Baby Boomers in Bloom

Last week, I reviewed Kay Marshall Strom's newest book The Second-Half Adventure: Don’t Just Retire--Use Your Time, Skills & Resources to Change the World.  This week, she's my guest-blogger.  To find out more about Kay--for starters, she's the author of 36 published books and an in-demand speaker--check out her website (kaystrom.com) and/or her blog (kaystrom.wordpress.com). 

Baby Boomers in Bloom

Inside every baby boomer zipping toward senior-dom is a thirty-five-year-old asking, “Hey, what happened?”  



Life, that’s what.    


We who vowed to stay forever young, who promised never to trust anyone over thirty, are actually talking about retirement.  But that doesn’t mean our generation has given up looking for ways to change the world.  The leading edge of the boomer generation—the first 3 million of us—is marching into seniorhood in great style—healthy, well-educated, and still filled with ambition.  (Though somehow, that word “senior” just doesn’t seem to fit a generation as likely to be found zipping around Singapore on a motorcycle as pushing back in a recliner for an evening of TV.)    


Because of who and what baby boomers are, just about every organization in the country is eyeing them. That’s because everyone sees a whole skilled, mature, experienced could-be volunteer work force.  And those organizations can’t wait to tap into that unprecedented reservoir of knowledge and wisdom and energy and experience at the affordable price of—well, free!  


I had the great honor of interviewing almost fifty blooming boomers for my book, The Second-Half Adventure: Don’t Just Retire-Use Your Time, Skills & Resources to Change The World.  These true adventurers ranged from a Viet Nam vet artist to a financial counselor who grew up in a Mafia family, from an unassuming quilter to an airline pilot, from a launch engineer to a substitute school teacher, from a businessman who had gone bankrupt to a tenured college professor, from a medical doctor to a bakery truck driver, from an engineer to a never-employed grandma.  These second-halfers were involved in adventures all over the world, including in their own backyards.  One worked at a computer on his kitchen table.    


Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”  Never in their lives have baby boomers been willing to stay silent about things that matter to them. And they are not about to start in their second half!