Working in Retirement Means

Having a structure; tasks to do and people to connect with as office buddies and fellow travelers.  The journey has not ended only slowed.  A more methodical approach leads to better outcomes, less frenzy and meditative actions.  Nothing is wasted.

Reading is a central core to my on again off again retirement.  I refocus thinking of where and how I can be of the most service to others, be with my family for good visits and plan enjoyable activities like travel and meeting other professionals.

My research through reading is comprehensive, contains depth and breadth and has a profound impact on decimating information to those I love who may not have as much time or inclination to search and understand as my advancing age gives me.

My work also includes many people of all ages.  Babies and infants give me hope about new discoveries and ways we will live more humanely with each other.  Tweens and teens help me question my emotional responses and connections to others who have a different “language” as well as a different lifestyle.  Young adults say to me over and over “take risks, be vulnerable and you never know until you try.”  For them, nothing is impossible and when I believe them I achieve greater satisfaction in reaching and exceeding my goals.

Retirement is an age and stageI can surf; riding the crests and reveling in the spaces in between relishing each moment.

 

30 Days Fly

Something you crave a lot This is an interesting one. I’m not really sure I crave anything exactly unless I’ve gone without whatever it is for a certain period of time. Even then I don’t think I’d describe it as a craving Does that mean I’m utterly content and want for nothing? Maybe it’s best to […]

 

via 30-day blog challenge: Post nine — getadatein2016

I think I will get out ahead and answer the pet peeves for tomorrow as I am peeved at the moment.

Noise – modernity is filled with leaf blowers, trucks backing, cement mixing and dogs barking.

Stupid Government Decisions – building more roads at ginormous prices rather than finding ways to alternate traffic patterns.  We have Google Earth, people, it can be done!

Traffic – Again, see above.

Unkind behaviors – rudeness in stores, toward other customers and toward clerks and folks who have to put up with your behaviors because it is a part of “their environment.”

Leaders – People who lead and do it for mostly crass reasons.  They do little work and just enjoy the show.  Their names appear on projects and when a disaster strikes, they are out of town.  If one is going to take on the mantel as public servant; she should act like the public good matters to her!

Is an Image Worth a Thousand Words?

What do you see?  What would be your word chart of this picture?

How about:  mothers and babies, shelter from prey (human and other animals), communal nursery, need to protect the young for survival, possible “love” between animals?

Or, would you go to the weather:  misty, wet, cold or humid?

Perhaps, you would not know how to grasp the scene without viewing the “where” of the photo.  The location could lead you to the words or vice versa.

How about reading the photo from left to right?  Was the photographer trying to catch the movement of the elk heading up the drive? (I am the photographer, and yes, I was).  If you know much about elk, you would know they were on the move by the stances and the colors you see.

And why?  Why were they in this location at this time of day?  Can you ascertain the time of the year?  Do you still want to have more information before you can begin a thorough word association?

Pictures

Memory is an elusive metaphor.  I think I took this photo near Bay St. Louis.  I had spent the day reading and immersing myself in “Katrina” literature; trying to get in touch with what that time meant to those people who experienced such a weather and national phenomenon.

Or, is this someone else’s photo I downloaded from the internet?

I thought these flowers would last for many years.  I put them in this spot and gave instructions about planting them.  The people who had the job got busy and I heard later the flowers had died.  In this photo, they live on for me.  I may decide to replace them this spring and I WILL plant them myself.

30-day blog challenge: Post four — getadatein2016

Day four is here and it’s another photo-based one: A picture of somewhere you’ve been Rather than go with a favourite place, I’m going to go with a recent place. This is a house I stayed in during the summer. It is located right by Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia, and I was there as […]

via 30-day blog challenge: Post four — getadatein2016

Back to the future — here is my selfie:

More Illustration; Fewer Words

The Rogue River in Oregon 2012  

Truly one of the world’s greatest places for me.  I felt at home here.  I never tired of seeing this river every day upon awakening.  Our lodging was a mile zigzagging up the steadier bank of the river.  I spent many days walking among the myrtle trees and I felt peace.

 

This photo says it all about my day.  In the company of small girls, I experience rib-tickling laughter, a tear rolling down a cheek and competition over whose tree was the biggest and best.  Altogether, a really good day.

 

This is not my photo and I wish I knew to whom to attribute it.  The energy shines through, doesn’t it?  I feel the slight wind blowing on my face and the “leader” is very interesting with her “closed like an adult space.”  Or, is she trying not to distract the photographer on the other side?  Which means the shoot had at least two photographers; maybe, more?  It pays to look and then look again.

 

I am not this angry today; but, I was, not too long ago.  I try to remember what that amount of tension felt like.  For me, it was the return to being alive.  I could not laugh and I cried most of the time.  When the rage hit, it felt normal.  I knew I had a chance to live for another twenty years if I planned to do so.  My life force feels strongest when I am angry.  For my life, it means not allowing the sheer madness to go on too long or to go underground.  Venting it slowly and fully as in steam from a  pressure cooker, that is a way which works for me.

Five Things I am Learning about Work in the Social Media World

For me, at the ripe old age of social security time, I find it somewhat trying and frustrating to understand the mechanisms of so many different sites.  As I plow on through, I am getting better at it.  For opening my business next week and being an “unknown” in my area, pushing through this resistance on my part is essential.

I like working.  I like having new office mates.  When I learn how to operate a web site and follow their rules and I get results; I feel less old.

The “youngsters” are so far ahead of me.  While I was in semi-retirement, taking care of ill family members and generally, living life; these “newbies” moved in and crowded me out. So, I can stick out both elbows and worm my way back in or I can resign.  Resigning myself to the non-inevitable has never been my strong suit.  My method includes working around the edges of what I know, taking time off to pick up the house, do some art and then, returning to a task I saw as difficult a few days ago and finding I can see a wedge opening before me.

Facebook or those most like it are essential to connections now.  How can I know about alpaca in Peru, what New Zealand knitters are doing or what new modern quilt patterns have been developed without these sites?  My eyes fill with red and blue colors, the zigzags and repeats draw me into the designs and my brain goes electric with all the possibilities.  I do not have to reinvent the wheel.  Somewhere, the mundane things like “forms” are out there hanging in the wind just waiting to be plucked off a bush or pulled from a tree.  How very nice.

Next goal:  to be at an intermediate level with those “forms”.  I know how to scan them into my computer.  The next step is utilizing programs like Adobe and Acrobat.  In this way, I can go paperless more often.  “Paperless” still scares me as I came up when we were typing with 15 carbon copies on a non-electric typewriter.  I used this machine at this level so often that I never have dreams of owning an old clacker like that when I have this wonderful Apple which has led me all over the US of A.

Five Life Changes and how they were Wrought

In facing the new year, I have made things happen during the past one which I think I need some reflection time upon:

Less quantity family involvement and more quality relationship building time works for me.  At the retirement age and stage of life, I am better at swinging and sliding than changing diapers or managing a crying wailing jag which lasted forty minutes; yes, it did.

I have been writing for years about work and retirement to get my head around these two concepts and I find I have deliberately tossed them both into the air and am juggling both as though I had another lifetime to work it out.

I made these things happen.  Sure, my family time lifted me up and gave me clarity.  Having someone to talk and smile with helped me to know I do want to live my days on this earth as alive as can be..the view from six feet under is just too depressing and dirty

I began little by little to be believe in magic, The Force, inner strength and prayer.  I mean, I lived in Baton Rouge this year; no getting through it without seeing the best and worst humankind has to offer.  I have decided to pluck the ripe fruit and leave the rotten ones on the ground knowing there will be hell to pay if someone does not pick up before the insects begin to buzz again.  Is this not always the way of life?

I like myself better.  I am a survivor like I have been for the last three and five years now.  Made every day more hardier than the last, and yet, I find I do not have to push so hard.  Like running, once the muscles are developed; it becomes more of a brain and determination activity slogging away and sometimes, slowing down to look up at the sky and check the sand beneath my feet and feel the breeze on my face.

Five Reasons to be Cranky

We are taught that positive thinking and mindfulness are the keys to a happy life.  However, I am sick and I cannot find anything good about it.  I will write from my heart of crankiness and you may judge, dear reader.

Being cranky is a survival mechanism.  If I am sour at the world and all its occupants, I know how silly that sounds and momentarily, it helps me.

Being cranky does not have to mean anti-gratitude.  When I am sick, I am achy, my chest hurts because I cough so much and I have secondary infections.  These aspects of being ill are not equal to being in a war, in the desert without water or lost in the woods.  I am an American and I can grouse if I want to.

I am cranky because the governor I thought a lot of went out West and shot an elk.  Now, I have been there and I understand how it is a touristy thing, a buddy thing and a man thing; but, he struck me as more sensible than that.  Elk are beautiful creatures.  I have been up close and personal with several herds.  I can tell you if the elk had a fighting chance; the governor would be lost.  Besides, did you know on these hunts, they often kill the females because it is easier for the big, bad hunters.  Yeah, yeah, I know, this could become a rant.

Being cranky today has kept me to myself.  It has helped me refocus my goals and decide what I want for the rest of my life:  not to take care of any more people!

Being cranky reminds me what truly sick is and I am flooded with my sicknesses and those of the ones I love and have loved and I wonder at the meaning of it all.  Our bodies are such perishable vessels.

Five New Hurricane Memories

People help each other.  As soon as the wind and rain stopped; folks poured outside and cleared debris, cut off tree limbs and checked on each other.  My family was fortunate in their neighborhood; by early afternoon, the neighbors had cleared the roadways and done what locals can do.  They still had intermittent cell phone coverage and electricity was off in spots.  Some family members could not be contacted which caused anxiety to heighten:  “what if, what will, how is he?”  We talked about possibilities and what could be done.  It was not easy.

I have never owned a swimming pool ever before in my life.  The last time I saw it; it was a breathless seafoam green.  This morning the water was mostly mud.  I do not want to think about it and we did plan what to do next.  It is a pool; no one got hurt and no one died.

I continued on with my conference plans.  I cannot be in two places at once.  I could not fix the problems there today.  I stayed in the middle of the good ole USA and enjoyed the beautiful autumn weather.  Yes, it did feel weird.  Yes, I did and am worried.

My realtor sold me the house on a beautiful day in May.  Is it a conspiracy of nature to relocate way before hurricane season?  I can truly say I thought about worst case scenarios but this was not one of them.  I should have planned for hurricanes.  I have been through several in my lifetime.  I think there is just something in human nature that tells us to protect for the “bad” not the “ugly.”  For me, it is just difficult to believe it could be this terrible; and, it was.  Many people in Haiti lost their lives.  As I figure up costs, I am grateful.

Natural disasters bring many challenges.  Normality becomes distorted.  The kitchen faucet runs dry.  The dogs are upset and pace.  Gasoline becomes a resource to hoard.  The wind and rain blow all night and even those of us who know what is happening are uneasy.  We worry.  We hope our families will be safe.  Suddenly, we separate the wheat from the chaff and see what is really important in life:  home, family, the freedom to move about the neighborhood and personal safety.