Social media, the newspapers and the rest are full of stories about punishing pensioners, financially that is. So that would be us then. Taking money from our savings accounts, taking away our heating allowances, increasing our taxes, getting rid of our triple lock arrangements, blah, blah. If we weren’t in the habit of ignoring, as…
What’s wrong with me now?
Even though I’ve been retired for just over 12 years (September 2013) and have written, according to my recent advert in The Oldie magazine (I put one in each year about this time) I have written over 2,000 blogs about retirement ( see image above)I have, in that time, read very few other people’s retirement…
Vineyard 102: The Harvest
I think a degree of predictability, routine even, in retirement, is a good thing. Demands on a person, even self-imposed ones, within reasonable limits, give a retired person a feeling of self-worth. And self-worth, as we age, which I’m definitely doing, can be hard to hang on to and should be highly valued. It’s one…
Vineyard 101: The Learning Goes On
Isn’t there a title of a workshop something like Psychology 101 or whatever where the number is meant to indicate that the learning experience is a basic one, even easy? Something like that anyway. And here we are in our vineyard blogs, after 13 years, at vineyard blog 101. But let me tell you there…
Heading for the Hills More Easily in Retirement by Bruce Kirschner
I know when it’s time to “get outta Dodge.” This uniquely American phrase refers to a need to leave a place in an urgent manner. It is a reference to the real Dodge City, Kansas, which in the late 19th century was a bustling and infamous cattle town on the edge of the frontier. Dodge City…
Unsettled Part 3. Sport!
The last two blogs on this retirement site have featured ‘unsettledness’, strange word I guess but then I rather like it. It’s an accurate descriptor of how I’m currently feeling without resorting to what I would call a label. I never liked labels when I was working as a psychologist even though or perhaps because…
Retirement Unsettled: Part Two
And it’s happened again. Yes, unsettled again. Is this going to be a pattern for the rest of my life? I hope not. The previous blog was about being unsettled by being in the company of ex school chums in my home town. This last weekend the ‘unsettleness’ was to do with neither of these…
Retirement, unsettled in my home town
Something happened this weekend which was unsettling. And I don’t mean having a nasty dizzy turn for which there was no explanation. This other event had no explanation, in the sense that I didn’t know why it was unsettling, but I gradually realised that it was. So what was ‘it’ you ask? Well it was…
Vineyard 100: Are we winning?
Some kind of achievement to get to 100 vineyard blogs. They’ve been slow coming these last two years for reasons ranging from the weather – snow and storm damage, to retirement (our man who does a lot of the work) and my health – all have undermined our efforts to keep the vineyard afloat. Certainly…
Self esteem: it never goes away
Over the years I’ve been writing this retirement blog the topic of self-esteem, sometimes called well-being, has figured consistently. Just one example – ‘Self Esteem 6’ from July 2022. As far as I can see from my records this was the last blog on the topic but, as you can tell from the ‘6’ not…