Poised for Retirement: Moving from Anxiety to Zen

by Louise Nayer

A unique narrative on a unique time offering solace to people nearing retirement, and also for those who are retired. Poised for Retirement is not your parents’ retirement guide, nor is it a financial planning guide; rather, it’s the relatable story of an ordinary working woman reflecting on her life and career.

Written with humor, compassion, and poignancy, Nayer’s poetic prose is also inspirational. Easy to implement visualizations and breathing and sleep techniques are offered at the end of each chapter. Readers will gain insight and wisdom as the author learns to create a new and healthier life during this important transition.



A timely topic for Baby Boomers (born between 1946 – 1962), representing twenty percent of the US population by 2029.Every month more than a quarter-million Americans turn sixty-five.Includes interviews with a diverse group of experts and laypeople who share their experiences as they face the same decision point in their lives.

Louise Nayer, is a writer and educator. She was a professor of English and creative writing for over twenty-seven years at City College of San Francisco. Presently, she is part of the San Francisco Grotto Writer’s Collective and teaches workshops at OLLI UC Berkeley. Her book A Memoir was an Oprah Great Read and won the 2011 Wisconsin Library Association Award. She lives in San Francisco, California.

159 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 19, 2017

Reviews

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Keep in mind always the present you that you are constructing. It should be the future you want.

Having strong relationships makes it far more likely that you take joy in life, but studies show that it also lengthens life, boosts immunity, and cuts the risk of depression.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

[Greta · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most books about retiring are about money. It was interesting to read a book about the emotional preparation and fallout - the grieving, the anxiety, the second-guessing. I liked this very much.

[Jay French · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this an enjoyable description of the author’s thoughts and actions prior to retiring, with annual updates for a few years post retirement. I find myself in roughly the same position in my career that the author was in at the beginning of the book. No surprise, I found the author has many of the same questions and worries and aspirations about her upcoming retirement as I have for my future. She provides some of the answers she reached, but also writes about the outcomes of her choices, and of her days in her new routine. I found this comforting. The author is a creative writing instructor, so I got the expected lengthy, poetically descriptive passages. The author also intended this to be a self-help book, so mixed in with her personal narrative are some paragraphs providing suggestions on things to consider or actions to accomplish to help lead to a successful retirement. I found these oddly placed suggestions, usually dropped into a narrative stream, were not very interesting or valuable, similar to many other books and matching common sense. The narrative is the value here. I greatly enjoyed the book. It hit the points I was like talking to a friend you haven’t spoken to in a long while – they meander around the decisions and actions of their lives, sometimes big ,sometimes little, always with reflection.

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this did not offer me any new insights (and I retired four years ago) it did confirm many of the things I have thought and experienced both before and since my retirement from the world of work. Since it is a relatively short read I would recommend it to someone thinking about the next step.