Life Is But A Dream

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Given Sears' strong legs and barrel chest, it's hard to imagine, but at that time, he says, he thought he was "washed up physically." So it was pretty much on a lark (and to fill up all those landlocked hours) that he drove to Mexico in a little pop-up cabover camper, with his old 9 ft. 6 in. long board strapped to the shell because, why not? "What a wonderful physical experience!" an exuberant Sears says of his time that first winter on a little-known beach in southern Baja. "You know, it all came back to me--the physical connection with nature, the spiritual connection with nature." After returning home to California's central coast, Sears bought a new board and drove to Mexico again the next winter, this time staying for six weeks, long enough to get back into great paddling shape and for his old skills to click. The next winter he took his wife, a former librarian and amateur painter, and stayed for six weeks again. The next winter they doubled their time, enjoying the waves and the migrating gray whales, and they have been spending three months in Mexico each winter ever since. Sears does not surf when he's at home in Morro Bay, but in Baja he's the chairman of the beach, loving every moment, whether it's talking with the young guys on the sand or paddling out to carve some S-turns on a perfect glassy-faced wave. "Surfers would look at what I do at home and say it's a lack of commitment," he says. "But what I'm really committed to now is having a more well-rounded life than when I was fishing."

Carving Out a Brand-New Identity

Jean Dibner, 62

Sculptor

Newton, Mass.

Once upon a time, Jean Dibner was a senior vice president of Avid Technology, a digital film-editing company. Now she spends her days carving granite and clay as a sculptor--but she's the first to admit that the transition "didn't just happen." Yes, she volunteered for early retirement in 1999, thinking that after raising four children and sending them to college and being a major breadwinner, "it was time to do something that was really energizing to me." But there's a lot of ground to cover when someone switches from running worldwide businesses, traveling nonstop and working 60 or 70 hours a week to learning human anatomy and making works of art meaningful enough to be shown in galleries nationwide. "It was a whole process to clarify what I even wanted from sculpture," says Dibner. "Was my goal just to create beautiful sculpture and put it in my home? Or did I want other people to see it and enjoy it too?"