This is a blog about the continuing theme of taking risks, of being adventurous in our retirement years. Will I ever get it right? I must tell you about our meeting with the planners about our barn (see right) one day, that was an adventure and an expensive one at that, but, not today. I’m…
A walk through the simple things of life
I’ve been banging on recently about valuing the ordinary. The original impetus for this kind of thinking was that, in retirement, we simply don’t have the money to do any of the exotic things – travel, buying guitars, frequent eating out, that type of stuff, so we needed to take pleasure in the cheap side…
Yoga, dogs and the retired person
I haven’t written very much about the health side of retirement other than my diabetes blogs. And I haven’t taken any time to consider the exercise and good health component of retirement. Until now that is and then, prompted by an article a couple of days ago on The Huffington Post / AOL site which…
What happens when couples retire together
This blog was first published on the Fighting Fifty website. My wife and I retired at the same time. This was partly planned and partly accidental. I was getting bored and she was getting frustrated. Her job was changing in a way she didn’t like and my job wasn’t changing and I didn’t like that….
Carpes Diem?
There’s nowhere else I’d rather be – discuss. Complacency or contentment? Does retirement produce more of one than the other? Depends a bit what you bring to the party – what kind of person were you before you retired? These idle, indeed trivial, thoughts run through my head lying in bed early Saturday morning. I…
Vineyard 14 : The merry month of May
“English wine has established a superb reputation in a comparatively short space of time. This is something we should nurture, protect and grow. We are still a tiny industry and the potential is enormous” So began a presentation by Mike Paul and Peter Gladwin to the UKVA (United Kingdom Vineyards Association) AGM, a couple of…
Ghost story 7 : Listen to Me
The seventh story in my That Which Lies Beneath series. I can’t remember anything about where the idea came from, probably sitting in a boring meeting at work or having difficulty with a challenging colleague. Who knows. I’m glad to say all this work stuff is but a distant memory. As ever to read the…
Is the ordinary all it’s cracked up to be?
Just as I was starting to feel comfortable with living a life of the ordinary, it (my comfort level) took a bit of a dive. There I was mentally lining up all my supporters and starting to feel OK about retirement. I assembled my back-up crew, I did this with a quick visit to the…
Phished out and Hacked off
I’ve made it at last, fame, I’ve been hacked (the image, right, below is as close as I could get to hacking). But yes, it’s fame of a kind. At least that’s how I’m choosing to see it. Otherwise I might be cross, no, this is an example of positive reframing at its finest. You…
Self Esteem in Retirement and Solutions Focused Therapy
I want to continue this series of blogs on the topic of self-esteem and the retired person by looking at a number of the psychological theories (others will follow this one) which have some relevance to the area. I’m going to begin by examining the contribution of a psychological paradigm named Solutions Focused Therapy (SFT)…