A life after retirement
For some people my name must be familiar. For those who don’t know me, I would introduce myself by saying “I’m a Portuguese retired woman deeply in activity”. I was born and brought up in Lisbon, and though I bring my home country and town always in my heart, I have been sharing my life for some years now also with Belgium; also travelling to other places, because I’m a little like the wind – always on the move.
Life plays sometimes funny tricks on us. Though I have a visceral dislike of war and violence in general, the truth is that my professional careers abroad have always led me to working with military organizations. In the 60’s in Germany, I was an English/German translator with ENGCOMEUR, in other words with the US Army Engineer Command, Europe, an entity of the United States Ministry of Defense. Later, in the middle of the 80’s, already in Luxembourg, I joined NAMSA, the Maintenance and Supply Agency for the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
These few lines address all future-to-be retired staff. It gives them the assurance that there is a life after retirement, sometimes much more fulfilling and exciting than when still professionally active.
The rule for an agreeable and rewarding “career” after retirement assumes three main principles: do what you like, do it as you like, and whenever you like to do it! And this is more than true when during your active life you had – for some reason that is not called for here – to execute one or more jobs that were in no case satisfactory to your academic qualifications or to your intellectual expectations.
Even still in my childhood I enjoyed telling stories to other children like me. Later, at high school, I nevertheless preferred written tests to oral examinations, and I remember that once I wrote a novel for the History course that pleased the teacher so much that she asked me to leave the manuscript at the high school library. Choosing a first university course in Letters and Literatures was not only a judicious choice but also a pleasant break in my routine professional life. Curiously too, even the Science Foundation course I took when entering the university campus for the second time offered to me the possibility of giving full expression to my inclination towards writing. Turning this passion into a full-time “job” after retirement was just at a fingertip click on my computer.
Knowledge is to be shared, otherwise it becomes useless. And since I’m especially worried about children and young people and their access to reading and education in general, writing for them appeared to me as a most natural direction to take. A first book – L’Aventure de Barry – was published in French in 1999, followed two years later by its Portuguese version in CD-Rom. But looking for a publisher is so painful for me – and don’t forget I’m always trying to follow the rule of the three “likes” – that I put any such contacts off for years, until the day when I realized that it was as well frustrating to write for… the computer!
Now, my question is: will I continue to have success with my new and forthcoming books? I count on you, my dear reader, to help me win this bet, in particular those people having children and grandchildren. Don’t forget, though, that my books are for “children of all ages”!
And as the great Portuguese poet António Gedeão would sing:
|
O sonho comanda a Vida. (in Pedra Filosofal, 1970) |
(translation) Dream our Life drives.
|
