Retirement blog : 700 up

I noticed when I re-read previous ‘centenary’ blogs that I asked the question – what’s changed since the last one? The answer previously was simple enough, not much. I’m not so sure that this would be quite the same answer this time around.

For one thing I seem a bit more at peace with this retirement business. I say this because I seem to have stopped searching for that ‘missing link’. My goals for the year barely exist. They begin and end with the entirely modest – take dogs on train* and visit old churches and cathedrals. So in the sense that I feel more content with what I’ve got, that’s a big change. It’s taken over six years to arrive at this happy state of mind.

I might like to think that my new peacefulness is connected to my, well, I couldn’t call it a near death experience, dramatic as that sounds, but the possibility of having colon, stomach and / or throat cancer does lend a certain piquancy to what life one has left. Maybe even gratitude at my good fortune. Many people have not been so lucky. Close friends and media ‘heroes’ – Clive James, Jonathon Miller, Bob Willis and so on.

So the blogs of 2019 are different in the sense of having more health issues. Otherwise the usual suspects have figured heavily. The vineyard and my music, Mrs Summerhouse’s art and the dogs. A surprising number of DIY or project-related blogs have featured and a couple of learning opportunities courtesy of the Guardian Masterclasses.

I won’t repeat what I have already written about making progress with this blog. But briefly I’ll say that since blog 600, readership numbers and Google rating have moved slowly in the desired direction. So that’s changed and for the better. Yet even as I write this, silly me, the figure have started moving in the opposite direction in terms of my Google rating. I didn’t understand why it moved for the better and now I’m equally puzzled with its move for the worse.

One thing that I have noticed as different about these blogs is that they have less advice and less psychology. When I started writing I had the strong idea that, with my psychological background and about to retire, I would be the perfect person to offer advice to other retired people. Maybe the blog would even lead to some kind of consultancy. Well it hasn’t and I might be (the perfect person), but it has happened less and less and not at all throughout the last 100 blogs.

I’m not sure why. Probably because the further away chronologically you move from the original state the less expertise / relevance your advice has to your target audience. Also I’d have to admit that I have less and less interest in writing that kind of ‘expert’ blog. From what I can see these days there are now hundreds of such blogs offering advice to people like me. I never did like taking advice and now it seems I don’t like giving it either. Where will it end? Oh yes, I remember.

Probably the biggest question, as I chalk up 700 blogs, is will I make 800? At the current rate that means another year’s writing. I am pretty sure I will but it’s a little hard to predict given that sometimes I’m truly stuck for a topic and at other times the ideas just spew forth, like just recently when I had four blogs all lined up  and nearly ready to go. Anyway, as far as retirement blog writing is concerned, let’s just say I’m optimistic and that’s not really a word I use freely.

I think that’s about all I have to say at this point so hopefully we’ll meet again in blog 701.

*We achieved this first non-goal last Friday when we took the pups into town on the train (see photo, second below, for proof). Only 10 minutes it’s true but as I wrote at the time, small steps towards our larger goal of visits to churches and cathedrals. We went to the pub for lunch instead, third below, (sausage and mash since you ask). Archie still makes us a little nervous on the train but was calmness personified coming back on the bus. But then he’s a more motor-oriented dog. We’ve made a start and now to continue with it.

We walked them round our local cricket ground when they got off the bus, the club I played for for over 30 years and found this pinned to the pavilion door. We thought it was funny.