Ashton's been blogging under the radar for the past several months, cutting her teeth on the form and piling up some wonderful stories (many of which you can listen to in audio). Help start building this network, and this book. comments (4): I think the whole idea of retirement is changing. Most everyone on the "entitlement plan" - i.e., SS, Medicare and my pension will take care of me are delusional. We will live longer and longer and run out of money. The better plan is some combination of mini-retirements (a la Timothy Ferriss and the 4-hr work week) and my own ideas about learning how to get paid for what you would otherwise do for free. Money then becomes a side effect of your own quality of life. In both cases you get out of the 'defer having a life until some TBD date in the future' trap and live now. Thanks, Mark. Getting paid for what you would otherwise do for free is a far more sensible construct than "follow your passion" -?_ and with considerable overlap, since what we do for free tends to be what we're good at, which tends to be what we're passionate about. I want my project to be useful for ordinary working people (who may not have a "passion" or see it as such) in addition to the artists and business owners who stay on the job for reasons that are intuitively obvious. The octo- and nonanonagenarians I'm meeting are incredibly interesting,