A New Year

This will be my first birthday in my new home and in my new life. I turn 64 next week - a sobering thought. Not exactly the ideal age for starting all over. I feel like I'm finally doing what I should have done when I graduated college. At that time, in 1967, I dashed off to Paris and began what turned out to be 42 years of living a day-to-day existence, never worrying about the future, assuming that my life would continue to be this exciting, wondrous adventure. And here I am, having faced the crossroads and having chosen a new, unknown path. Starting all over. Who would have guessed.

I have no idea what lies ahead of me. Will I continue doing mortgage loans? It's a very difficult time to be in this business. Real estate values have come crashing down, leaving homeowners with not enough equity in their homes to be able to refinance. Interest rates have started to climb back up. Wholesale lenders (which are the kind of lenders I use) are getting out of the wholesale business. Second lien lenders (ie home equity lines of credit) are imposing impossible requirements for resubordinating the lines, hoping the borrowers will just pay them off instead of keeping them. Except that again, back to the original problem, there is not enough equity in the home to do that. I did close one small loan, but all the others are in limbo. So what else can I do to earn income? I should rephrase that, because I can do lots of things, but what will I be able to do? What kind of employment can I find in the present environment where I can work out of the home, utilize my various skills, be employable at my age, earn enough to cover my monthly expenses and provide a little for the uncertain future and uncertain health requirements, not be bored, feel fulfilled? I try to do visualizations and I draw a blank. My sister keeps assuring me that everything will fall into place, just as it has with finding the carriage house and Carla, and getting out of my former house and divesting myself of all that was in it. A year ago at this time I was in the pit of that "black hole", not seeing any way out of it, not seeing any possible future for myself. I couldn't imagine myself finding an apartment that I would like, furnishing it, making new friends. And yet I did. So hopefully not being able to imagine my new career does not mean that I will not find one.

I'm very reflective today. I guess that's what impending birthdays do. I'm not planning any celebrations. I don't want one and it doesn't feel right. Not yet. I'm still in a kind of limbo with many goals still unaccomplished - filing for divorce, finding employment, figuring out my place in the Lui family which had been my family for 30 years. Next year at this time all of that should be behind me and I will be turning 65 - an appropriate time for a celebration. I think I'll just skip this birthday.