Retirement and the morning after the night before. The morning being Sunday morning and the night before being the night of my big retirement challenge. That being my first live gig as a jazz pianist or at least my version of being that performer. Having given you a fair idea of my anxieties around having…
Category: Learning new skills
Retirement Challenges
Did God, or whoever organises these things, send Monday’s jazz session along to give me something to write about? Probably not given that I’ve written about this aspect of retirement several times before and almost always in the context of me playing jazz either on guitar or, latterly, piano. The aspect in question is, as…
Retirement and those learning goals
It must be about time I brought you up to date on how I’m doing with my main retirement learning / setting myself challenges, goal. Specifically how my playing jazz piano is going. I think it’s been a while since I last wrote about this most-demanding of my retirement activities perhaps because I’ve been too…
Retirement challenges for good or less good?
I wonder what you lot out there think about the benefits or otherwise of setting ourselves challenges in our retirement. There will of course be a number of us who will think the whole notion of setting challenges, is code for causing ourselves unnecessary stress and hence, ridiculous. You worked for 40 years, now relax….
Retirement and yet more in the way of jazz
I’ve written before about retirement and what a busy time it is. I’d heard it said (I’m too busy, don’t know how I ever found time to work) but didn’t believe it, silly me. I told people and myself, before I retired, that my plan was to rebrand myself as a writer. This would be…
Retirement and more jazz challenges
Setting yourself challenges, stepping outside your comfort zone, learning new skills, all good things for the retired person and I’ve written about them before although with a cautionary addendum along the lines of don’t set the bar too high, fail and damage what may be an already fragile self-esteem. Phew, that’s quite an opening sentence….
Retirement challenge – Summer School again?
Those of you who have been reading this retirement blog for a while may just remember a blog I wrote about a year ago. The topic was my attending a four day jazz summer school. If you haven’t read it or, perish the thought, forgotten it, you may care to refresh your memory. If you…
Retirement and The Oldie magazine
In the nearly four years I’ve been writing this blog I did something last week that I’ve only done once before. Can you guess? Yes, you’re right, I paid money to advertise it. I advertised this time, as I did the last time about three years ago, in a magazine called The Oldie. On its…
Retirement and the learning goes on
Let me write a more cheerful retirement blog after the last little cup of poison. I’ll revisit one of my favourite retirement blog themes – continued learning, life-long learning, call it what you will. Regular readers of this blog will know that it is one of my most-revered retirement values and hence I continue to…
Retirement and that gardening business
I guess it’s time for a catch-up on one of our most trying retirement areas. It’s that possibly false idea that when a person retires they have a heaven-sent opportunity to set up their own business. You know, to follow their dream, to turn their hobby / passion into a financially rewarding enterprise (lovely word)….