I don't believe that many people wake up one morning and decide to retire. I think it is more often an evolving, iterative process of observing the days, assessing one's needs, becoming more keenly aware of the passage of time in ways that are a bit different from the previous times and arriving at a clear vision of what life has to offer and how best to continue to achieve one's goals and perhaps, if we are very lucky, one's dreams.

It happened to me that way.

After working for the...