Eva has this idea we should retire to Nice. Hot Mediterranean climate for much of the year. Reasonably close to a lot of other places in Europe by plane and train. Big enough to have amenities. Small enough not to be hard to get around. Colorful. Historical. All sorts of reasons.

Neither of us is hugely conversant in French, of course. That's one drawback, though it does have its uses. We will not be tempted to watch a lot of television. Local politics will not be as pressing an issue. And since it is a tourist city, all services are offered in several languages, for the lazy or linguistically not gifted.

Part of me resists: Too far away. Too unsettling. Too many unknowns. Too many unknowns. (Did I write that twice?--oh, oh. ) Too many risks.

That's when the other part of me checks in. "Too many risks"? How many risks is enough?  What happened to the man who used to quit a job and move to a new city for the challenges? (Answer--he settled in to one city for way too long and got comfortable. Well--began to settle for this as comfortable enough.) (Other answer--he got a lot older while settled.)

I still look for ways to get out of my comfort zone as I search for writing challenges, for ways to expand my skills. But I do not usually pursue those for publication, just for information and relaxation. That suggests that I'm just locating a new comfort zone, after all.  So to get out of my zone as a way to live my life, at my age? Shudder.

Maybe that's the best reason of all to move. To a new continent. To a new city. To a new culture. In a new language. To get over or at least confront the timidity, get on with living my retirement, rather than living out my retirement. Hell--just to get on with living. Maybe then I can quit looking at retirement as this yawning chasm of boredom, a time spent looking for ways to spend time (which it seems to be for a lot of my acquaintances).

Of course, I'm also afraid of what happens when Eva and I have no fall-back, when we have only each other as "community." My parents divorced right after my Dad hit retirement and the wall of his own diminishing capacity, and began to want to micromanage all aspects of their daily lives--in the home that had been Mom's  main domain.

What if I'm like him that way (not that I ever was an Alpha in the pack--but then neither was he. He just hungered for that position and hated anyone who got farther up that ladder he thought was or should be reserved for him)?  What if I become too difficult for Eva to live with or tolerate? In a place far from home, not quite making it possible for us to feel at home?