Calling Out to Me

I recently received the gift of a giant piece of spare time (I don't like that expression—spare time, it implies you have extra, when we all have the same daily allotment) by way of a life-changing transition. I stopped working and am on the way to retirement. I spent five years looking at retirement and trying to find that one place I could take hold of it and make it mine, instead of just allowing it to become something that happened to me. However, Life caught up with me before I had found that handle (of course, because there may not even be the kind of handle I thought there was).
Consequently, I am reliving my late teens—looking for what I am going to do with the rest of my life. It is still a puzzle, just like it was when I was a teenager. This time around, I thought a lifetime of experience would be beneficial in smoothly switching my focus from work to whatever. However, aside from giving me some tools I have some proficiency in using, all that experience still has not provided the answers. For some time, I believed my retirement would include some work in my career field—not so any more. I have determined whatever I do will be something I haven't done before. My first career did develop in me some writing, coaching and speaking skills, and I feel ok about adapting those to new uses.
But, back to those teenage choices, what do I want to be when I grow up? At the very beginning of that first time around this block, I felt like whatever I did had to serve others. I compromised on that one, mostly for economic reasons. I wanted to have the resources to raise a family, etc. But I still managed to make my role one of helping others most of the time. Now that finances don't drive today's choices quite the way they did that first time around, I am sure service will be part of what I do.
Another luxury I have that I didn't have when I was a teenager is that I have the temperament to step back, breathe and listen. That either never occurred to me back then, or I didn't have the time (there's that time thing again) or the patience. This time around I am listening. The folly of my five-years of dabbling in the retirement plan was that I was out there looking for a formula, a step-by-step structure, and maybe just being a little too active. Just now I am listening to what's calling out to me, and choosing what keeps calling. Already I've found a couple that keep calling, insistently. I'm answering those two, but then I plan to step back, breathe and listen some more. Then we'll see.