When it comes to a retirement lifestyle, I'm a traditionalist

I'm not a very high risk kind of person.

I know what I know and I'm comfortable with that.

Risk for the sake of risk isn't me.

I'll take a calculated risk, but I have to do a lot of calculation in the process.

So it came as no surprise recently when I took a survey as part of some research I was doing for my Baby Boomer Examiner writing and found I was a "Traditionalist' when it came to some expectations for my retirement years.

The survey from Trilogy Communities recently released an online personality assessment aimed at Baby Boomers to evaluate their desired lifestyles and personalities and how those relate to where they would like to live. Trilogy has active lifestyle communities for people 55 and up in Florida, the Southwest, California, and Northwest.

The online assessment tool includes several categories having to do with home, recreation, travel, and interests. It asks, for example, how close do you want to be to your family, and it offers three images to choose from: Within walking distance, within driving distance, within airplane distance.

By having the results come back as being a traditionalist, apparently I'm not willing to take many risks when it comes to what I want to do and where I want to live through my retirement years.

Well, I wasn't much of a risk-taker up until now, why would that suddenly change?

Since retiring from newspapers in June 2008 about the only risky thing I've done is create Broad Cove Media -- my one-man media empire. (I'm not sure but maybe you can count learning how to surf as being a risk.)

I haven't tried to remake myself into something that forces me to color outside the lines. I don't color that way.

Writing for an audience in and of itself is a little risky, but the craft of writing, which I've been doing for almost 40 years, isn't.

Baby Boomers have all the opportunity in the world to re-make themselves.

We're having to remake themselves because of a changing employment landscape or because of how we need to stay engaged professionally, socially and mentally as we age.

But Baby Boomers shouldn't try to remake themselves into something they are not.

I admire the stories about Wall Street executives who retire to become chefs, but that kind of a leap isn't going to be the norm.

It's important that we stay within ourselves.

I'm not going to try to be somebody I can't be.