Moving to Mexico in 2014 has brought me adventure, a sense of peace and increased financial security. I don’t regret any decision I made, bad or good, that played a part in bringing me here. When I’m walking the streets of Mazatlan or along its malecon, I sigh in relief like a robber in a getaway car. When I see the dark period of American history my friends are living through at home, my automatic response is “Thank god I’m out.” But then, Mexico has always been a place where people from all over the world come to escape.

There are plenty of logical reasons not to live in Mexico of course - Mexico is not for everyone. But when so many people comment that they’d love to live in Mexico, I take it on faith that they really would like to. So why don't they?

"Heaven is living in your hopes. Hell is living in your fears. It's up to each individual which one he chooses" - Tom Robbins, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."

In spite of all the evidence that money and possessions don’t make you happy, people still hang on to the idea. I once listened to a doctor in Denver complain bitterly about the need to keep working after sixty-two. She lived in a two million dollar house. People greatly underestimate how a house, possessions and the familiar lock them in. If I asked her today if she believed money could make you happy, I’m sure she’d say no. And yet.

with Mexican best friends at the Conservatory in Mazatlan

Just as comfortable familiarity can lock you in to a static life, lack of money can equally be excuse not to pursue a new lifestyle. A move has start-up costs and in the case of Mexico that translates to usually awful airplane travel to different areas in Mexico to see where you’ll fit in best and expenses you won’t be able to foresee. Mistakes will be made.

At least if you’re older you have one thing going for you. Planning where you want to be for the rest of your life you likely can finally distinguish what will make you happy from what your friends think you should want, which is, mystically, usually based on a version of what they did with their lives, projected onto you.

Prior to moving to Mexico and looking for a job, I remember shrieking in laughter when a another doctor friend of mine thought I should go back to school, at age 55, to train as medical assistant. I took a moment to introduce myself.

Such is the dissonance that can exist between other people’s ideas of what you should do and your instincts. Readers have told me that they weren’t telling anyone about their decision to move to Mexico, so afraid they were of being talked out of it by people who’d never been to Mexico.

Not too many people think of Mexico in their years of rice and salt. In 2010 I certainly didn’t think I'd end up living out my life on a Mexican beach. After moving to Denver from Virginia during the Great Recession after losing my job in Virginia in 2008. I admit to doing all I could think of to hang in there. My days consisted of meager contract work, constant interviewing, and all the hell that goes with job hunting. I finally realized that if I tried hard enough, I could well end up spending more than a decade in a job I hated.

On that subject, I’m willing to bet one thing hasn’t changed since then. If you’re in your 50’s and lose your job in the US, you are likely screwed for good in getting a new job at the level of your last. You can read all the cheery AARP advice you want but hard cold statistics demonstrate your chances are very slim. The job market is like a rug being ferociously shaken. Being able to hold on isn’t always in your control. When worn career paths closed to me, it became matter of whether to acquiesce to a lesser life and a lesser job or dare to imagine a riskier, wildly different life.

In my own trek toward expat life, what surprised me was how situations appeared so organically once I committed to going, once I said, I’m doing this. As Will Smith remarked on the power of commitment:

"There's a redemptive power that making a choice has, rather than feeling like you're an effect to all the things that are happening. Make a choice. You just decide what it's going to be, who you're going to be, how you're going to do it. Just decide. And then from that point, the universe is going to get out of your way."

Not every problem that gets out of your way is a huge one. Many are everyday annoyances that you never got around to addressing because you lacked any impetus. With a goal, solving these small issues become a priority. I figured out how to live without a a costly SUV, simplified my life and moved more business online in the run-up to Mexico, things I’d meant to do for years.

What I found in Mexico was the financial freedom to create a life to order. By late mid-life, I wanted my use the skills I’d honed over a lifetime and new interests to converge into the creative period I felt I’d earned and that I’d never get a chance at again.

For all our individual differences, in many ways those of a certain age have plenty in common with one another, and the same conditions to address or ignore at our peril.

We have made (or lost) our fortunes. Children are up, on their way and pretty much in charge of with who they spend their time. Old friendships slog a slower journey of discovery. You can find yourself self doing things for the 3rd, 4th or hundredth time and have to decide how you feel about that, whether it’s out of sustained joy or habit.

At certain periods you’re forced to at least try to honestly examine what routines and surroundings that make your life and test unchartered territory against the lure of placid, bovine contentment. For all it’s challenges and set backs, finding the courage to make move to Mexico, a country a knew little more than I could glean from a few week-ends in Ensenada in the 80’s, was its own reward. If it hadn’t worked out, I’d still have the comfort of knowing that the fear didn’t hold me back, and I certainly had plenty. It’s what you don’t do that you regret.

I read an excellent article in the New York Times about a triple amputee who made his palliative care his life work. One of the observations he and other caregivers he worked with made was that at the end of life, rather than the existential clarity we and those around them anticipate, most often patients' last days focus on quotidian beauty, and small things.

It was a relief for me to realize that going with a simple sigh might be enough if I’ve done all I could think of to have as much fun as possible along the way while keeping a nice roof over my head. Knowing that we go with a sigh is still one more reason why it's what you do between now and then that matters most.

Take a happiness test with one of the twenty tests devised by Penn State to measure your happiness, engagement, flourishing, meaning and satisfaction with life.

"Do the Work" by Steven Pressman on getting "unstuck."
"Essentialism" by Greg McKeon - a best-seller on the disciplined pursuit of less.

About the author:

Kerry Baker is the author of three previous books"If Only I Had a Place," is a guide to renting in Mexico with style, which includes a listing of rental concierges in Mexico's most popular expat areas.

My third book is “The Mexico Solution: Saving your money, sanity, and quality of life through part-time life in Mexico.” The first how-to book you’ve ever bought that will also entertain you.

My recent book is a cookbook, The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico, a cookbook for travelers, snowbirds and expats who want to maintain a healthy diet in Mexico.

Ventanas Mexico

The Great Escape