Much of society thinks of retirement as the end of something important. And maybe that’s true. But what if it’s just the beginning of something… better?
In this episode, Lara and Rowan chat with their longtime friend Dani Donders, who retired at age 55 (yes, we’re also envious) after a long career in the Canadian federal government and is now pursuing new creative ventures. Not only is she writing books and reading tarot cards, but she also teaches other women how to explore and embrace their creative side later in life through workshops.
No matter where you are in life, this chat will give you food for thought. Age is just a number, and it shouldn’t stop us from living.
Links
Dani’s website - https://curiouscrone.ca/
Curious Crone on Youtube
Curious Crone on Instagram
A blog post by Dani inspired by one of our podcast episodes
How to find Dani’s book on rock wrapping
Want more of Lara and Rowan?
Rowan is available for speaking engagements, and Lara also shares a lot of her art on Instagram.
Transcript
(transcripts are not carefully edited and probably have some errors)
[00:00:00] Dani: I call it the permission to try. People need permission to try new things, which is kind of crazy. Like how do we get to the point where you need permission? Is it okay if I mix the red paint and the blue paint?
Well, yeah. It's your art. Welcome back to unboxing It. I'm Lara.
[00:00:39] Rowan: And I'm Rowan.
[00:00:41] Lara: And we are thrilled because we have a guest with us today and it's somebody that Rowan and I have both known for a long time and like a coming on decades, from the online space and who we think is the perfect person to bring a topic backup. So we've talked about aging once.
We're gonna talk about it again. We're gonna talk a little bit about what it means in terms of career. What you do next, and I think it's gonna be a little bit of trying to disrupt the whole getting older means life is ending conversation. So welcome to the show, Dani Donders.
[00:01:22] Dani: Oh my goodness. It is not an understatement for me to say this is a huge honor to be here with you guys.
So thank you.
[00:01:29] Lara: We are so thrilled to have you. I'm going to read an introduction of who Dani is for all of you, and then we're gonna jump into this conversation. So Dani Donders believes there is magic in storytelling and curiosity and creative expression, and in connecting with other humans now retired from a long career in government, Dani has dedicated her crone years to rekindling the spark of creative play in herself and in others.
She hosts kitchen table workshops where friends can come together in an afternoon or evening of creative exploration. She does tarot card readings for events and parties. She continues to explore photography and creative print processes. She wrote a book on the creative art of rock wrapping.
Dani also loves to share stories of her ongoing creative adventures and words, photos and videos across her small but mighty online empire, at curiouscrone.ca.
Welcome, Dani.
[00:02:25] Dani: You went with the long version. Thank you, Lara. It is genuinely a pleasure to be here.
[00:02:30] Lara: Dani does so many things. But like in a way that I do them, so I'm excited.
Right. I love meeting other people who naturally and instinctively do lots of things just because it's easy and it's fun and I find some people look at me like, what are you doing? But I know Dani doesn't.
[00:02:47] Dani: All the things, that's what we're doing because everything is so interesting. And how can you just do one interesting thing when all the interesting things are out there?
So yeah.
[00:02:57] Lara: I hear you.
[00:02:58] Rowan: This really flies in the face of the idea that I think a lot of media still perpetuates, and a lot of people still believe, oddly enough, in this economy that. Retirement means kind of just slowly fading out of life, right? Like you're, supposed to, I think in this idea that we have of, I'm gonna use the American dream, but I think it translates to a lot of different cultures that, you know, you go to school, you choose what you wanna do in school, which leads you to a job.
You work a job, and then you retire from that job at a certain age, and then you. I don't know, maybe you go on a cruise or,you go golfing or , , I don't know, you basket weave or something. But that's pretty much it. And then perhaps, you live with your children or you go into, a retirement home of some kind, and then you fade away.
So like that is not how you plan the, I don't even know what this era of your, I mean, did you call it the crone years? 'cause I kind of love that.
[00:04:04] Dani: Yeah. And you know, the whole reason, like I created the Curious Crone Empire, because I wanted to pull together all the different things that I was passionate about.
And I called it Curious Crone in particular because like, it's not. Necessarily fun aging and seeing in the media and, in the public sphere what aging, like you said, all the stereotypes around it. I remember when I turned 50 and my middle kid who's a young adult, was so amused by the fact that all of his.
Friends, parents were like, oh no, I'm, you know, I'm turning 49 for the sixth time and here's my mom who says I'm 50 and I love being 50. And did I tell you I'm 50 and 50 is awesome and I can't wait to be 51? 'cause I love being 50 so much. So that's, to me, what embracing the crone years is about is like, okay, there's no denying it.
I can't see the screen clearly. I forgot to put my hearing aids in and my feet hurt. Okay. But also my heart is so full and I'm so full of excitement every day because of all the cool things that I can do now. So that's what embracing the crone years is about to me, is that, yeah, there's a lot of stereotypes about aging right now.
and I'm kind of aiming to break all of them.
[00:05:20] Lara: Life's not done. Just because you're getting older and just because maybe you're done, the career you started when you were in your twenties, you get to keep evolving. You get to keep trying things I. Often say, I would love to be retired, but like not in a, now I don't do anything way in a, now what can I do next?
Kind of way.
[00:05:42] Dani: Yes, exactly that. Exactly that. Just because, you know, the thing is behind you, whether it worked or whether it didn't work or whatever. That doesn't mean that all this excitement is not ahead of you. And so I guess that's a sort of a glass half full attitude. But looking forward, all I see is the potential for more adventures.
[00:06:01] Rowan: So the idea of retirement is leaving a specific type of career behind for you, then perhaps rather than, I am not going to do anything that pays me money ever again.
[00:06:15] Dani: So you know when you were like nine and it was five minutes to four on a Friday afternoon, and you were sitting in your school chair and watching the clock tick and tick and tick.
I just hit that four o'clock mark and exploded out of my chair. I've been sitting patiently in my chair for so long. The school day was 35 years long, but now
it's the weekend. Let's roll baby.
[00:06:40] Rowan: That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. And I mean, retirement looks different for different people. Right. one of the things when we wanted to do this episode that I brought up was, I think.
It would be wrong of us. Not to mention that retirement is looking different for younger people these days. A lot of people are not able, like they're not sure how they're going to retire. And that retirement might mean I don't work full-time anymore. Now I work part-time or, you know, I have to move in with my children or whatever it might be that comes down the road.
so. I think this isn't so much about retirement as it is perhaps about entering new life stages as we get older. However, that looks for some of us it's retirement. For some of us, it's just switching gears in a different way. But how would you describe the mindset that you have every morning now when you wake up and you think about what you're going to do for the day?
[00:07:40] Dani: So, It's been almost exactly six months since I retired, and the first month, every day was abject terror, and I was looking through the, you know, how old am I? I was just about to say, I was looking through the want ads. Okay. I didn't actually have a newspaper. Slide section. That's just the language we have left over.
Right? But now, I mean, even before I retired, I went , to my director. I worked for the government and I said I changed my mind. I've made a horrible mistake because I was worried about not. having enough money and, it just so happened that I retired as a certain president, took, office and the world economy, did a big wobble and societal norms, did a big wobble and everything.
And my boss at the time said, yeah, no. due to government cutbacks, your position doesn't exist after your announced retirement date. So. You're on your way out, sweetheart, whether you want to be or not, because I had had that vision that I would go back and I would work as a consultant and all sorts of other things.
So like I said, the first two months was pure panic, and then a bunch of other bumps happened. and so I had little small crisis I had to deal with. It's only been over the course of the summer that it's really been like waking up on vacation every day, but. Summer, it feels like summer vacation.
The next couple of weeks is gonna be the really interesting time because , my husband's a teacher, so he goes back to school and my kids are in school, so the next month or two is gonna be the really interesting time when everybody else is not on vacation anymore, but I'm still on vacation.
[00:09:07] Lara: think our view of retirement is being done right? , it's thinking I had a job. Now I theoretically saved up all the money that I need for the rest of my life, and now I am done my working years. But that's also not where you are. You right from the start had every intention of still doing different things that made money, right?
Like doing your tarot parties , and exploring things that you wanted to do in different ways.
[00:09:34] Dani: Well, that's it., I've said all along , I was 55 when I retired, so I knew that I would have capacity to work. and it's deeply ingrained in us that if we have the capacity to work, then we should work.
So even though I had my pension coming in, it was less than my salary. So my goal for myself was to work enough that I was gonna make up that difference between my pension and my salary. So that's what I started out doing. But the fun thing is that I'm working. For the thrill of things that make me happy.
So it is doing tarot parties and it's leading workshops and I wrote a book and it worked. And so, yeah, it's a matter of instead of, you know, working for the man, finding ways to make money that don't feel like work.
[00:10:20] Rowan: That's the dream. That is the dream. , I wish that we could do that from day one.
I wish we could all do that from day one, right? Where it's like, whatever you wanna do, go and do it. that idea of like, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. Which by the way, I will say as someone who loves what he does, isn't actually true. But there are still some really hard days.
But it is truly a gift. If you can love what you do, tell us about your book because we are all authors here. , all of us have written, nonfiction books, actually. They're
[00:10:52] Dani: Very different books though.
[00:10:53] Rowan: Yeah, right. Yours is very different from mine, which is very different from Lara's.
So like, tell us about yours.
[00:10:58] Dani: Yeah. So I wrote a book about how to wrap rocks and 95% of your listeners. What,
[00:11:06] Rowan: right? Yeah. I, yes.
[00:11:07] Dani: No. So, it is an art form that I stumbled across about a year, year and a half ago, and it's just about taking rocks that you find in nature and adding things like wrap leather cords , and charms.
And, when I started doing it, I couldn't find any instructions, so. Some, I wrote a blog post and then, because I'm an old school blogger, I was looking at my metrics one day and I'm like, oh really? People are really interested in this blog post that I wrote. No, really, people are really interested. Like that's the only thing that I wrote about that people are interested in.
So, I started making some more content about it and the content was really popular and I'm like, okay, well I am gonna write the book that I couldn't find when I first started doing this. And it's been super well received. So it's a downloadable PDF, because I wanted to make it accessible and affordable and people keep whining that it's not a book.
So I've been trying to figure out ways to make an actual book out of it,
[00:12:01] Lara: which is great. But also some people might want a paper book and they just don't get it 'cause that's not how life works. And they don't get to make you do things unless you want to. I will say though, that I think what's great about the rock wrapping is so many people.
Love rocks. I say this, having been to the Maritimes last year with a couple of teenagers who I think brought home 30 pounds of rocks in my van, and it's a good thing we drove because like at every beach they're like, look at all the rocks We found their pockets were
[00:12:32] Dani: full. And then what do you do with them now?
With me, you can , turn them into art that sits on the mantle beast and clutters that up instead of in a drawer somewhere. Yeah.
[00:12:42] Rowan: Perfect. I think that's a great idea. Like first of all, pro beautiful clutter. Very much bit of a maximalist over here, but I do think that, this is where I think age and wisdom come in, because if I were to ask you, Dani, would you have taken on the job, the work.
The time and the confidence needed to write a book in your twenties, would you have done it?
[00:13:11] Dani: Gosh, no. And the funny thing is, that's what I wanted to do. You know, I wanted to be journalist and a writer when I was a little kid, but doing something like that to think that I would have the expertise to write a how to book, a craft book to teach people things, that wasn't on my radar five years ago.
So, yeah. Evolution is a cool thing.
[00:13:30] Lara: you get to do so many fun things and I think that that's the beauty of thinking. I don't have to do things the way I did before I get to explore the new things. I get to try things that maybe when I was in my twenties, I would've felt weird or self-conscious about.
not that you need to feel weird or self-conscious about it, but like is tarot having gone into something like that was like a whole different, like pivot into something different and trying it just 'cause it interested you. Right.
[00:13:58] Dani: Yeah, and I mean that one was a tough one because there are some serious.
Attitudes and ideas out there already. People think the rock wrapping thing is just always Dani's cute, weird things. Okay, just let her be. but the tarot thing, people have some pretty strong feelings about that. And it's funny, as a professional tarot reader, now I have had people who didn't want to hire me.
Because I was not woo spiritual enough for them, I, I, don't channel spirits. I don't claim to be a medium. I don't think that I am channeling the voices of the past. I'm a storyteller. And so tarot to me is about storytelling. So I was not woowoo enough for them. But then I had other people who wouldn't hire me because I was too woowoo.
Because the people in their family objected to the idea of having a tarot reader at their event. So. For me, either one of those criticisms five or 10 years ago, I would've taken deeply personally because I wasn't enough of this. I wasn't enough of that. But now I just find it amusing that I have become this person who has the confidence to really, really love tarot. I really love the storytelling and the connection with other people, but I was so self-conscious when I started talking about it initially because of all these perceptions that are out there. So I think it's a big thing to evolve into somebody who is able to say, okay, yes, there are these conceptions, maybe misconceptions, certainly opinions, and.
I can still be brave and like the things I like out loud because they make me happy.
[00:15:31] Rowan: Isn't it wonderful when we get to the age where we realize we don't have to be everything for everybody and that that's impossible and to just not even try, like I, I thought that was the most freeing thing for me because as somebody who has a larger online presence.
I get a lot of demands from people to be like this or be like that, and that used to hurt so much. don't even know the amount of hours that I lost sleep, how much time I spent in therapy, just. Running these thoughts through my head, like, how can I meet this expectation and how can I meet this expectation and how do I not compromise myself, but also be enough for everybody?
And then one day it just hit me. I just got old enough and I think I did enough work on myself where I was just like, huh. I don't have to. I really don't because there are billions of people on this planet. So if I'm not what you're looking for, that's okay. Somebody else will be. So it's okay for me to like what I like and do what I do as long as I'm not harming people, right.
If I'm not deliberately being terrible, but like I'm allowed to be myself and. You know, my truth. And so are you, so if tarot is something that speaks to you, fantastic. Little known fact. I do my own tarot readings every few days. Just, you know, do I know if they work? No. Do I have any strong spiritual belief about them?
No. Do I think they're really cool and they can tell a story just like you? Yeah, absolutely. So I like to do it. It's like another little thing to think on in my day. So people look at these things all differently
[00:17:04] Lara: and you were curious and you were brave, and you went out and talked about it. And while there are some people who may not think you're woowoo enough, or some people who think you're too woowoo, I think there's also some people who think that your level of tarot is just right.
[00:17:21] Rowan: You are woo woo enough.
[00:17:23] Dani: I'm woo woo. And that's okay. My favorite thing is when I'm doing, tarot for, a public event and there's a lot of people who have had exposure to tarot. I happened to be just last weekend. and , they get needled into doing their first.
Sitting for their first, tarot reading, because their friends have been giving them a hard time about it, twisting their arm. And I was kind of half protesting, you know, we don't bully people into getting tarot readings. That's, not okay. But to have somebody sit down who is initially skeptical and have them understand where I'm coming from, I'm not predicting a future.
I just, I wanna tell you a little story. And there insights there that they were quite surprised by. Specificity that I was able to talk about that kind of made them sit back in their chair. I love those moments because that means that somebody had a preconceived notion and I forced their blinders open just a little bit.
And I love that.
[00:18:14] Rowan: sometimes, that's how growth happens in general, right? It speaks to stepping out of your comfort zone. And to me that's literally stepping outta my comfort zone is the only way that I grow as a human being.
[00:18:26] Dani: I think that's another thing I really wanted to do with the curiosity workshops that I, foster, is that we are so tentative to.
Try things when we're not gonna be good at them, or to try them without guardrails and you know, step by step instructions and everything. And I think that people should just be braver about even doing small things, like picking up a piece of fabric and putting some stitches on it. Like you don't have to be really good, you just have to want to do a thing to try something new.
And if at the end of whatever crafting evening you. Are not gonna be like me and decide it's a lifelong thing that you need to add to your ongoing repertoire, which happens every time I try a new craft. Maybe you try it and you just, at the end of the day, you made a thing and the pretty thing sits on your mantle and that's it.
You never do it again. But now you know, at least you tried.
[00:19:16] Lara: I keep, saying to people that. I'm always trying to figure out whether a new craft of some kind is gonna be a one night stand or a new love affair for life. and a lot of them are just one night stands, like, I just want to try it once and off we go.
And I think you and I have a lot in common when it comes to being there's a thing, I'm just gonna try it and see how it goes. And there's a lot of people. That that would make really uncomfortable and therefore having somebody like you be able to walk them through it, like, I wanna try it, but I don't know what to do and can somebody tell me what to do.
So creating these curiosity workshops helps people try the things they might've been nervous to try otherwise.
[00:19:55] Dani: I call it the permission to try. People need permission to try new things, which is kind of crazy. Like how do we get to the point where you need permission? Is it okay if I mix the red paint and the blue paint?
Well, yeah. It's your art. I'm speaking about paint and I don't do anything with it to do with paint, so I'm, I'm outta my lane, but yeah, exactly that. Permission to try. Why do we need that?
[00:20:18] Lara: Because we've been taught perfection is required and failure is terrible. therefore, if you try something and think, well that wasn't good, then clearly you are a terrible artist.
You suck. Why did you ever try this?
[00:20:32] Dani: Yep. That whole fear of failure thing. Oh yeah. But you and I, Lara too, have that ability. to look at something and say, oh yeah, I could do that. I could do that. There's no reason why I can't do that. And then we just sit down and do it.
[00:20:45] Lara: Yeah.
It's like the audacity. You have to think you can do something that you shouldn't be able to do. But the bonus is that because I'm like, sure, I could do that. It means I get to try things and I also think I'm much more comfortable at failure than a lot of people because I've tried things thinking it would go well and it didn't.
Like I'm used to trying things that don't work out.
[00:21:08] Rowan: This is where, I do say I am a painter and that's my hobby. It's one of my hobbies, when I have time for hobbies, which I don't have a lot of time for them these days, but. I was in the store looking for artwork for our new home, and everything I looked at was expensive and I was like, I don't know why this is so expensive.
I could do that. And my partner kinda laughed. I'm like, no, no, I really think I could do something like that. How do I know that? I don't know, but I'm gonna try. So I went and got the material and I just made art. And now. The thing that is on our walls at home more than anything else happens to be my artwork because I can make it go with any room in the house.
Am I the best artist in the world? No, but I said I'm not a terrible artist either, and I really enjoy it.
[00:21:57] Lara: Your pieces are beautiful.
[00:21:59] Rowan: Oh. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I think that people get really stuck and I think we get more and more stuck. Some of us, not all of us, because I know we're gonna get some listeners who are like, oh no, I feel so free at my age.
And , that is wonderful. But I think for some people there's this idea that, expansion of self. Ends at a certain age and that age , is different for everybody. But there's this idea idea of like you're old and set in your ways, oh, this person's not gonna change because they're old.
And as it turns out. Science disproved that, that we have this beautiful ability in our brain called neuroplasticity. And neuroplasticity allows us to form new pathways at any age, and that includes creative pathways. Anything we want to do, we can try to do. Virtually any age. That's everything from learning to paint when you're older to you know, learning new ways to deal with anxiety.
I mean, all of those different things can happen. We just have to work at it. So when you host these workshops, Dani, do you find that people come in feeling a bit timid or are they really excited?
[00:23:13] Dani: this is the other reason why I like these workshops. there are two different possible scenarios.
You're sitting around a table and everybody has a glass of wine and you're sitting and you're looking at each other, and there is conversation there is talking, but. You give those same people something to do with their hands, and there's an alchemy that happens. You can better connect with the people around you because your hands are busy because you're both making the same mistake because she chose the blue one and you chose the red one and it's why I think we used to have in the olden days things like sewing bees and quilters bees and things like that, because.
When your hands are busy, there's something in your brain that just loosens up a little bit. And so I think as somebody who often crafts on my own, I truly believe exactly what you're talking about, those neural pathways and how creativity is a muscle to be exercised. But there's an extra special sauce when you're sitting around a table with some of your besties.
And the conversations that I'm privy to have been really interesting because people just drop their guards and they're really enjoying what they're doing with their hands because their soul is a little bit more closer to the surface. And, you know, here's the woo woo again. but I, think that's true.
And so. Seeing people lose that tentativeness of, oh, is it okay if I put the string here? Is it okay if I try it backwards? Of course, it's okay. So I find that my sort of style of facilitation isn't didactic. It isn't. You will take this and you will make this, and you cannot use glue. You cannot tie a knot.
Here, it's more like. So this is how I would do it. This is how I found its easiest, but I'd love to see you riff on it. I'd love to see you immediately be better than me. I'd love to see you improve upon this design, because I think that that's all people need is you give them a pile of stuff and you say, here's some ideas.
Here's some guidelines. Go. And people just, like I said, their soul are closer to the surface. , Their guard drops and it's magic.
[00:25:10] Lara: I think it's really important to have people, who sort of lead by example in being able to try and do new things, right?
So you talk about all these new things that you've done and they're not just creative. You've got, you're kayaking, which you started,
Yeah. Kick sled, there's all these things that you've tried, but there's a lot of people who get so stuck in the every day and what they do and what they're supposed to do and what they have going on and managing everything that they don't think, okay, I'm gonna go out and look for something new.
And so I imagine a lot of people might say to you, oh, I wish I could do something like that.
[00:25:48] Dani: Yeah, people do say that to me about, I wish I had your energy, or I wish I had your creativity. And it's pure curiosity. That's all it is. All of these things all come back from curiosity. I wonder what will happen if I wonder what's around that corner.
I wonder if they'd like kayaking. I wonder how I can go out into the forest and not walk because my knees hurt all the time. Oh, this kick sled thing that my friend Annie had, that looks pretty zoomy. yeah, so it's curiosity without inhibitions. Maybe that's it.
[00:26:19] Lara: And telling people there's no reason they can't also try new things.
Right? And maybe it is kick sledding and maybe it is rock wrapping, but maybe by the end of them considering this, they're now ready to try something else completely different. Gardening, cooking. All the other things you
could do.
[00:26:37] Rowan: How are you different today than you wer 15, 20 years ago.
[00:26:43] Dani: Confidence, yourself self-confidence. I believe in myself. I did not. I was taught in an early relationship not to believe in myself, and it took me a long time to build that up. So, yeah. Confidence and
curiosity.
[00:26:57] Lara: How did you gain confidence?
[00:26:59] Dani: Geez,
Lara. That's a hard one. You know what? I know the answer to this one, and you guys are gonna laugh.
It's a thousand percent. Fake it till you make it. I built an online persona who was confident and funny and I don't know, vivacious, and I grew into her in real life.
[00:27:18] Lara: I imagine there's a certain feedback, right? The more you do something, people think you are something. The positive response you get to the things that you do, the more comfortable you feel to keep doing it.
I know for me a lot of the stories that I've told, the things that I talk about. If I hadn't gotten the response, which was, thank you for telling me this. It's helping me do X, Y, Z, I wouldn't have then continued talking about it all the time. But you try things, you say things, you see how it impacts the world.
That's for me is how I started gaining more confidence to keep doing that and to keep trying things.
[00:27:54] Rowan: Yeah, it's very much, again, we go back to those neural pathways. and for me it, it's a lot like the exposure therapy that I'm doing right now for the type of anxiety that I have, and it's really the only way to deal with the type of anxiety that I have in an effective way.
I mean there, I guess there are other ways, but this is the most effective and it is about. Faking it till you make it. Like it's same kind of thing where you expose yourself to something that is going to trigger that anxiety that you know is going to set it off, and then you sit with that anxiety until it decreases and you do that enough times that you train your brain.
That the more that when you are faced with. This trigger. Again, it doesn't affect you the same way anymore or it affects you a lot less. I think confidence that is a perfect way in some ways , to build that confidence is just figuring out what you would look like if you were more confident and then getting to know that person and behaving in that way until eventually your brain's like.
Yeah, as it turns out, I am pretty confident.
[00:29:00] Dani: It's funny, I, came back from a really successful tarot event a couple days ago, and it was just one of those, everything was fire, that day. Not the dog in the room on fire, the, the good fire. and I thought to myself, I would like to go back to 14-year-old me and say, listen, honey.
When you get to be an old lady, you are gonna be a person whose biggest asset is charisma and the way you interact with people, and the people will tell you that, you make them feel good about themselves and you'll just have a natural ability to work with people and to realize that, I mean, like you, Rowan, I was badly bullied in school and, it took me a long time to get past that and the idea that the thing.
Even growing up, people have always been a mystery to me. I'm probably on some sort of neurodivergent scale because relationships have, you know, friendships have always been complicated and the idea that I've evolved into a person through that fake it till you make it. Who is able to take.
Charisma and channel it, and not just make money from it, but to be self validated by it and through the storytelling, make other people feel good. That's where I, I get the big feedback is when other people are happy through like a tarot story or whatever. yeah, so it's, really amazing when you can do like almost a 360 a lot like you have too, Rowan, that, you know, you've come a long way in your journey from.
Being powerless to being powerful, to being somebody who can beam that power onto other people and lift them up with it too. So there's that word power again, but it's a powerful journey
[00:30:32] Rowan: it is, it is a powerful journey. I think , we were talking before we started recording about how you've gone in this very new and exciting direction.
Not that you're not the same person 'cause you said you very much are the same person, but you're trying, many new things right now. And I'm in a phase of my life where I have shifted into. Opening a cafe and wine bar and what that looks like and the ways that I can use my own creativity and my own, charisma, if you will, though the way I connect with people.
I love connecting with people, so it's a perfect fit for me. But I also said. I really got close to opening a coffee shop in my twenties. I was very young, like early twenties, and it just financially was not a good time. I had a great business plan. I had some private funding, but the bank would not lend money because it was just like, we're just not investing in restaurant style places right now.
Sorry. And I was very disheartened at the time and saw it as a failure, and now coming back to it at almost 50 in opening a shop. I'm so glad that didn't happen back then. But I was able to take a lot of the ideas from back then and bring them into now with much more competence, many more connections, more means.
Sort of everything altogether. And a fantastic business slash romantic partner who is coming on this journey with me. And all of the amazing skills that she brings to this. So I think that like, it's okay to wait until later. To do things. I know there's this idea of people like you only have today.
You only have today, and that is true. I mean, I don't know how long I'm gonna live. Do I have 30 more years? Do I have 30 more days? 30 more minutes? I have no idea, but I do know that. It feels right to do some things now that I wasn't prepared for before, and that's okay. It's all right to go into a new phase.
I don't have to do the same thing that I have always done just because it's what I know and in fact, it's very liberating to be able to do something that is newer and bolder at this stage.
[00:32:41] Dani: I think that, that. Also talks to something we spoke about before, a little bit about how I'm 56 now, and not that long ago, 56 would've been, oh, well, nice knowing your granny.
Go sit on your rocking chair. And, , maybe that would've been what some people wanted. You know, sit on the rocking chair. And there are worse ways to go than just sitting on the rocking chair and knitting and crocheting until you get eaten by the world's most giant blanket. but. To have that the idea of no day, but today, but also why not today?
You know, it's like they talk about when you think about going back to school, we talked about this too. I am where I am today because I flunked outta university in first year, and then I continued my job in retail and then by happenstance, at the age of 20, I got a job with the government that was supposed to be temporary.
35 years, so maybe exceeded the definition of temporary a little bit. but then I went back to school and I started university when I was 22 or 23. I went nights for five or six years, and I remember being 22 and going back to school with a bunch of 18 year olds and thinking, oh my God, I'm so old with sweet, sweet supper child.
So old at 22, and I graduated at 30 and I thought, oh, you know, it's gonna take me forever and. At the time, it certainly seemed like it did, but if I hadn't gone back to school, I still would've been 30 at the end of six years. I just would've been 30 without a degree. And so, I really think that for anybody who is our age, younger, older, whatever, if they're thinking about that, be brave enough to imagine the possibility of, what if I went back to school?
What if I. Tried something new for the first time. What if I did a 180 and imagined a different set of realities? For me,
the capacity is there.
[00:34:31] Lara: I think it's important to remember it's not too late to do anything at any age, and I think maybe traditionally we were. Kind of taught whether it was overtly or just like the underlying message was there, that by a certain age you're past your expiration date, right?
Like, oh, it's too late now. Like you said, Rowan, you can't teach a old dog new tricks is a saying, but I think. It doesn't matter. I am not done changing. I'm not done trying new things. I'm not done wondering what's next, and I don't think I ever will be done. But there's a lot of people who haven't lived life quite as.
All over the places I have who might have a harder time thinking that they can veer off a path, right? How can I do something different when I've been doing this for 30 years? That would make no sense. And you know what? You don't always have to make sense.
[00:35:27] Dani: Another thing that we haven't really talked about is capacity.
Congruent with, , retiring from the government. My kids are mostly grown up now. They all still happen to be living with me, but in their late teens and early twenties, they don't need me as much as they did before. So I think that's another key time in a lot of humans who are our age, is that it is a time of reinvention because for so long, raising the kids and keeping the family on track and all that stuff, we were up to our eyeballs in it and
there was no capacity for anything else. So I think the reason why I exploded in a million different directions was to. Still that void that was left behind. And for me, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. But you know, I was all in on raising these kids and every minute was about living life with them and building experiences and memories and all that stuff that I'm so glad we did.
But my 17-year-old isn't that excited about building experiences and memories anymore. And the 23-year-old, even less so. So yeah, that's the other kind of magic thing that happens at this point in our life, whether you're retired or not, you do find that there's that capacity to ask yourself what's next.
[00:36:36] Rowan: And I think for a lot of parents, especially for parents who really prioritized being around the kids as much as possible, it is a big shift when they suddenly don't really need you as much anymore. you know,
[00:36:51] Dani: but they need you in a different way.
[00:36:53] Rowan: Right. They need you in a different way. That is definitely true.
and I apologize to our childless, listeners 'cause we go back to children a lot on this show. But I also wanna say that there are a lot of things like whether you are a parent or not, relating to that as somebody who was part of a family and then, you know, grew up or somebody who's watching a niece or a nephew or somebody do the same thing, right?
We all sort of have children in our lives. But whatever that is, whether it is children or a really busy career or a lot of schooling, or you're going to school as well as working or whatever it might be, and then suddenly there's all this time available that sounds like. A thing that somebody will immediately embrace like, wow, this is great.
I suddenly have all this time, but sometimes it is just a void for a while. That's why a lot of parents go through that empty nest syndrome where now they think, well, what's next? What do I do? Who are you? This person sitting across from me who I used to know and then got. So busy having all these children now I hardly know you anymore and who am I?
Because I don't even know me anymore. So , I think that there is some truth to that, that whatever it is, that has exited our lives, it does create an opportunity for something that fits our lives
today.
[00:38:14] Lara: I feel like we could keep talking and talking and talking, and I'm trying not to open up all new conversations because I think because the topic is so deep and rich.
[00:38:28] Dani: And multi-faceted.
[00:38:28] Lara: There's just so many ways in which we need to keep talking about what it means to age, what it means to.
Go into different phases of our lives and not feel like anything is ending, but we're just continuing to be. And so I am very grateful, Dani, that you were able to join us to talk a little bit about some of the ways that you've done it, and I hope a lot of people are just getting a little bit of ideas and inspirations on how they can continue to explore and not feel tied to any one way of creating their journey.
[00:39:04] Rowan: And definitely, you know, one of the things I'm taking away from this conversation is. Approaching life with more curiosity because I think that that has served you very well, Dani, and it's something that I don't do as much as an anxious person, where I tend to, you know, take a big step back sometimes, like a scaredy cat, like literally my cat who is terrified of everything and sort of peek around the corner and goes
I don't know, is it safe? , Do I put a paw out now? I don't know. Okay, I'm gonna step back, right? And I think that's not what you do. You're like, let's do the new thing, and you just dive in. I have so much respect for that. And so that is what I am taking away, and I really hope people listening are taking their own lessons away because you have a lot to offer.
I am so grateful that you joined us.
[00:39:47] Dani: There
are two questions you can ask. What if and why not? Why not do your first podcast? It's terrifying. But your friends are really awesome, so you should do it.
[00:39:58] Lara: And you did a great job.
[00:40:00] Rowan: You did a fantastic job.
[00:40:01] Dani: We survived. Thank you so much, my friends.
[00:40:05] Lara: Thank you for being here.
Everybody. , We will put links to all of Dani's places in the show notes, but you can also go visit her at curiouscrone.ca.
Thank you again. Thank you.
[00:40:16] Rowan: Thanks, Dani.
