Ellen Goodman

On the first day of 2010, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman launched her encore career in her final column for The Washington Post by declaring, “I’m letting myself go.”

She put a positive spin on the phase, explaining, “After all, where will you go when you let yourself go? To let this question fill the free space between deadlines in my life has been quite liberating. It suggests the freedom that can fuel this journey.”

At the Purpose Prize Summit a few weeks ago, Goodman announced she planned to enter the semicolon phase of the “Then ; Now” encore career transition with a group of women friends who were all committed to having an impact on society.

In her January 1 column she writes, “I belong to a generation that has transformed our culture. We’ve been the change agents for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights. Now, we find ourselves on the cutting edge of another huge social change. This time, it’s the longevity revolution. Ours is the first generation to collectively cross the demarcation line of senior citizenship with actuarial tables on our side.

“‘Senior citizen’ is now a single demographic name tag that includes those who fought in World War II and those who were born in World War II. We don’t have a label yet to describe the early, active aging. But many of us are pausing to recalculate the purpose of a longer life. We are reinventing ourselves and society’s expectations, just as we have throughout our lives.”

What type of encore career do you think Ellen Goodman should have? Read her final Washington Post column and post your comment.