realizing you are getting older and your life goals may be dwindling without it causing you to get depressed thinking about it? How did you work though very different retirement plans with your spouse? How did you deal with the risks of flying vs the potential consequences to those you love?
 
I'm in a somewhat similar place in retirement where I want to go on adventures and my wife just wants to sit in her nest and go nowhere. Literally, no where.

I have no solution but, I too, am struggling with the problem.

It's strange in that our very first date was an adventure and we have had many over the years. But she has changed and I have not.

Two years ago I finally told her I was going on a bucket-list adventure (flying coast to coast and back in my home built). She supported me at the time, but it was with a caveat that this kind of sefish expenditure should not be repeated.

To be clear, we are not rich and this was a selfish expenditure, so I don't begrudge her feelings on this.

So I'm stuck. She won't go anywhere and I have to agree it's not fair for me to spend our limited resources just on myself.

If money weren't a sticking point I wouldn't have a problem making my own plans. I'm quite happy doing things all by myself.

I don't see an obvious solution for myself.

Getting old changes some people.

I would add that if money is not such an issue in your case, that you have a right to your own happiness. Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself in this life to achieve your own happiness.
 
It's also more fun to share the experiences with someone.

I haven't had the same struggle as the OP describes exactly, but I am in a similar place dreaming about retirement...with my primary motivator being that I want more time to travel, and just in general to do "stuff". Maybe build a homebuilt, maybe go for a month or two backpacking trip on a long trail, maybe just take some fun min-trips....

My wife and I like to travel but her idea is short jaunts.... like a few weeks up to maybe a couple months, then back "home" Me on the other hand I look at "home" as an anchor pulling me back and limiting how far we could go! Also for her home is here.... so our three kids can come back to their roots... Add to that she wants to stay "close to the kids, hoping for grandkids"...but I think that there's no telling where the kids will land and they're likely to be scattered in three different directions so there's no sense in planning for all of that!

We used to talk about full or part-time motorhome RV-ing. She has turned to part-time only. I've switched my dream to doing a similar full-time idea except on a boat...just for a few years. She's not on board with that idea so I have resolved myself to either doing part-time in an RV...or maybe just doing month-long or season-long trips and staying in VRBO type rentals. I'm ok with that too. I could spend a summer someplace in Europe, then come back to home base. Later maybe a few weeks out West someplace, etc...

I'd still rather sell it all and go full time for just a few years, while I'm still young and healthy enough...then settle someplace...and find some new goals then... but at this point anyway that's not appealing to her so we'll find a compromise in there somewhere when the time comes.
 
I wish I could help. I am 79 and still working part time as a flight instructor. That is about to change because the insurance company won't cover me at the flight school after December 31st. Nevertheless, I will continue to look for opportunities to give flight reviews or even primary training elsewhere.

As things slowed down, I decided to take a course at a local college, which gave me some reasons to meet deadlines. I enjoyed that and may take another. As a veteran, I do not have to pay tuition. I guess this is Maslow's "self-actualization."

We do some traveling, but my 101-year-old mother-in-law lives with us and is barely mobile. So, we stay close or limit our time away. We need a break now and then, so another one of her children will come here and stay with her while we go to Florida or some other warm place in winter for a week.

At one point we thought about the RV life, but after renting one, decided it wasn't for us.

My goal for 2025 is to get rid of all those possessions that I've accumulated and no longer use. Give away, sell, or discard.
 
I've never been one to worry about "milestones", and I refuse to have a "bucket list". There are things I've done and things I'd still like to do, but I know I won't do them all and that's OK. Life is an interesting journey, it's not about the destination. The kids are grown and on their own and there are two grandchildren now.

I'm 65 and expecting to retire next year; I have so many things I want to do that I don't have time to go to work. Not "milestones", I just want to keep building things, hiking, flying, traveling. I have the plane and my wife has "her" RV. She really doesn't like flying so when I needed to go light-sport last spring I traded for a single seat plane. Sometimes I travel with her in the RV and more often she travels alone, sometimes I fly to meet her. I expect we'll travel more together once I retire.

I expect we'll sell the house eventually and move to someplace smaller, there's nothing holding us where we are, but with the RV and the cabin I doubt we'll be in the house for more than six months a year.
 
As a relative youngster (51), we just blew the whistle on the third quarter and are using the television time out to discuss what the fourth quarter game plan looks like compared to what we expected it to look like.

Even when we talk with each other instead of at each other, there’s a lot of gray in the ‘how’. Since how is only half the equation, we’re starting to talking about the why.

Hopefully by understanding each other’s why, we will find the how. The whiteboard has been erased as we talk thru this.

Time, talent, and treasure are the things we have to give, receive, and manage. Generosity doesn’t have to be money-based and generous people seem to be happiest.
 
Don’t worry about long terms, find a new interesting challenging hobby that will occupy you for few years. Then rinse and repeat, after a few times and a few years you will have a diverse range of hobbies that your interest ebbs and wanes back and forth between to keep you content and occupied.
 
First off, with regard to the airplane part…you gave that up, at least in part, because it was a “risky activity.” It isn’t any less risky now, so it’s not an unreasonable thing for your wife to not want you to go back to it because of the risk.
Edit: a good compromise would be something like @tspear mentions below, something with a chute would be,at least, a perceived safety factor that could tip the scales.

Otherwise, my wife and I are on the cusp of retirement, and are still figuring out what it will look like. Part of the problem is imagining a sudden change in lifestyle, so the plan is to work probably two weeks a month, and have the other two weeks for building a retirement lifestyle. My wife had suggested a full-time RV lifestyle for a while, and while I think I could do that, I really don’t think she could, so we’re going to keep a home base, and make 5 or 6 RV jaunts per year, and are planning to use some of that for some volunteer work at individual churches within our church body.

That will also give us the opportunity to figure out if there’s a place we’d rather retire to than where we currently live…We’ve been here for the last 13 years, and only recently has my wife started building a “tribe” here that she connects with, and that might make this a possibility.

We anticipate visiting kids/grandkids more often, and being a little more involved in their lives. My grandsons (5 and under) are my workshop buddies…we’d be able to do some bigger projects as time and skills permit (assuming that interest continues…if not, we’ll do other things.)

I agree with @Dana in that there’s nothing wrong with a major goal being simply to continue the journey, and with @TCABM that generosity with time, talent, and treasure is an important component of that.
 
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OP,

Looking at everything as a single large problem will get you nowhere.
Break the issues down.
1. Work on the flying aspect. For many, this is sacrilege. Get or rent a Cirrus; and walk your spouse through the chute. Although this does not have a significant effect on the actual fatal statistics, it has an incredible effect on the emotional fear aspects for a lot of spouses.
2. In terms of the house. Immediately stop doing everything, tell your spouse you want to prepare for the time when you are not physically capable to manage everything. So you are going to hire someone to do it for you. When your spouse sees the bill, she will either accept what it costs and the associated impacts on your savings, or agree to sell the house.
3. You spouse does not appear to have any incentive to want to go anywhere. My wife and I have created some fun projects we want to do when retired. e.g. Visit all fifty states, and take a picture in front of the state capital building. A second one, is to visit a Jazz club in every major metro area. A third one will be to land at all public airports within 100 miles of my retirement home base. A friend has done one with his wife, to visit every American Girl Doll store in the USA.
4. Talk to your spouse, find what are the barriers to going somewhere. Only once you know the barriers, can you look to eliminate/reduce them.

Sometimes it is the journey, sometimes it is the destination. But I always am looking to make one aspect of that enjoyable for my better half.

Tim
 
Aging Pilot said:
How did you cope with realizing that most of your major life milestones are already over?
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I set new milestones. I had a career in the Navy with milestones and a civilian engineering career and my family and several other ways to view my life and they all have goals and milestones and when one milestone is knocked down I often found another right behind it.
 
172andyou said:
It's weird to see a question like this pop up when millions of men in the same position have already answered it. OP is clearly going through a midlife crisis and the cure is a girlfriend, a gym membership and a corvette...
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For a less likely to cause bad “unintended consequences” result, I recommend this hobby instead.

Set a 5 year goal to shoot a trophy bull elk.. with a flintlock…that you made.
You have two acres, enough room for a practice range, you have horses and presumably a trailer to haul them to be able to ride and pack gear into a remote region of mountains. Flintlocks are darn hard to get good with so will occupy a lot of time in the “off season” practicing. Elk are very hard to hunt, so years of trips might go by with even getting a shot, let alone at a big one.
I recommend a 58 caliber kit from Jim Kibler in extra fancy maple..
 
I also like @Flatiowa ’s suggestion of basically building from scratch the components necessary to achieve a goal, whatever that goal may be, rather than throwing money at it to make it happen faster and easier.

I will also note that retirement discussions with my wife have evolved significantly over he years, from things like unsupported long range bicycle touring to not being able to discuss retirement without my wife ending up in tears pretty quickly to the current iteration. And it’ll probably change some more before retirement is over with. The “tears” era was extremely frustrating, but it’s all part of the journey.
 
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I have found that retirement is kind of its own reward. I have goals, but there's no driving "I gotta get this done" behind them. Goals, not timelines. Anything I accomplish, I do because I want to. I'm taking the opportunity to allow myself to get sidetracked once in a while, though I have started imposing a little self-discipline around not starting things and leaving them laying around half-done. Either finish it, or dump it. But I've started writing with a fountain pen again, growing things, reading more, doing more bicycling and walking, driving to a store more often to look at or buy things in place of just ordering from Amazon, and so on. I'm getting the garage and my office cleaned up - very time consuming, but very rewarding and the source of the occasional sidetrack. We're vacationing more often... two cruises and a week in a state park lodge this year. We're getting together with friends for lunch or dinner at least once a month. I was repeatedly warned about people who retire and decline into just sitting around doing nothing, but honestly I have yet to meet anyone who's not as busy after retirement as they ever were, if not busier. I know I'm fairly busy, but a lot happier.

I hear you on the property thing. We bought our house 20 years ago when we had five kids at home, and it's really bigger than we need (though still full to the rafters with "stuff"). I had plans to move somewhere warmer too, but like you we've plowed a ton of time and money to make this place exactly what we want. All of our grandkids and most of our kids are here, so I'm pretty sure they'll carry me out of this house feet first. I've accepted that. In your case, maybe figure out what you DON'T want to do any more and adjust accordingly. Do you really want to keep the animals around? If they're gone, you have more flexibility for travel. As much as we'd love to have another dog around, we like the freedom to pack our stuff and leave for an indefinite period without worrying about a dog sitter or kennel.

I also know more than a couple of people who have retired and gotten divorced. I worked my ass off for a very long time so we could enjoy our later years, and I'm not about to let anything screw that up. Yes, my wife has changed over the years, as have I. Priorities, interests, and so on. Gotta adjust and find a way to make it work. I support her insanely time consuming and expensive hobby (quilting) and she tolerates mine (airplane building, car restoring, and a few others that rotate weekly). The stuff I can't put up with... well, I find other things to do or other places to be to avoid those pi**ing me off too much.

If you're 15-20 years out from retirement now, the best advice I would give would be to max out your retirement savings (including HSA) whenever you can. Not having to worry about money after you retire is probably the biggest stress relief you'll ever find.

If you have an airplane in your garage... nothing says it can't be a "retirement project". If you can get some work done on it before then, great. If your wife isn't happy with you flying, just know that generally speaking they get over that once you've been at it for a couple of years without killing yourself. She may never want to fly with you -- mine won't -- but that just changes the mission, not the desire.
 
Aging Pilot said:
For those of you currently in the same type of spot or those of you who are older and already retired, how did you deal with realizing you are getting older and your life goals may be dwindling without it causing you to get depressed thinking about it?
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I'm 63, retired at 59. I can't imagine that my "goals may be dwindling." Set some new goals!

There's always something new to learn, some new project to take on, some worthwhile cause to champion. I've become involved in a variety of charities and taken on new responsibilities. I've done two pro bono engineering projects (a home for women rescued from sex trafficing and a school in an impoverished village in the mountains of Sudan). I, along with SWMBO, have become a year-round volunteer with Samaritan's Purse. I've mentored an at-risk high school student. I planned and organized a church trip to Israel (unfortunately cancelled due to the war). And that's not the half of it. There's travel, flying, hunting and fishing, guitar, and lots lots more. Lots of projects around the house, too.

If you want advice, it's this: get outside of yourself and do some things that focus on others. There's lots of need for people with talent and leadership skills to help out in all sorts of organizations: charities, church groups, political organizations, etc., etc. Also start to cultivate some new hobbies, take some classes, learn to play an instrument or to paint or whatever. Exercise your mind.

The happiest retirees I know are people who became so busy they didn't have time to go to work anymore.


Aging Pilot said:
How did you work though very different retirement plans with your spouse?
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Fortunately our goals and priorities are very similar so this hasn't really been an issue. Also, we're both comfortable with letting the other do things and take trips solo.


Aging Pilot said:
How did you deal with the risks of flying vs the potential consequences to those you love?
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Life insurance. The challenge is to find that sweet spot in coverage amount that's enough to ease your wife's worry, yet not so much that she's motivated to smother you in your sleep.

Over the years, my hobbies have included automobile racing, cave diving, wreck diving, motorcycles, and flying. My wife knows I'm not reckless and that I do these things as safely as possible. She rides horses, which has its own risks. Neither of us has ever discouraged the other from doing things we want to do. For us, marriage is about encouraging and enabling and helping each other do things; it's not about needing the other's permission.

Life isn't about avoiding all risk. Risks are things to be managed and reduced to an acceptable level, but I don't intend to let them be insurmountable obstacles. I love the Hunter S. Thompson quote: “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, 'Wow! What a ride! '”

If that's not where your head is, and if it's not where your wife's head is, I'm not sure what to tell you. You can't pursue aviation without somehow becoming comfortable with the risks remaining after you've mitigated as much as you can.
 
To the op: with horses you can get a good 20 miles into back country in one day, even if you don’t care for hunting. Sometimes a week away from the world is worth more than a year of travel. I also live close to where I grew up (one mile to be exact, but I doubled my dads moving 1/2 mile from where he grew up lol). I actually did retire very young close to twenty years ago, spent two years traveling (frequent road trips across the country) but that very quickly lost it’s appeal. Then got bored and got a full time job at a company a few miles from home that I actually believed in its product (cheap, nutritious food) as something to do and a bit of social interaction, and am still there coming up to 15 years latter. The world is the same no matter where you go, just different faces. But recommend watching this, it might be something you have never considered.
 
Give & take (compromise), and money is a solution. Here’s what I mean:

Risk of flying? Buy a life insurance policy that will make her comfortable.

Can’t sell and move away forever? Winter home down south, pay a caretaker up north. Or spend some winter weeks apart.

Build a plane, focus on building especially in the winter months.

Find some hobbies and new friends or reacquaint with old ones, now that your daughter and activities have waned.

You shouldn’t be miserable, nor should you be selfish, and same for your wife. If you take each of your current attitudes to their logical end, you are going to go your separate ways and miserable, or stay together and both be miserable, and hopefully that not what either of you wants. Compromise is one answer from my seat in the stands. And money fixes a lot of stuff BUT its future utility is overvalued - spend some of it now and be happy.
 
1) you are not the first person to have this issue - there are in fact professionals who counsel people on this. You wouldn't rewire your house without consulting an expert; this isn't that different.
2) your wife may not realize it now but if you can't manage the "farm" five years from now - that reality isn't going to change. What can you do to make that clear without being hurtful?
3) once #2 is addressed, you may find it a lot easier to develop some shared goals to pursue

Lastly, and I cannot stress this enough; these are huge life changes you are talking about (retirement, children leaving home, moving, etc) and you should not expect them to be solved on an anonymous forum or without effort relative to their magnitude.

Godspeed.
 
I think you have 3 choices:
1. Stay where you are, do what you do, and learn to enjoy it for the rest of your life. Pick up another hobby, like photography, RC planes...
2. Stay where you are, but do things without your wife some part of the time (weekends, holidays...): fly, travel, etc. You can find people and groups to do this with. Your wife will stay on the farm and take care of everything. Both of you will be happy.
3. Leave that life (yes, divorce) and create a new life.

Pretend you are 80 and ask yourself how much regret you would have for doing options 1-3.
 
You went from doing something everyday to not, with no hobbies to fill your time, that’s tough. You can get stuck in a box like your wife and other wives have or you can pick up new hobbies. Just try everything and see what interests you.

Flying is a risk, but personally I rather die flying than of cancer, but I’ll probably die of cancer anyway. Flying is pretty safe.

Musts: Sell your house and get a reasonable condo in a prime location for your lifestyle (beach, city, whatever), hire a cleaner. Do not be a slave to your dang property. Hire that stuff out.

Travel and enjoy, you can go by yourself. It’s tough, but you can do it.

Get your hobbies going, go to the gym and keep healthy!! Eat healthy (no fried or salty stuff), fasting, lots of veggies. Do yoga, get a CFI rating, teach new pilots, contribute to your community, join EAA, go to A&P school, I could go on…
 
DaleB said:
I was repeatedly warned about people who retire and decline into just sitting around doing nothing, but honestly I have yet to meet anyone who's not as busy after retirement as they ever were, if not busier.
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My father was a truck driver. He retired in his 60s, and went to the Teamsters business agent to sign up for his pension. The agent told him, "If you're like most drivers, you probably won't collect more than about 12 of these pension checks."

Dad asked for an explanation. "Well, you guys worked hard all your lives, and after you retire, you sit down in front of the TV with a six-pack, and after about a year, your heart gives out."

But like you said, he was busier than ever after retirement, and lived to be just two weeks short of his 80th birthday.
 
Wife: "I would be much happier if you didn't go back to flying."

Me: "You're starting to sound like my ex wife."

Wife: "I thought you weren't previously married."

Me: "I wasn't."

Flying isn't just a hobby. It's your identity. It's who you are. I would grow to resent a woman who drove me away from it.
 
Jon Wilder said:
Wife: "I would be much happier if you didn't go back to flying."

Me: "You're starting to sound like my ex wife."

Wife: "I thought you weren't previously married."

Me: "I wasn't."

Flying isn't just a hobby. It's your identity. It's who you are. I would grow to resent a woman who drove me away from it.
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I’m going to file that one under “self-fulfilling prophecy“…
 
I'm definitely not at that point either, but I'm at the point in life where I finally feel like I understand old people, and there are fewer of them the more I become one!

And, I do think about this a lot. So thank you for posting.

Lndwarrior said:
So I'm stuck. She won't go anywhere and I have to agree it's not fair for me to spend our limited resources just on myself.

If money weren't a sticking point I wouldn't have a problem making my own plans. I'm quite happy doing things all by myself.

I don't see an obvious solution for myself.
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Maybe you can learn a new hobby that can also make you some money, so that you can spend the extra money doing things you want by yourself?
 
OP- are you are telling yourself the answer (“…some sort of sign of depression…”) with the rest of the post explaining why?

like others have suggested, growing apart happens

Good luck
 
Aging Pilot said:
For those of you currently in the same type of spot or those of you who are older and already retired, how did you deal with realizing you are getting older and your life goals may be dwindling without it causing you to get depressed thinking about it?
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For me it's taking stock of the life lived so far and how fortunate I have been. Sure, life has thrown me a few curves and one significant curve that I never imagined, but overall I am blessed and if I checked out tomorrow I have had a good life. From what you have said it sounds like you have had a great life so far that many would envy!

Aging Pilot said:
How did you work though very different retirement plans with your spouse?
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I can't offer any advice from experience here, but I do understand your dilemma. As you get older physical activity will definitely get harder. I'm 57 and I'm amazed at how much I have lost from a strength/endurance perspective over the last year. And I always feel it now the next day after physical exertion. Hopefully you can have an open, honest and frank discussion with your wife so she can understand how difficult it will be to keep up a farm, let alone allow some modest travel.

My wife and I are about a month away from retirement and while we're mostly aligned on retirement plans I think we both understand things can change and as long as we're flexible things will probably work out. If they don't then we can change goals and plans...

Aging Pilot said:
How did you deal with the risks of flying vs the potential consequences to those you love?
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I have never felt that flying was that risky in itself. Absolutely there is risk involved, but that risk increases the further you get away from day VFR over flat open areas. You can definitely make flying relatively safe by your practices. Sure, accidents happen, but that's life. I feel much safer in the air than my 25 min participation in the I-84 Grand Prix during my drive to/from the airport...

Best wishes, good luck and blue skies!
 
Compromise is the key to marriage.

Keep the house. Your wife feels it is her forever home. Don't take that away from her. Plus your grandkids are going to love visiting the farm.

Talk to your wife about flying. Tell her it is important to you and you want to start again. Reassure her concerns by telling her concrete measures you will take to be safe.

Try not to worry too much about the future. Life throws you curve balls, and sometimes they hit you square in the face. Ask me how I know. Be grateful for the happiness you have now, and live each day to the fullest.
 
As they say one day at a time. Hopefully you can have a reasonable conversation with the wife so you can continue flying happily with no stress
 
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What..?? oh, goals.

This is why I should use my reading glasses to read...
 
Retired 28 years ago. at 83, I never missed a beat by doing other things I never really had time for while working including flying. When I retired I asked my wife "Why don't we move to Charleston SC or Steamboat Springs Co where we had spent weeks every year. She replied "What about the Kids?" (Kids being 29 and 30 and living nearby). Ok.

Compromise reached. No move but winters in CO and weeks in Charleston. After a few years, Wife stays home winters and we visit a few times.

Took a part time winter job in CO. Back to flying including Seaplane Rating (going for Glider this year). Lots of travel to Europe and the States, sometimes solo most time with my wife and later girlfriends. After my wife of 50 years passed, three girl friends (first moved to FL, still friends, second passed away and the third is the best yet and a keeper).

As for the OP, sell off some acreage and animals, keep the house and use the money to travel to places you both want to see or either one wants to see, buy an annuity/life insurance for the wife's benefit and go flying or whatever "risky" stuff floats your boat.

I have met and know two kinds of retired people. Ones that were so consumed with their work life that they are a complete mess when it is over and those who basically say "Well that horrible/wonderful phase is over, i'm going to do something else". Something else can be something you always wanted to do or something that you eventually find out you really enjoy. If nothing comes up, you aren't looking hard enough.

Life is too short to stress over crap you can't do anything about.

Edit: Setting a goal is nice but it is important to realize, achieving the goal is nice but not really that important. What is important is the enjoyment of working to achieve it. If you lose interest or just can't get there, at least you had fun along the way. If by some miracle you do get there, pick another one.
 
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The wife and I spent the last 30 years building a horse farm together.
They change you.

Where most people take a vacation, when horse people travel, you're calling the place two or three times a day to see if everyone's OK. We hardly got unpacked on a rare ski trip before the phone rang to tell us one of the idiots ran through a fence and had a cut deep into the joint capsule. Saying " just find someone to take care of the place for a few days" says real easy, but does oh, so hard. Dealing with downed fence boards, frozen pipes, colic, the parade of potential horribles goes on and on. There was a time we had good farm hands and got away some, but these days simply finding a warm body to reliably show up to feed and muck out for a couple days "staycation" is hard enough, never mind finding an experienced adult to take full responsibility when you're away.

We're facing this same " What's next" question soon. We're both 65, and honestly I have about had it. If I never saw another horse I'd be a happy man. Those 60 lb bales are getting heavier. The thought of digging up another buried water line to fix a leak...I just don't want to. EVERYTHING from hay and feed to bedding and fenceboards has gotten outrageously expensive. We don't need to do this, the place is paid for and we owe nobody anything. Retirement is funded, life is good, we just have a short leash.

I have a beautiful Comanche that spends too much time in the hangar. We used it quite a bit to travel down to see the in-laws (day trips, wheels up by 10a after taking care of the horses, home before 4p to do it all again.) but now that they are both gone, I go out to shoot approaches and dream of the Bahamas and plan trips we won't take because of " what about the horses?". I've taken some weekend trips alone, but feel guilty leaving her all the work. The wife loves the place, and the horses. She no longer shows, but foxhunts two or three times a week. Knee replacements are on her horizon, so life won't be getting any easier starting in Feb. But bottom line is I won't break her heart.

We've started talking about what's next, but have reached no conclusions. We could sell the place lock, stock and barrel, but she's not ready. We could rent out the facility to another trainer, or even help another trainer get started. I could go for a nice little lake place. We really haven't been any place we would consider a better alternative.

Not really looking for answers. Thanks for the chance to vent.
 
Plenty of things to do, and not all of them aviation-related.
Join an EAA chapter and help with Young Eagles or pancake breakfasts.
Consider ham radio. Building your own high power amplifiers and antennas can be just as much fun as building an airplane.
Learn to scuba dive. 40% O2 feels really good. It's called geezer gas for a reason.
Learn how to play a musical instrument. Join a band.
Build a go-kart or a small race car, take it to the track once or twice a month. It can be a lot of fun twaking suspension set-ups in search of an extra tenth of a second.

One key to a successful marriage is both parties understanding that there's me time, you time and us time. It's ok to do things on our own, sometimes. You can be at your ham radio club meeting while she's taking a pottery class.
 
Don’t necessarily show her your original post, but talk to her about how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking. See how she’d go for some of the options you might be thinking after all your POA friends have chimed in now. There’s a compromise there somewhere that doesn’t involve lifelong misery or selfishly blowing the whole thing up.
 
I've always been a workaholic and I thought I'd suffer in retirement, but I was wrong. I was really worried I'd be one of those guys that would languish "with nothing to do". Dang, there is a lot to do and I'm loving it.

When I sold my company I had a 1-year leash where I was on-call to the buyer and couldn't do anything else. They never called so I filled the gaps with bucket list items. Got my ME, got my ASES, got back to building my CH750, traveled, volunteered. If they had called, I would have had to tell them I had no time to work. After I was freed, I found my bucket list items had turned into hobbies and I'm as busy now as I ever was. But truly stress free with the ability to completely control my schedule. Owning your own timeline is the best thing ever.

Financially, we were blessed to be able to retire debt free (I recommend it if possible) and my wife and I agreed I'd work enough to pay for my hobbies and out travel so we never had to touch our investments so I avoid guilt there. If you're still paying bills it's more complicated.

We're in a too big house and will downsize somewhere eventually once we agree where. We're not close on where so we might be here forever. I'm OK with that.

I don't really know what my next "goal" is. I've adapted to enjoying the ride.
 
I'm 50 and feel like I've checked more boxes and achieved more in the past 10 years than the preceding 40.

Our oldest is also heading to college, and when I started talking about retiring in less than ten years, I discovered my wife's idea for the future was me working until I drop dead and her continuing to be a SAHM after the kids had left. ;) That's just one of the reasons we're no longer married.

Your life is far from over. Enjoy the rest of it while you can. Happiness is real.
 
"FOURTH QUARTER, no guarantees of overtime!"

Bruce, very well said. As I approach my ninth decade - I like that - a lot.
 
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