There’s a word I don’t use about myself.
Retired.
I don’t do real estate anymore. Haven’t for a while. But retired? That word implies a kind of arrival — a rocking chair, a slower pulse, a life that has shifted from forward motion to pleasant stillness. That’s not what happened to me. What happened to me is harder to explain, and maybe more useful to hear.
What happened is that I finally found my song.
Maya Angelou once said that a bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, because I spent the better part of forty years singing in the margins — letters to the editor, dissenting votes at a planning commission table, weekly columns in an alternative newspaper that maybe a few thousand people read. I wasn’t looking for applause. I was looking for traction. There’s a difference.
The first time I felt it — really felt it — was a featured Op-Ed piece.
Tulsa had tried twice to pass a bond issue that would fund a new arena, among other civic investments. Twice, my fellow Tulsans had voted no. I was tired of it. Tired of the defeats, tired of watching a city I loved refuse to invest in its own future. So I sat down and wrote a long and impassioned plea to my fellow citizens. I made the case as hard as I could, tried to pump some enthusiasm into the air, tried to reach people who I believed wanted something better for this place but hadn’t been given a reason to say yes.
Did I change the outcome? I’ll never know. The measure passed. I’d like to think I moved a few minds. What I know for certain is that something moved in me.
I had four years of journalism training at the University of Tulsa that I had never used professionally. Not in the way you’d expect — not in a newsroom, not behind a byline that paid the bills. Real estate had been my career, and a good one. But the training wasn’t wasted. It was waiting.
In 2010, I was appointed to the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission. I was often on the dissenting side. That didn’t bother me. What mattered was that I was heard — that my voice resonated with people in the community who shared my values, my hopes, my stubborn belief that cities could be built better. I served five years. During much of that time I was also writing weekly Op-Ed pieces for Urban Tulsa Weekly — about planning, about walkable communities, about what it means to build a place worth living in.
I was never satisfied with any of it. Still aren’t.
My song is my voice. The wanting to share, to reach people, to speak into the silence and see if anyone leans forward.
I tell you this because I think it matters to understanding what a reimagined life actually looks like. It isn’t one thing. It’s a chord — several notes sounding at once, each one necessary.
The research on men in retirement is not particularly cheerful reading. Studies show that loneliness predicts poor health outcomes better than high blood pressure. The average retiree spends thirty-three hours a week watching television. Men who spent decades defined by their titles often enter what one researcher called a “vacuum” — a space where the social cues and professional rhythms that once validated their worth simply vanish. Many never find their way out.
I am not going to tell you I had it all figured out. I didn’t. But I will tell you this: I never stopped looking for traction. Even in the margins. Even when the audience was small and the column ran in a paper that folded years ago. Even when I was the lone dissenting vote in a room full of people who had already made up their minds.
That’s what reimagined looks like, at least from where I sit. It isn’t a grand pivot. It isn’t a moment of sudden clarity where everything snaps into focus. It’s more like archaeology — brushing away the layers of a career that paid the bills until you find what was underneath all along. The thing you would have done anyway, if someone had pointed you toward it sooner. If you’re curious what that process looked like for me in a different chapter, you can read more in Inspiration & Personal Growth.
My song is my voice. The wanting to share, to reach people, to speak into the silence and see if anyone leans forward.
I’m not retired. I’m just finally, fully, doing the thing I was always going to do.
If you’re sitting somewhere right now wondering what your version of that is — I’m not going to hand you an answer. Angelou was right. You don’t need an answer. You need to find your song.
Go find it.
