This article appears as part of Casey Weade's Weekend Reading for Retirees series. Every Friday, Casey highlights four hand-picked articles on trending retirement topics and delivers them straight to your email inbox. Get on the list here.

From roles to souls: Past podcast guest, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, describes retirement as your “autumn season of life”, in that it brings extraordinary freedom to redefine your life narrative and legacy. However, many pre-retirees don’t always think about this aspect. It’s been engrained in society to view aging as negative, but when there’s a possibility of living ten decades, embracing the fact that you’re growing older will help you mature positively, and with purpose. Retirement is an opportunity to truly make an impact, and many are doing so through “late work”. This article describes a few different ways that might look:

📌Passion – Underlying passions you once had while younger might have shifted away throughout your working years, but when your career comes to a stop, you have the freedom to revisit those untapped fascinations

📌Duets – These individuals construct late work as a means to connect with their partner, based around something they’re both passionate about, and can pursue from an entrepreneurial standpoint

📌Continuums – If you love your career so much that you don’t want to stop, this is your category. It provides you energy, meaning, purpose and community.

📌Magnus Opus – This group includes individuals who do their greatest work in their latter years, either because they now have to time to focus, or it’s led to a natural progression of their skills and experience

📌Portfolios – A multitude of working projects and occupations provide this group of people fulfillment, but it’s all typically focused in one area, such as a freelance writer or company consultant

📌Transitionists – Here is where you will find your coaches and advisors – whether that be for retirement, fitness, business, etc.

Be open-minded: You may never want to “retire”, but I know you want a “Job Optional” plan at minimum, and it may look completely different than you imagined.