Daylight Savings began this morning. I stayed up past my bedtime and woke up too early. Now I’m stupefied. Here is another good reason for procrastinating on my writing goals. Several interviews done and zero drafts completed this year. I must remind myself of how and why I write. There is no deadline and I’m not getting paid. This blog is about my crazy retirement adventures, not just promoting art. In honor of that philosophy and not getting enough sleep, take a look at these fantastic “keep you up all night” bedrooms from Modernism Week in the Palm Springs area last month. Continue reading
Retirement Stuff
Disrupting the Darkness
This is me, enjoying my sun-room and dreading the end of day light savings. Wearing my brightest colored outfit, in denial, and shifting through conflicting feelings. I love the fall and I hate the fall. I love the cooling temperatures and the approaching holiday season. I hate the “falling back an hour” and losing the early evening day light. Continue reading
Grieving is Unfinished Work
Water color portrait by Jacqueline Stubbs
Sometimes I have to write something for myself – about my Mom. I’ve been thinking a lot about her lately. Not that I don’t think about her throughout each day, because I do. I’m talking about the thoughts and questions that bring me to tears. The kind of boiling tears that make you walk around the house carrying tissues and not daring to put on mascara or go out because you’ll look like hell and start crying all over again when anyone asks how your day is going. Continue reading
Drop By Drop
1-1/2 inches of water and climbing
Leadership Coach and Writer Tania Carierre challenged me with an exercise to answer the question: ” I know my day is one of meaning if I have had moments of ….” Continue reading
The Hole View – Retirement Pressures
The guy who cuts my grass broke a window on May 17th. Two weeks later, I still don’t have a firm schedule for its repair – although I did finally get a price quoted. In my retirement transition, I’ve been focused on this hole and angry. It’s a symbol of everything that is broken and that I’ve been waiting to get fixed. Now that I am retired, that which used to be a nuisance, sometimes becomes an obsession. I retired from a career in power where I worried about the scope of outages, when the next hurricane might come, and a myriad of daily decisions and administrative matters. Now, my decisions are like this: Continue reading
Finding Purpose After Retirement
Early retirement has been like walking this zig-zagged iris garden boardwalk. Lots of fun travel over here. Golf and art lessons over there. Short term volunteer assignments along the way. Thoughts of marketing some of Mom’s artwork (she loved painting irises). Blogging a lot, then not. Walking around enjoying the beauty, like these travelers, but not jumping off into any particular field. I’ve written about my retirement identity crisis recently. However, I’m turning the corner into some things that are motivating me like I haven’t been for a while. Continue reading
Retirement – Identity Struggles and Feelings
The above was from an article written in 2013 when the thought of early retirement didn’t exist. I was fully immersed in a career that I loved, working for a company and with people I respected, and really doing well….until my Father died shortly after it was published and I became the primary caregiver for my Mother. I spent the next four years immersed in elder care, my job and nothing else….until I started considering early retirement. There is lots of advice on the financial aspects of retirement and how to spend your time, but not that much about one’s shifting identity and the emotions involved. I think of retirement planning in terms of three F’s: Finances, Fun and Feelings (MOSTLY feelings.) Continue reading
Writing From The Heart
Painting by Judy Mackey
Creative Pension Payment: Being able to write about anything
I’ve always been a writer. When I was 12, I wrote a short story. I even typed up the manuscript, but my Dad got transferred to Japan that summer and it was misplaced in the packing. In middle school and high school I filled journals with poetry and teenaged revelations. In college I wrote all the time (my BA is in Communications.) At work I wrote contracts, white papers and occasional articles for company publications. And then I went to graduate school…. It was exhausting after a while. Continue reading
ARTISTIC PENSION 
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