Aging is a world of discovery for me. I didn’t know what to expect, and I’ve found it a rich mix – some things worse than I expected, and others a lot better than I imagined.

I’m strange; there is no term for me. I’m too old to get hired  (thank God) by a Corporation and too willful to actually stop working or do what they call retirement.

I’m too old to work in a lot of jobs, too healthy to give it up at all.

I’m busier than ever, but the major difference between the kind of work I did in my earlier years and the kind I do now is obvious. I never once have thought of retiring; I see it as freedom from being chained to work like slaves to their masters.

I was an author, a critic, a reporter, a newspaper editor, a political writer, a police reporter, and executive editor of a network morning show. I didn’t like any of my bosses, but I loved all of my jobs.

I was a working fiend, jumping from one place to the other, getting unhappier one by one. I’m now a blogger and photographer. It fits me fine. I’ve never been so free.

Work is a necessity and dimension of the spiritual life. I credit that with changing my life and finding work that makes me happy, not work that makes me restless and smothered.

My age has finally allowed me to understand that I am not here to live off the fruits of life and others. I’m here to begin again, to replant the old idea of work.

For me, work is no longer slavery, and I don’t care what anyone says; working for a large corporation is the closest thing to slavery I can think of in our world.

My work is creativity, not slavery. My work is doing good, something I do not do for money, but for my soul.

My work – my blog, my photography, the food Pantry, the refugee children – is the stamp I put upon the world, the mark I leave behind.

Growing old does not let me off the hook; my work is not useless, valueless, and insignificant just because I am no longer paid for it. For me, my work is the first moments of my new life where I am really free to choose what brings out the best in me and may one day bring out the best in some small piece of the world around me.

That’s a beautiful thing to live for, the best job I  have had in my life.

The big question I had was what, exactly, would I choose to do? I needn’t have worried. In our greedy and selfish America, there was no shortage of worthwhile things to do; or people who could use my help; it found me before I could even search for it. In our country, there is no excuse for being bored or not being useful. All you have to do is step outside and look left and right.

The work to do will hit you on the head, as it did me.

I’ve been walking on the spiritual path for some years now, and that helped me see that these years are for the development of the soul, not the bank or my ego.

For the first time in my life, I have work that enables me and makes demands of me, and reveals me. My work is hopefully good for others, not just for me.

For me, that makes it good work at any age.