I have never been very good at relaxing. Even the simple act of sitting still has proved difficult. You can understand then why the prospect of retirement way back when filled me with a nervous dread and why I spent so much time planning this period of my life. Hence my efforts to break my…
Category: Well being
Accentuate the positive, if you can
I think I’ve written this thought before but hopefully it bears repeating; in a world that seems to constantly be contracting, a person has to work harder and harder to keep one’s options open. The temptation is, many years into retirement, to go with the flow and settle for or even enjoy a life of…
My reading has changed
My reading habits are changing or perhaps more accurately my newspaper reading habits are changing (my book reading habits remain largely unchanged). We still buy both The Guardian and Observer at the weekend and subscribe to the first on line for the rest of the week. The latter was more of a charity gesture to…
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…
Review of 2024
It’s customary for this retirement blog to review the year nearly gone by at about this point. In order to make this as realistic a view as possible I have been rereading this blog from a year ago and of course checking with my diary. If you’re going to engage in this kind of activity…
Be careful what you wish for
Have you ever felt compelled, when you get to a certain age, to absolutely make the most of the time ‘you have left’. Sounds a bit dramatic I know but time’s winged chariot and all that. For such a lofty concept my version of it is, shall we say, a little prosaic, banal, ordinary, what…
Rethinking the Retirement Couch by Bruce Kirschner
Eleven years ago, approximately, when I started writing this blog all about retirement, I had the idea that it would be a community venture. In other words that other people would write blogs about retirement and I would post them. Now eleven years later I can count on one hand the number of guest blogs…
A retirement out of balance
A retirement out of balance. Regular readers of this retirement blog (and I know there are one or two of you) will not need telling that there are three main pillars to my retirement life – this blog, my music and our vineyard. Plus a few other bits and bobs like the dogs, reading, watching…
Changing times in retirement
Changing times. I thought I would take a break from the health side of my retirement and remind myself of the other, brighter sides of my existence. And, as is usually the case, these other activities ebb and flow week by week and there have been some changes as the title of this blog implies….
Looking back from retirement
Looking back from retirement, strange business. Definitely on my road to recovery this week. I’m still finding difficult to muster any enthusiasm for writing this blog (I’m doing about one a week at the moment) but I’m managing to be a bit creative even if the blogs themselves are quite short (maybe none the worse…