It’s been ten years.
One decade ago this month I walked away from a job I loved to shake up my comfortable life and try something new.
I stepped down as the head of news and communications at Duke University, surprising my outstanding team. We’d been working together for years to respond to research discoveries, sports championships, weather emergencies, campus protests and more, as well as to the rise of social media and other dramatic changes to the media landscape.
Duke sent me off with a big reception at a local theater and, as shown in the photo, an informal farewell at the Durham Bulls baseball stadium.
Less than a week later, Champa and I embarked on an 11,000-mile drive around the United States, followed by an extended trip to Nepal. That’s where the two of us met in 1977 when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, posted to the same school where she was teaching.
Finally, after a short break, we got rid of much of our stuff, rented our house and moved to Moldova, in Eastern Europe, to begin serving together as Peace Corps Volunteers.
I chronicled our three-year adventure on this blog and in my book. Since returning to Durham in 2018, we’ve continued pursuing our “not exactly retired” lifestyle, joining a growing number of older Americans who have been redefining retirement as more than leisure — and redefining themselves in the process.
Several news outlets profiled us as examples of this trend, which in our case has meant extensive travel, volunteering and spending time with family and a network of friends that reaches around the world.
I’ve never looked back.
I enjoyed my career and still miss my Duke colleagues, some of whom recently lost their jobs because of federal funding cuts, but I knew it was time for a change. Just like when I graduated college and chose to backpack across Europe, Asia and Africa with a friend instead of following my classmates to graduate school, I wanted to grab life and see what else it offered.
As I’ve approached this ten-year milestone, I know how lucky I’ve been. I left my job before the Covid pandemic and current funding crisis. Champa and I finished our service in Moldova before the pandemic and war in neighboring Ukraine forced the Peace Corps to halt its operations. We’ve been fortunate with our finances, health and family responsibilities. We could have encountered some disaster while traveling abroad, or at home, but we’ve been fine.
I launched this blog to share with friends our initial drive around the United States, never expecting it to continue so long or to reach people in more than 100 countries. I’ve loved hearing from readers with questions about the Peace Corps or early retirement, or just seeking encouragement to make a leap themselves.
As I’ve told them repeatedly, my message is not “join the Peace Corps!” That’s a good choice for some people but not for others, assuming they get past the rigorous application process. Rather, I’ve urged readers to be intentional about their lives, to choose instead of drift, regardless of their interests. We all have dreams, whether it’s to launch a business, start a nonprofit or master a new skill. It’s often possible to pursue that dream, even on a limited scale, while respecting the real-world complexities that come with it.
Champa and I plan to keep going as long as we can. We’re traveling more than usual now so as to remain outside the United States during its current turmoil. You’ll see soon where we’re heading next. As we approach the next election, however, and as we get older, we will reevaluate. One of the main benefits of the past ten years is how comfortable we’ve become with uncertainty and change.
Veering from our traditional American lives has enriched us immeasurably. These riches have come not in additional paychecks but in the people we’ve met, the places we’ve seen and the memories we’ve made, all while remaining centered with our family and friends. As we’ve learned on the road, we are far from unique in doing this. Many other older people with widely varying budgets and circumstances are also traveling off the beaten path and blazing their own trails.
I know how privileged we are to be among them. Not everyone can do this; family obligations, finances, medical limitations and other constraints are real. But it is possible to resist letting fear or habit prevent us from living with purpose. We can choose to make room for what truly matters to us.
An old Peace Corps slogan says: Life is calling. How far will you go? As we wrap up our first decade of being “not exactly retired,” Champa and I are grateful for how far we’ve gone and still looking forward to whatever comes next.
Thanks for joining us on the journey.
Top photo: Resting after a camel ride in Morocco.
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Eventually, I created an informal volunteer role for myself with the North Carolina partnership program that assists Moldova, where we served as Peace Corps volunteers, and I resumed volunteering at Urban Ministries, but who knows what I missed?
Over the past few months, I’ve met with our 
To be sure, many retired citizens do serve as volunteers — teaching literacy classes, building homes with Habitat for Humanity and much more. Some volunteer through
The midterm election gave me hope that Americans will not surrender to despair, that they will fight to once again make our country the kind of place we can all extol when living and traveling abroad. This past Sunday, Champa and I served lunch at a local soup kitchen with our friend Celeste, right, who also served in the Peace Corps, in West Africa during the Vietnam War. She reminded me how challenging it was to be asked questions then about America. Eventually things got better. I’m hopeful they can again. 
I was invited because I recently assisted the partnership as it prepared to ship hundreds of English-language books to Moldova with two NGOs. I worked with Bob Gingrich, Peace Corps Moldova’s director of management and operations and a fellow North Carolinian (left in photo), who will soon distribute the books among PCVs to share with their host communities.
I ate lunch with Kate before her talk so she could tell me more about the partnership and I could answer some of her questions about Moldova, which she is visiting for the first time, thanks to a grant from 
Also arriving here this past weekend was Willow Stone, a student from Clayton High School who will live with a Moldovan host family and study Russian.
The Moldovans who attended on Monday picked up not only new teaching ideas but also armloads of free books to bring back to their schools. Some of them have also interacted over the years with Peace Corps Moldova’s English Education program, in which Champa has served.
"Not Exactly Retired" 