Starting over at 50 wasn't something I'd planned.

In fact, I'd spent years planning almost the exact opposite.

I'd worked around the world for most of my career and, like a lot of people approaching retirement, I had a picture in my head of what would happen when the working part of my life finally came to an end.

My wife Donna and I would sell the guest house we owned in Scotland. We'd travel the world together, enjoy our retirement and finally have the freedom to go where we wanted, when we wanted.

That was the plan.

The problem was that by the time I actually retired at 50, I was beginning to realise that it wasn't necessarily our plan anymore.

When the Future You Planned Starts to Disappear

I finished work on the 1st of November.

For tax reasons, I couldn't immediately return to the UK without risking breaking the 90-day rule I was working around at the time, so I decided to spend five months in Goa and return to Scotland at the end of March.

I'd been to Goa before and knew plenty of people there. During the day, life was good. There were friends to meet, places to go and usually somebody around.

The nights were different.

Eventually everyone goes home, and you're left with yourself, your thoughts and your memories.

And one question kept going round and round in my head.

What direction was my future going to take now?

Before I'd retired, I'd increasingly heard Donna saying that she enjoyed running the guest house and didn't really want to sell it.

That wasn't what we'd originally planned.

The guest house had been bought for her while my own work took me elsewhere around the world. I'd never had much involvement in running it, nor had I ever expected it to become my full-time retirement.

And if I'm being completely truthful, I'd spent the best part of twenty years avoiding living permanently in Scotland.

Nothing against Scotland. I'm Scottish.

I just couldn't stand the bloody weather.

So during those nights in Goa, I had plenty of time to think about what might be waiting for me when I returned home.

Deep down, I think I already knew.

Sometimes the Hardest Part Is Accepting What You Already Know

When I returned to Scotland at the end of March, my fears were confirmed.

The guest house was officially up for sale, but offers were being turned down. The more I looked at what was happening, the clearer it became that Donna didn't really want to sell.

She enjoyed what she was doing.

And there was nothing wrong with that.

The difficulty was that it left us wanting two completely different futures.

I could stay in Scotland, become involved full-time in a business I'd never particularly wanted to run, and give up the retirement I'd spent years working towards.

Or I could stick to the original plan.

Retire.

Travel.

See the world.

Enjoy the freedom I'd worked for.

There was just one fairly significant difference.

The original plan had never included doing it on my own.

That was the decision I eventually had to face.

It wasn't about deciding that Donna was wrong and I was right. She had found something she enjoyed and wanted to continue doing it.

But if I followed her road simply because I was frightened of following mine alone, there was a very good chance I'd end up miserable and eventually resent her for a decision that was actually mine.

After a lot of soul-searching, I chose my road.

Starting Again Doesn't Have to Mean Starting From Scratch

A week later, I moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Benidorm.

I'd initially rented it for three months.

I ended up staying for six.

Looking back, choosing somewhere familiar was probably one of the better decisions I made.

I already knew Benidorm well from previous visits. I knew my way around, knew places I liked and didn't have to deal with the added pressure of trying to understand a completely unfamiliar place while simultaneously trying to understand what the hell I was doing with the rest of my life.

There was a sports bar directly across the road from my apartment, so my love of football gave me somewhere to go.

Music helped as well.

I knew the karaoke bars and could move from one to another singing for most of the day if I wanted to. Benidorm being Benidorm, you could probably sing for fourteen hours without too much difficulty.

Even I didn't need quite that much therapy.

Having a two-bedroom apartment also meant friends could visit. One mate came out for a week about two months after I arrived, and another came a couple of months later.

Seeing familiar faces helped more than they probably realised.

But underneath the football, music and friends, something more important was happening.

I was discovering that I could manage on my own.

Being on Your Own Doesn't Mean You've Failed

I still thought about Donna.

Of course I did.

You don't spend years with somebody, build plans together and then simply switch your feelings off because you've moved to Spain.

But those six months gave me something Goa couldn't.

Goa had given me time to think.

Scotland had given me the answer I'd probably already expected.

Benidorm gave me time to accept it.

I gradually stopped thinking about how I might change Donna's mind and started concentrating on something I actually had control over:

What was I going to do with my own life?

If I wanted to travel permanently, I needed to plan ahead. Where was I going to go? Where would I stay? What flights did I need? What would the next twelve months look like?

Then I'd have to do the same thing again the following year.

That practical planning helped.

Instead of constantly looking backwards at a future that wasn't going to happen, I was beginning to look forwards at one that might.

My career probably helped me more than I realised too. I'd spent years working around the world and had become accustomed to my own company.

But there's an important difference between being comfortable on your own and wanting to spend the rest of your life alone.

I didn't suddenly decide that being single was wonderful.

I simply began to realise that being single didn't mean my life was over.

You Don't Need the Rest of Your Life Worked Out

This is probably the biggest thing I'd say to anyone facing the same situation later in life.

You don't need to know how the story ends.

At 50, I didn't.

I didn't have some grand five-year plan showing exactly what my new life would look like.

I rented an apartment for three months.

That was it.

Three months became six, and during those six months I proved something to myself that mattered far more than having every detail of the future mapped out.

I could cope.

I could organise my own life.

I could make my own decisions.

I could still enjoy football, music, friends and the things that had always made me Billy.

And I could make plans for tomorrow without needing somebody else to approve them.

Starting over didn't mean throwing away everything I'd spent my life building.

And it didn't mean inventing a completely different person.

I was still me.

Sometimes You Don't Need a New Dream

Looking back, I don't think I actually started again at 50.

Not completely.

The dream I'd worked towards hadn't disappeared.

I still wanted to retire. I still wanted to travel. I still wanted the freedom to see the world.

What changed was the person I'd expected to share that dream with.

Donna had chosen the future that made sense to her.

Eventually, I realised I had to do the same.

And perhaps that's the part of starting over later in life that doesn't get talked about enough.

Sometimes you don't need a new dream.

Sometimes you need the courage to continue with the one you already had, even though the person you'd expected to share it with has chosen a different road.

So, is 50 too late to rebuild your life?

I don't think so.

But rebuilding doesn't mean you have to know what the finished building is going to look like.

Sometimes it starts much smaller than that.

A decision. A three-month rental. A football match in a bar across the road. A song in a karaoke bar. A mate coming over for a week.

For me, the biggest change was accepting that I couldn't control Donna's decision. I could only control mine.

Things were never going to be the same again, and eventually I stopped expecting them to be. If I wanted the retirement I'd worked towards, I had to take responsibility for making it happen. That meant putting plans in place, keeping those plans moving forward and, for perhaps the first time in a long while, making sure I looked after No. 1.

Not because nobody else mattered.

Because this was the one life I had, and nobody else could decide what I did with it.

And somewhere during those six months in Benidorm, I finally began to realise that perhaps I was going to be all right after all.

— Billy