A Satisfied Life, by Sally Matteson

 

I am an Upstate New Yorker, growing up in a dairy farming region between the Adirondacks and the Catskills near Cooperstown where you will find the Baseball Hall of Fame.  My parents divorced when I was young, my mom raised me alone, and I was a difficult kid. My siblings were much older than me, they were born in the 1940s. Mom was strict and if I stepped out of line, I knew there would be consequences. I watched her work a full-time job, buy a fixer-upper house and redo it and raise a daughter in the ’70s!  She did it all and I believe she taught me well.

We lived in a very small town, part of a larger school zone, so I took the bus to school.  The school was one building, Kindergarten through 12^th grade, with around 400 students total. There were only twenty-eight in my graduating class.  I did what most teenagers do; crazy things with the kids from school cut classes and rode around with boys in fast cars.  I had a boyfriend who took control of my life and I fell into a bad situation of physical abuse and drugs.  The last year of high school, she packed my bags and sent me to live with my older brother in Florida.  I was able to graduate and maintained my Regents Diploma status, which is an advanced program in New York State.  

I lived in the Florida Pan Handle near Elgin Air Force Base and completed one year of college, majoring in Business Programs. Looking back that is one regret I have, not completing college. This has meant that I have had to work extremely hard for everything I earned in the business world.

I stayed in Florida for about two years and then moved back to New York.  I married and then divorced, took entry-level jobs in offices which gave me a wide range of experience.  I even tried my hand at running my own business…a tavern called Sally’s and selling real estate.  It is obvious to me now that nothing was making me happy, I was floating around trying to be happy and connected and failing miserably.  After the failure of yet another relationship, I moved to Albany, New York, and stayed with friends for about a month before finding a place of my own.  For the first time I was alone in the world, with no family support. For years I worked two jobs to just survive. 

Soon I realized that I really was not going anywhere, and I had a friend who had moved to Atlanta. So, I decided to take the Amtrak from Schenectady, NY to Atlanta because I had never been on a train, and I wanted to see what train travel was like. It was a twenty-three-hour journey to what would become my future.

My friend worked for an IT recruiting company and at that time, 1993, the beginning of cellular phone companies and regions, and Atlanta was a great place to be. So, she got me an interview for an office manager position, and I landed the job!  Even though it was not much more money than I was making, I knew I needed a change. I had no idea just how far I was about to travel in the business world.

I had the amazing opportunity to work for many different companies, gaining valuable experience along the way.  Eventually, I found my way to a newly formed company focusing on warehousing logistics in the grocery sector.  I have had amazing managers and bosses over the years and learned as much as I could from each.  My new boss, the owner of the company, gave me full control to manage his office and take care of his employees, approximately 200 at that time.  

When he sold the company years later, I had transitioned into Human Resources Manager from Office Manager, and we were approximately 3000 employees strong all over the United States.  

After the sale of his company, he gave those of us who had been with him from the beginning a gift of money. I used that to pay off debts and decided to do something I had always dreamed of doing... I went to Italy. I found a tour group run by women, focusing on women travelers, and signed up for a 10-day tour in Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast and then 3 nights on my own in Florence.

It literally changed my life, how I thought of myself and what I could do. I have since returned to England and Italy, gone to Paris, and attended a yoga retreat in the South of France with stopovers in Barcelona.  

As I moved toward retirement age I decided that to maintain the quality of life that I wanted I was not going to be able to stay in the US.  I had not worked jobs in my early years that offered pensions or retirement opportunities however my last job which I held for 20 years did.  I managed to save money and invest in a 401k; however, it was not going to support me while living in the US.  I began looking for a retirement spot.  A chance meeting with a gentleman at an insurance conference gave me the idea of looking at Lake Chapala and after about four years of studying everything I could, here I am!!!

I never could have imagined living my life now, and my other journeys, when I was in high school. My mother was a voracious reader and I read almost everything that she read when I was a kid.  It gave me a hunger to see other countries.  Many of the novels were based on the World Wars, before and after and that sparked my curiosity.  I wanted to really experience other countries and people and their history. Reading stimulates the imagination and creates curiosity about the world. One book I read, The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, really inspired me and made me want to walk on the same ground as the characters. It is a story about women who survived the war and German occupation.  Traveling through Europe and envisioning their history is amazing to me and makes me grateful for where I have lived.

It was very strange to arrive here last year and have everything come to a screeching halt.  I was retired!!  What does one do when you do not have a job to go to??  But my first priority was furnishing the house. When I arrived I had nothing for a month! My neighbor across the street loaned me a loveseat so I would have something to sit on. 

Moving to Ajijic was almost like coming back to my small-town roots. My values are small town, so I feel at home here. Every day when I walk around my complex, I see a hundred reasons to be grateful for my life here and my accomplishments which made it all possible. When I thought about retiring in Atlanta, I felt it was too big, too competitive, and too rich. There was just no way I could retire in Atlanta; my thoughts were on how I could pay my bills and survive without living in a trailer somewhere. I have nothing against trailers but that was not how I wanted to live this chapter of my life.

 Living in Ajijic allows me to live a good quality life without feeling guilty. I can give money to people on the street. One street over there are some goats that I take my leftover fruit and vegetables to, and I love watching the Mexican man herd his cows down the street to some grassy areas. Almost back to my roots.