Another milestone, another pat on the back from myself to myself. Well, somebody’s got to do it. I admit this one, retirement blog, number 900, is a bit vague. I’m usually quite clear when I’ve reached my centenary landmarks but this one is a little different.
I know I’ve cleared the 900 mark, have done for a while, but this last 100 have been made up of rather different retirement blogs and some which hardly qualify as a blog at all. By this I mean included in that 900 plus are the vineyard podcasts and, an even newer addition, my retro blogs. Probably about 40 in total if you add both of these together.
So I’ve waited until I’m well clear of the 900 point before posting this celebratory retirement blog. At this point I usually ask myself, what’s been different over this last 100 blogs to the previous 100. Well I’ve already told you two things that are different. I’m pleased with both of these two additions.
They’re very different in character. The podcasts were started by a chum of mine who’s taking leave of absence for a short while, I hope. This means I’m learning the skills of podcasting and they’re quite different from those of blogging. Much more complicated and generally difficult for me. I see myself as fundamentally a writer not a talker and the technology is less accessible to my declining brain. But I’m slowly getting the hang of it. I say this with some trepidation and if there’s no podcast tomorrow (yesterday as it turned out, by error) you will know I was right to be cautious.
As for the retro blog well I think this was a good idea and overall it’s relatively simple to achieve, certainly compared to the conundrums of the podcast it is. But the problem is of course it hardly counts towards the 900 total. So they’re there but they’re not, if you follow me.
So yes, I’m pleased with both of these additions in different ways but what has been less pleasing over the course of this last 100 retirement blogs is, not to put too fine a point on it, I’ve found it more and more difficult to come up with new topics about retirement. Or more accurately perhaps new ways of writing about the same topics.
I’ve written before in these centenary reviews that there has been less and less actual psychology in the content. I also said at the beginning, all those years ago, (nearly 8) that I intended that these blogs should apply my psychology knowledge to the new, for me, area of retirement. There’s really no psychology in the blogs now and this of course is to be expected as I move further and further away from my career.
So that’s not a problem in one way but in another it means a large chunk of ‘topic’ is taken away from me. So I have to find replacement topics. Much of this has me simply writing about what’s happening in my retirement and hoping vaguely that this is of interest to you out there.
Sometimes from feedback I get I think it is and at other times, well … maybe not. I almost find myself doing stuff for the sake of this blog or at least having done something that wasn’t all that successful and thinking well, never mind it will make a nice blog.
Certainly there is enough going off in our retirement lives currently to make several blogs. But this can be at a cost, namely stress from too many plates spinning with some inevitably crashing to the ground. So again I need to be cautious with this strategy for generating blog topics.
Perhaps the ‘easiest’, it’s all relative, way of coming up with retirement blog topics is by scanning the media. The word media is a fairly modest one in my case – two weekend papers, the BBC news on my phone in the morning and, well, that’s about it really. Even with these sources I don’t read with an eye to retirement blog topics so the stimulation is quite limited. Just as an aside I’m finding I’m less and less interested in reading anything in the media even, or especially, those articles I feel I should read. This worries me.
I have to say that TV and sometimes even radio or other podcasts don’t throw up many ideas but then that’s mainly as a result of our choice of watching / listening. After all if I’m looking for inspiration about retirement topics, Peaky Blinders and Boardwalk Empire (our two current squeezes) don’t offer much in terms of inspiration, people don’t so much retire as expire, usually as a result of being horribly murdered.
I have a couple of stalwarts blog-wise. One being my monthly vineyard blog (as opposed to podcast). This is a topic that simply keeps on giving and if failure is more enjoyable to read about than success, then this is the perfect topic.
The other part of my retirement life that keeps on giving is Mrs Summerhouse, at least in terms of her art. During the pandemic she was re-cycling her canvases usually with floral still lifes, like they were going out of fashion. Which in a sense they were because she used up all her old college canvases and her art has consequently somewhat ground to a halt. There’s always her photos and those of our garden/ are quite pleasing and will no doubt be pressed into action shortly.
So nobody can accuse me of not being broad-based in my search for almost suitable retirement blogs but there is no doubt that it gets harder, not to actually write but to find things to write about.
All I can say at this point is that way back when, I set myself a quiet target of writing 1,000 blogs vaguely on the topic of retirement, and that is still my general intention. I’m pretty sure having got this close I will make this target but whether I’ll be tempted to carry on grinding them out after that, I really couldn’t say.