The power of patience & planning

I want to give myself a big present for my 50th birthday. I want the next 3 to 5 years to create a foundation for the next half of life.

I spend delicious hours contemplating what this might be. Get a PhD? Buy a house in another country? Hunker down and pay off this one? Get my best-seller line of novels going? Buy that first rental?

Take what you like and pay for it, says God. -- Spanish proverb.

On the deeper level, I want to begin growing a life of compounding wealth. Set up a solid foundation and health-care for me and my mom. Not only repay the people who have loaned me money, but in turn be able to gift them with an unexpected sum to do something sizeable and enjoyable.

I got the birthday idea from two computer scientists, husband & wife, at Xerox PARC. Their 50th birthdays were a year apart. They began planning five years ahead. For their birthday, each would get 6 months to do "Something I've wanted my whole life." He chose that they go live in Nepal and climb the Himalayas. She chose to rent a big hall and give a formal classical piano concert for all their friends and family.

Or take my high-school philosophy teacher, Patt Hawthorne. She was a single mom who took creative writing workshops in New York each summer. One day, Patt met another woman there. They got talking, discovered they were both single moms, both high school teachers, both from Montana, both homesick.

Together, they chose a Montana college town -- which in itself, strikes me as a high form of self-care -- and bought a house. They found one originally owned by two artists, with studios on separate floors. They bought the house seven years before they retired. Each summer they took turns living in it, to get used to the town. The last two years they lived there together. When they retired, they simply stepped smoothly into a lifestyle they had already created. (And then, a few years later, out of the blue Patt fell madly in love and is probably returning to Washington. Nonetheless.)

One more. My tax attorney took a night class in Italian at the local community college. The group of students hit it off, and for the next four years continued to meet with their Italian teacher at her house. At the point when she was helping with my taxes, the group had just pooled their resources to buy an Italian villa together. They planned to share its use, as well as spend one week year there together, as an annual ritual.

Like my friend Ed says, "When I have Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, and Plan D, all leading to the same place, I can relax." He never does anything without at least Plan A and B in place, and usually Plan C.

Patience is a weapon. Planning is a weapon.

As someone for whom Desire and Action have always been weapons, these are powerful new swords to find in my arsenal -- heavy, balanced, honed.