Considering Retiring? How About Rewiring? Reflections

want to think about as you make them. Because everybody I think I know makes New Year's resolutions. They promised to lose weight. They promised to take up a course. They promised to quit a job or start a business, or take on a side hustle, or spend more time with family, or spend more time with friends, take more time for themselves. Basically, we resolve to do better and be better and have a better life. And I really hope that twenty twenty five is everything you wanted to be.

So I was born. I won't say what year, but I was born on January first, and normally on January first, you want to be the first baby of the year. But guess what, I was the second baby of the year. I was born probably fifteen minutes after the first I don't know, but I was not born as the first baby of the year. So I missed all the perks. I miss being a tax deduction. My mother said I ruined the New Year's party where she had to leave because she went into labor, and my dad said I

was poorly engineered and badly accounted for. Because they said that with love, but it kind of throughout my life meant that I always had a few things that seemed to be tied back to that New Year's Day delay, Like I was always running ten to fifteen minutes late for meetings. I never could get caught up. I always had to work harder to be number one. It seemed like I was always number two with everything I did, whether it was in course work or competitions, I was

always second place but not first. And it really kind of made me, in one way, want to work harder to be number one, and then another way say, I don't really care. I'm happy with number two. And you know what, it's okay not being number one. It's okay being number two or three or four or why bother counting? Why bother competing with yourself and your parents' expectations, or your friends expectations, or your spouse expectations. Why do that?

Why constantly have to live feeling you have to measure up well? That is how I had to live my life all my life because my parents expected me to be number one, because I was, you know, in mer mind, the best there is. My mother always said I only had one child because she was perfect, and she's everything we want her to be. That's a lot to live

up to. So I all my life was competitive and went to the most competitive city in the world to you know, launch a business and you know, really build a major career New York City, and I felt like I was always hustling and going and looking for business and trying to be my best and being number one and on and on. Well, one of the things I think one of my resolutions is going to be for twenty twenty five is to stop worrying about measuring up

and being number one. I was born and bred to be number one and be competitive and be the best, and I was voted most likely to succeed, and I did all these things. But maybe it's just time to say I'm good the way I am. I'm okay, just the way I am, because I'm a lot older now, and you know, the offers for jobs and opportunities don't come in as fast. But I'm also at that time in my life where I'm supposed to be just enjoying what I have for the rest of my life. That's right.

I've lived more than half my life. You may have too, so now I just want to enjoy what I have of the rest of my life and really nothing for granted, every day, every minute, the little things, not the big I've made it clear on many broadcasts how things and material things no longer matter to me. I seem to have a lot left because nobody wants to buy my stuff, and I'm not ready to donate everything I have. I just want to live with what I have, within my

means and make my life more meaningful. I'll say that again because I want you to think about that. I want to live within my means and make my life

more meaningful. I'm not ready to retire. I want to work and do things, even though I'm typically I guess statistically of retirement age, and I tell people who are facing retirement who really are like, I don't know what I'm going to do when I'm retire, and I actually, you know, because I was researching the concept of retiring, thinking Wow, what would I do if I said I was retired. I don't know because I'm always doing and being I'm doing this show still and I don't have

to do the show. It's a labor of love. I like talking. I like talking to people out there who I hope are listening. I hope I'm making an impact and a difference and inspiring others. I told someone recently who's one of my social media followers, I have a lot thank goodness, he said, I you know, I'm starting a new chapter of my life. For over thirty five to forty years, I've always been defined by my career and what I write about. He's a writer and my topic.

And now I have to redefine myself when I retire. And now I'm retired, and I wrote it back, I said, don't retire, rewire. That's the other thing. So learning to make my life more meaningful is one of my resolutions. And the other is, don't think about retiring, think about rewiring. Maybe it's time to step away for the career you had in the industry you worked in. Maybe it's time to say, maybe I don't want to stay current with everything,

Maybe I want to just do something else. One of the people I know who's a friend, maybe she's listening. She's a chef all her life really terrific. The restaurant industry is a tough industry. You make really no money. You're constantly battling everything. And most of my friends who are restaurate tours, independent wines and chefs are struggling. She started doing Joey, she started designing beautiful jewelry. Now she has customers. She found something to do with her hands

in a new way. She rewired her talents with her hands and her creativity and went from creating beautiful dishes to creating beautiful pieces a jewelry. I know a lot of people who are doing that right now. They have had this amazing run, successful run with their career, but maybe the either their career has left them, they have decided to leave their career and they're not ready to retire, but they rewire. I think that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to rewire. I want to do more things

with my hands. Frankly, I've never done anything with my hands. I've only done things with my mouth like talk and eat and sip and share, and I'm still doing that. But I think I want to do something with my body and my hands to be creative in a new way. I also want to so that's resolution number three, be creative with my hands and my body in a new way. Resolution number four is one that I'm going to really

try to draw hard on this show. Is that I'm all about living healthy and having a healthy life and self care. But it's more than just physical and mental. I also want people to be financially well I want to really address financial wellbeing, not making money, but just living within your mans as I said earlier, and living with a life that is more meaningful. I don't want to see my friends and my colleagues worry about money,

running out of it, losing their clients. I have so many friends and colleagues who are struggling to keep their business going, keep it successful. My heart was broken when one of my good friends is a man. He's a restauranateur. He is an amazing man. Ionic Benjamin, we love you. He worked in restaurants for many years. But it was in a terrible car accident in his car skid it off a road. I don't know whether there was ice or fog, but as a result, Yonic Benjamin's car hit

a tree. He was badly entered, and he was left a paraplegic. Now he could have just said I'm done. I'm just done. I'm going to just live on disability. But not my Friendonic Benjamin. He was working, you know, he was working as a somer. He was serving on the floor. He's working the floor, you know, telling people how to what to order in terms of wine. So he had a wine background, so he outfitted his wheelchair with a table so he could still continue to serve wine.

And a friend of his, you know, nobody would hire him, he said, And I'm saying this and he said, man, but I'm sure there's many women out there who faces. He went on so many job interviews. People didn't know he was in a wheelchair and he would, you know, wheel in and he said, the look on people's faces when the interview would start. They didn't know what to do.

They had to gather themselves. And of course many people did not hire him or give him an offer because he was disabled, which breaks my heart because that's wrong. You should not judge people because they have a disability. And he was quite able to sell wine and discuss wine. As a result, a good friend of his in the business, Jean Luke could Do, who sadly has passed away, asked Janick to work at his retail shop in New York City, and fortunately the retail shop had wide corridors so Yani

could navigate the aisles. But what Yanik learned is not everywhere is accommodating for people who have disabilities, especially those in wheelchairs. So he pursued a dream. He rewired and he became involved with an organization called Wheeling Forward to help advocate for people living with disabilities and to make places more accommodating for them. And through that he met some friends as he continued to exercise and rebuild what he could of his body so he could do more things.

And he has. He's been in marathons, you know, with his wheelchair. He's traveled the world. He's amazing. So he was able to get a dear friend to help him invest in the idea of creating and accessible focused restaurant, which he called Contento because he'd finally reached a point where he had accepted what had happened and he was moving forward, and he opened a restaurant called Contento. It

was in Harlem. It was I think Contento was the one of the first restaurants in the United States to really focus on making it all accessible to people with any kind of disability. It was designed to accommodate people who had walkers and wheelchairs. There was braille on the menu, the counters were low, he offered sign language course to his servers. He really thought of everything, and then the food was arrasing. It was really great food. It had

a Peruvian theme. The chef had a Peruvian background. The Wineless, of course, thank you Janik was terrific and featured many indigenous and verse and people of color. You know. It was a diversity focused wine to accommodate and acknowledge the diverse world of wine. Contento went on to receive many accalodes and awards, being named one of the most innovative restaurants in the country Accalodes and pressed Like you can't imagine.

I remember interviewing Yanik and he was on a roll. Literally, he was on a roll, and he was raising money for Wheeling Forward with a program called Wine on Wheels, And I mean, everyone loves Yannick, so imagine what it was like to see his post in December twenty twenty four that he would be closing Contento on December twenty first, and the reasons just frankly gutted me. He said that he'd had to take on extra jobs just to afford his health insurance. Okay, don't even get me started on

how that guts me. He had to take on extra jobs to afford his health insurance. He had to hire a full time security guard at the door at Contento because there had been so many thefts and there was a crime problem in his neighborhood. Okay, gout costs were high and basically he was losing money. And he closed Contento December twenty first, twenty twenty four. And I wrote him and said, oh man, you accomplished so much and you will continue to do so be proud of what

you did. Don't look back, look forward, wheel forward, wheel forward. And I'm telling you the story because you may have had not the best year in twenty twenty four. Many of us felt twenty twenty four was disappointing. Many of us wanted to see the first woman president elected, huge disappointment for those who did. Many of us wanted the situation in the mid least resolved and hostages were turned home, and oh brother, it just keeps going on and on.

Many of you would hope that the world would be a better place for everyone, but there's still school shootings, even up before Christmas. There was a recent one, and climate change, and climate change is hitting places you didn't think climate change would hit, like Asheville, North Carolina, and Hurricane Helene. And you know, one side says the economy's better, But recently I was getting a facial and talking to my facialists, and she said, the economy is worse. We're

having more of a struggle. I don't know. I don't know, but what I do know is we need to wheel forward. We need to push ourselves forward and not allow ourselves to live in the land of would have, could have, should have and regret. We have to wheel forward. So if twenty twenty four was not your best year, don't be angry, don't be sad, don't have regret to say it wasn't the best year. But I'm going to wheel forward.

I'm going to find more meaning in me and in my life and live more meaningful and live within my means. I think you have to do that because you want to stay focused and positive. And whether that's I've I've decided to retire, I'm done. I've decided to rewire and do something new, or I decided to sink into where I am and just work harder and be better at it and enjoy it. It's your choice. It's your choice to decide what you want to do. I'm at that point.

I actually had a pretty amazing twenty twenty four. Yes, I wanted Kamala Harris to become president, and I'm pissed, but I stopping pissed because, you know what, the die was cast, the vote was cast, and we have a new you know, an incoming president who many people voted for, and I have to accept that. And I'm not going to bitch anymore because I'm not going to spend my

life bitching and moaning either. I'm just going to keep going my merry way and doing my thing and trying to be living a life of meaning and being meaningful. I had a pretty good year, though, when I do reflect back, and I'm going to tell you something interesting. Since nineteen ninety, oh god, this is a long time ago, thirty five years ago. I think it's thirty five years ago,

or I can't count. One of my bad elements is math. Anyway, since nineteen ninety I have celebrated New Year's my birthday somewhere different every year. I made it my special tradition, so that every year I would start the new year on a new foot and a new placed, with a new perspective. I wheel forward, as I say, and boy have I done some amazing things. It started. My first one was Amsterdam. I celebrated in Thailand, I've celebrated in Bli.

I've celebrated in Borneo. I've celebrated in Nepal, the Himalayas. I've celebrated in Brazil, in Chile, Peru, Budapest, Switzerland, on a plain to Paris, Edinburgh, Scotland. I've traveled the United States. I've celebrated Charleston and Savannah and Nashville and Palm Beach, Orlando at SeaWorld and New York. So many places, and each has been such an important building block of my life and who I am and how I approached my birthday and starting a new year and a new chapter

and a new life and a new attitude. And it was really important after my mother died, when I actually had no plans because we put all plans on hold because we were waiting for my mother to she was dying, and she died just before Christmas and my last show I talked about that, and we had no New Year's plans, and I was just like, I don't know what we're gonna do. Maybe we'll just drive somewhere. Maybe we'll go up to BlackBerry Farm. It's a beautiful place. We've celebrated

there in Nashville. We didn't know, and then serendipity landed in my lap and a friend of mine in the wine businesiness said, I'm organizing a tour de friends, a buying trip, and we'd love to have you and David join us to see what it's like. Can you leave January fifth? And I was like, can I leave January fifth? I can leave December thirty first, do you mind? I'll pay for my time leading up to that, he didn't seem to care. I said, you know, my mom just died.

I gotta get out of Chadanooga. I can't be in this house. So literally, two days before December thirty first, twenty twenty two, I booked that flight through his travel agent to Paris, and we spent New Year's Eve flying to Paris. It's my first time flying to Paris on a plane, so it was a first. We watched the movie New Year's Eve on the plane. I cried. I

was still grieving over mother. Be landed in Paris and the city, the Champs Lyse was littered with trash and bottles from the night before, and we ate beautiful meal of oysters and fresh clowns a coquilage. They call it a charming Parisian bistro and drink really good champagne. And the way staff brought me my favorite dessert, have LoVa with a candle, and I get to tell you, it was really special. It was really special, and I realized that you can make your party wherever you are. This year,

we're doing it a little differently. For the first time in all those years, I'm breaking Tradisian. I've always celebrated New Year's in the same place. Twice. The first was when my hut when I was going through chemotherapy, and I had planned the trip to go to Asia for New Years. My husband's never been and I said, we're gonna go to Asia. We're going to celebrate New Year's

even Cambodia. And I had this, oh, actually, Hong Kong. Sorry, we have very dear friends in Hong Kong and we were going to fly over and celebrate New Year's with them. And my own cologist said, you know, when I realized after my double mass ectomy and all the diagnostics came back that I would need chemotherapy, my oncologist, doctor Marie A Theiadula, said well, we need to start chemotherapy. And I looked her straight inly. I said, well, here's my schedule.

I'm scheduled to fly to Asia for Christmas and spend New Year's in Hong Kong for my January first birthday, so I can start chemotherapy around January tenth. Will that work? And this was November and she looked at me. She said, that's not how cancer works. You will start chemotherapy in December and you're not going to take the trip. I said, no, I'm going to take my trip. This is my tradition. Anyway, she won, I didn't. I ended up spending that birthday

in the Hampton's. A very dear friend just said, here's the keys to my house. Go out, because at that point I would in the second round of chemo, when my hair was starting to fall out. That was the first time I repeated a New Year's in the Hampton's, and the second was when my husband turned fifty. I gave him my birthday. He wanted to go to Switzerland to see friends very badly, and we both have dear friends in Switzerland's His was in Zurich, mine was in DeVos,

and I've already spent New Years in DeVos. But I said, I'm giving you my birthday and we flew over to Switzerland to be with our friends and it was a lot of fun. This year, I'm doing it again. I'm repeating in New Year's, but I'm doing it differently. We did in New Year's once because we were always going home to see my mom for a long time after

dad died. We did Chattanooga to New Orleans. We did a drive and spent a New Year's with friends at their uptown, beautiful uptown home, and she had a dinner party and we went to Commander's Palace for my birthday and it was very lovely. But now that we live in New Orleans, we want to embrace the city and all seasons and celebrations because for the first time in

a long time, I feel home. I love it because for many years, whenever I visit and I would tell my New Orrollenian friends how much I love this city and I would like to live here one day, they always said, you're already home. And when I finally got here and I said I'm home now, they said, welcome home. And that's a New Orleanian term, welcome home. And I'm finally home, both physically and emotionally. And mentally, so I said to my husband David, I don't need to go

to another southern city to celebrate. We were thinking about going to Savannah. We did his birthday there but at mine. But I was like, why go to another southern city when I'm already in the most beautiful city in the South in my mind and I love it. So we're going to spend or we're spending New Year's my birthday because this is airing on my birthday here in New Orleans, celebrating, and I couldn't be happier because I'm learning that sometimes

there is no place like home. Sometimes you have to travel the world and experience different things and live life to love where you are. It doesn't mean I'm going to necessarily do this every year, but I'm happy to be in a home where I'm having so much fun and enjoying life and finding me new meaning and making my life more meaningful. So you don't need to escape. Escaping and leaving something doesn't necessarily mean you're getting rid

of something. You will always be going back. The only thing you're getting rid of on the first day of the year is the year before that. It's over, the year is past. It's now history. Today is your gift and tomorrow's mystery. So make those resolutions. Don't beerate yourself if you don't stick to them. Just make a few. I write mind down in a diary to diary of every New Year, New Year's Birthday, New Year's Eve, New

Year's Day, birthday, since that trip to Amsterdam. Think how long that's been nineteen ninety and now it's twenty twenty five. It's the story of my life. In handwritten diaries, I reflect on what the year brought in and what was going on in the year. Where was my head, what was good, what was not so good? What I hope to achieve in the following year. What's my bucket list of things to do in life? And as I as my life progresses, my bucket list gets smaller but becomes

more meaningful. It's different. There's different things I want to do with my bucket list, and some have dropped off the bucket list because I've already done them, like spending New Years even Scotland to experience Hogmanay. But you add new things like working with your hands and keeping your body strong and find meaning where you are enjoying life more and worrying less. So think about that as you plan your year. Be ready for the unexpected and expect

to be surprised and amazed what can be. I think that's my message I want to leave you with. Be always living in a world of awesome. As you're in awe, things can be awesome and in fabulous. Be curious, be inquisitive, live in a world of wonder. Wonder and learn to wander and explore. Seek meaning by meaning fully define yourself the way you want to be or redefine. If you are planning to retire, say I'm rewiring, spend your world

and turn it into something beautiful that you want. And if shittaki comes your way and something's not great, except that that's going to happen too, there's nothing you can do except just figure a way to rewire it and rethink how you're going to tackle it, because that's really all you can do. So Happy New Year to you, Happy Birthday to me, and always remember you have a choice in life on how you want to live and

how you want to approach and tackle every day. I believe in choosing fearless and fabulous, and I hope you will too. Happy New Year, Thank you Jay Dead used to dre