FOR Abigail Trafford, the R-word - "retirement" - is a misnomer.

"It's a kind of second adolescence," she says in her book, "My Time: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life."

"Instead of winding down after age 50, you're having to gear up. Longevity's imperative is regeneration," she says.

If "second adolescence" sounds too trivial, use "My Time" then, as the author does, to describe your years after middle age but before old age, a period the author calls a "personal renaissance."

In her prologue, she explains her inspiration to write the book.

"Something huge is happening. A demographic wave has swept over the social landscape. It's not just that people are living longer - they are healthier longer," she says. "The biological calendar has been reconfigured so that people are physically younger than their chronological age."

"A century ago, even 50 years ago, there was no My Time. Life was too short. Today many girls born in the United States can expect to live to 100," she says. "It's just dawning on Americans that a social revolution is taking place as people are living longer - and healthier - lives."

"As a health writer, I have seen how the longevity revolution has altered every aspect of the culture," she observes. "Political leaders wring their hands over the swelling ranks of Medicare ... At the same time, entrepreneurs have built a burgeoning anti-aging movement that offers everything from Botox injections and supplements to weight-loss regimens, spiritual retreats, life-long learning centers, and sex manuals - all targeted to people over 50 and older."

'The perils are real'

But there's a missing link, says Trafford, a columnist and former health editor at the Washington Post.

At least in the US, she says, there's no psychological roadmap for My Time.

In her view, physical longevity is no guarantee for a good My Time - many Americans commit suicide in their 60s because of a poorer My Time.

That's where this book kicks in. It's a fresh reminder to the reader that it "can be dangerous to stay in the rut of middle adulthood and not move on."

"The perils are real," warns the author. "The highest suicide rates (in the US), for example, are found in white men over 65. Why this surge in self-destruction among those who have been most privileged in the culture? The immediate explanation is usually untreated depression or some other medical problem. But in the larger context of the longevity boom, the statistic sounds an alarm: If you can't find new purpose and pleasure in the bonus decades, you can get trapped in a biological purgatory. You feel too old to live, but too young to die."

Trafford's "bonus decades" refers to "the window of My Time," that is, 30 years or more from about age 50 to 80.

In these bonus decades, she advises the reader not to sit back in a rocking chair, relishing or regretting what is gone.

"Leisure is the old definition of retirement. Today, most people ... say retirement is the beginning of a new chapter in life, rather than an extended vacation," she says. "The rigors of Second Adolescence demand that you take an activist approach and not just slide along from adulthood to the endgame of old-old age."

Although it was first published in 2003, the book resonates today, from Europe to America to Asia, where recessions, slower growth and an aging population are eating into retirement pensions, sparking worries about life after retirement.

Don't worry about retirement

But people don't have to worry so much, says Trafford. Pension funds do matter, but the reinvention and regeneration of a retired life depends on more than those funds.

How do you revive your retired life, then?

"Aida Rivera of Puerto Rico knows," Trafford says. "The high school dropout went to college when she was nearly 50 and earned a college degree to become a therapist at age 60."

Indeed, "retirement" is the wrong word for life after mid-adulthood. As Trafford points out: "You may stop working at a job that defined your life for many years. But you don't stop. Everett A. Greene Sr retired from the DC Fire Department and turned to community service. He works at a food bank and mentors children in elementary school. Like many My Timers, he has a mission 'to give back.'"

Perhaps the author knows best about the remaking of retirement. Her own story is probably the most revealing in her book.

At age 50, she was offered a higher management position at the Washington Post.

After discussing with her husband, she turned down the offer because she loved what she was doing: writing articles.

So she stayed in her old position for another decade. "But a rumbling restlessness started in my chest. What do you really want to do?"

Finally, she stepped down as the helm of her newspaper's health section.

"After a short sabbatical, I return to the Post in a new role as a columnist," she recalls. "This is the classic bittersweet turning point of mourning the past while dreaming about the future."

Then she traveled to Asia for reflection.

On a clear October day, she visited the ancient city of Kyongju in South Korea, where she saw a Buddha from the eighth century AD, sublime in grandeur and simplicity.

"In the gaze of the Buddha, I am suspended," she says. "In the quiet of Kyongju, harmony triumphs over power, tranquility over success, creativity over status - and love over everything."

Indeed, many of us don't know what we really want until the last minute, when our chest no longer rumbles with restlessness.

Trafford aptly borrows a Swedish proverb to describe this last-minute enlightenment: The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.

One man knows

One person, though, knows what he really wants to do "early in the morning."

Xin Fengnian, the late music commentator who passed away at age 90 last month, applied for early retirement from a well-paid job in 1976 when he was only 53.

He would devote his "bonus decades" - which largely had nothing to do with financial bonus, though - to what he loved most as an amateur: Western and Chinese classical music.

His first book, "Casual Words From A Musical Fan," came out in 1987. Almost at the same time he began to learn piano.

Though an amateur in music himself, his expert insights about music, expressed in plain words, empowered and enlightened a generation of Chinese readers.

"He wrote diligently," Xin's son Yan Feng recalls. "When he was in his 70s, he would get up at 5ish in the morning, light up the stove, boil the water and, a cane in hand, walk a fair distance to a local vegetable market ... Upon returning home, he would listen to BBC morning news and then start to write."

Xin Fengnian's real name was Yan Ge, literally meaning "strict" in Chinese.

Yan borrowed his pen name from the English word "symphony" to show how much he loved Western classical music.

He knew what he wanted. He never suffered that rumbling restlessness as he barreled toward the years in retirement.

He lived a life that provides a perfect footnote to Trafford's popular book.