Life’s Third Act
My friend John Mallen recently spent a month at ArteSumapaz, an artists’ residency tucked into the mountains of Colombia. John is over 80 years old, and he arrived there eleven months after the death of his wife, Alex, with the goal of working on a personal project he calls My Third Act Playbook, an exploration of how he wants to live this next chapter of his life.
Writing is one of many ways to express ourselves and, as we’ve seen in so many of my webinars, a way to process change and navigate even the most difficult moments in life. In John’s case, he’s writing to discover what comes next, and he carried along something that began much closer to home: a Word of the Day cluster he started on July 31, somewhere between Atlanta and Bogotá.
John graciously gave me permission to share a glimpse of his month at ArteSumapaz. It is a beautiful reflection on art and creativity, but also on friendship, community, and what it means, at any age, to keep showing up for your own life.
Making Art. Living Full.
by John Mallen
ArteSumapaz, 71 and a half miles southwest of Bogota airport, a former coffee plantation and, in more recent years, a cattle farm, has played host to 700 creators over the past seven years. Painters, potters, writers, and sculptors, as well as musicians and performers, sign on for one-month or longer residencies.
I am in the August 2026 group of 12. For three weeks now, I have been researching and writing my self-assigned projects. Others are from as close as Bogota to as far as British Columbia, Canada, to the north, and several European countries to the east.
Time drifts on one’s choice of when to work, play, or join activities — much like the open onces gatherings in the library, with light snacks, conversations over topics surrounding art as well as works residents have brought in for discussion; a Critical Review Process to submit your work or respond to another’s; occasional movie nights as well as ad hoc resident-run exercise classes and meditations and of course, soccer.
Spontaneous ad hoc trips are made to any of several towns, the largest of which is Fusagasugá, 20 miles away on the way to Bogota. Mostly, they are reached by renting Nelson and his 4WD, 1986 diesel Nissan Samurai, a Land-Rover-like SUV which grinds its way mostly in 1st and 2nd gears along deeply rutted unpaved roads that, with the vehicle’s springs a distant memory, give a tooth-chattering ride that builds character.
We frequently break into groups for remarkable conversations, themselves powerful byproducts of this experience.
In between all this we work separately in writers’ rooms, the painting studio where several work in their assigned 8’X10’ work areas, where the other day Aina Peix, still in her early 20s and freshly minted from art school in Barcelona, demonstrated a fresh canvas that took my breath away: the 3-D shed for potters, blacksmiths and others, or the performance space in the rehabbed farm Granero.
Around all this there are small break-away confabs through which we’re forming a larger community, a kindred circle of trust, joy, support, and warmth with its own attributes.
One confab is The Post-Meal Linger, vegetarian dinners on the terrace or in the dining room. One day, the post-breakfast talk ran through to lunch, covering various approaches to creative discipline with the same gravitas others would lend to the pursuit of law or engineering.
Some evenings, the scene is hands wrapped around mugs, occasionally filled with wine or beer, as then talk goes on into the cool mountain night. A big multi-evening thread has been taking steps to save a gentle, female puppy with a fine-haired copper coat and the name Zarra. This is the lucky one of the random canines that roam these hills. Thanks to the Madonna instincts and caring generosity of residents, she has been cleaned, de-loused, and neutered – the surgery taking place right here in the parking lot by a jovial white lab-coated house-call veterinarian. In a recent post-meal collaboration, the “rescue Zarra” digital campaign has gotten underway.
Closely connected is The Choreography of Cleanup: here volunteers who have signed up for a reduced rate in exchange for help are joined by full-fare residents, together clearing the dining room and quick dispatch of the kitchen clean-up. This evening, with two volunteers and several other residents, we donned jackets, shared a bottle of Cabernet and a chocolate bar, eating supper under the glow of a rechargeable Energizer lantern that everyone is issued as the sunset gave way to a Waxing Gibbous moon.
Now picture this taking place in a Multilingual Symphony that is a happy effervescence generated in a mix of Spanish – there is more than one Spanish – and English – all energized by laughter, enthusiasm, surprise, and delight.
It goes deeper.
I am surprised how one day following the other I have become aware of details in the ArteSumapaz architecture and furnishings that were not seen in the days prior. For example, the specifics in the art that’s hung about this place, even the well-carpentered woodwork in windows, doors and molding — joints that were hand-fashioned by craftsmen with precision decades ago: why did they affix steel slots on both sides of the entry door to my room, perfect for accommodating a 2’X 4’ board that could be placed horizontally to prevent battering through? Were there bandidos who would raid the ranch’s la casa grande main house?
Paralleling the increasing awareness of physical details has been a progressive unveiling of personal details among and between residents. More than biographical details, these are deep revealings about psychological and emotional struggles, medications, romantic dramas, and personal ambitions, these interlaced with fears real and conjured. Polite social armor of the first two weeks has been replaced with warm acceptance of one another; our flawed parts unguarded. Smiles come easier, along with hugs, embraces, and wordless eye-catching across a room to confirm an unstated question or direction.
The “¡Hola!” greetings are warm.
The ¿Cómo estás? gets genuine replies: “A dog’s bark woke me at 3 a.m.” … “My gut is upset.”
I am living full.
This Week’s Writing Prompt: Act III
Prompt: Life’s Third Act
- Begin with the Self-Acknowledgment Hug and the affirmations.
- What would your life’s third act look like? What image comes to mind? Place a word representing that image in the center circle of your cluster.
- Take a breath, smile, and allow another image to come to mind. Remember, it’s perfectly okay if your images don’t seem related. Just notice what appears.
- Repeat the process until you’ve filled the remaining circles in your cluster.
- Set a timer for five minutes and write a story using the words you placed in your cluster. Don’t worry about where the story is going or whether it’s “good.” Just write.
- When the timer goes off, put your writing away. Come back and read it the next day with fresh eyes.
I’d love to hear about your experience. If you’d like to share your writing or any insights or surprises that came from the Practice, send it my way!
Substack (It’s FREE!)
If you’ve ever wondered why practices like the Self-Acknowledgment Hug and the Word of the Day Practice can make such a difference, explore my Substack.
It’s where I dig a little deeper into the neuroscience behind writing, creativity, self-connection, and personal growth, and how understanding how our brains work can help us access more of what’s already within us.
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