Category: General life musings – retired or not!

Everything doesn’t need to be about being retired…or NOT! Life is to enjoy and appreciate every day!

Thankful!

Welcome everyone!

Today, in honor of both the season and my own feelings, I am writing about THANKGIVING.

I have now been retired about 6 weeks. It has been amazing, and one of the things I have realized during this time is how truly thankful I am for so many blessings; For being able to retire at all. For my husband, daughters, granddaughters, home, extended family. For this beautiful world we live in. For our protections and freedoms in our country, (which we need to make sure to preserve). For my faith. For Jesus, my Savior and Lord. For the freedom to say and practice that. For my church and my church family.

These things have always been dear to me, but now I feel like I am seeing them more clearly. I take a bit of time to think about them more often now. I realize that not everyone has all of these blessings, but if we take time to think, we all can probably realize at least some blessings we have. Blessings come in all types. Our life;  the opportunity to offer hope to others, thereby creating life and hope for ourselves. Our family and friends, our ability to work towards positive change in our lives.

The key, I think, is to recognize this opportunity, and not feel that we are always at the mercy of difficult circumstances. There is always something not perfect, or even close to perfect in each of our lives – but there is always hope, always life, always opportunity, for as long as we are on this earth. I am thankful for all of these that God has given me!

I pray you all have a Thanksgiving season full of peace and hope and love, recognizing and being thankful for whatever blessings are yours!

  Take care, Mary

Purpose with children and grandchildren

Hello again! I am glad you are back!

I thought today I would home in on another “purpose” idea that is big for me as I am sure it is for you if you have children and/or grandchildren; that is, being more engaged with them when I have more time.

We have two adult daughters and two granddaughters, one about to leave her teenage years, and one just entering them. First of all, how in the world did that even happen? LOL! I don’t believe I am old enough to have an almost 20 year old granddaughter…but I digress…(bet some of you wonder this same thing!)

We are lucky to have both of our daughters and granddaughters and son-in-law live close to us. We do see each other every little bit, and I go to my granddaughters’ events as often as I can. I communicate with my daughters at least by e-mail or text every day, and phone calls at least a few times a month. We all get along great, and I now consider my adult daughters to be my best friends. That is such a blessing because well, truth be told, while they were great kids overall, a few years were rough for us…and I am grateful we all came through it with the close relationship we all have with each other!

But, I would like to be able to actually SEE my daughters more often. Together and one-on-one. Family gatherings are wonderful, but it is hard to really talk to any one of them in depth when everyone is all together. They do seek my thoughts on many  situations, and I appreciate that…but actually being together individually will really help to home in on that ability so it isn’t as forced. I feel like I now have a bit more wisdom to impart, but it doesn’t come out well, and doesn’t get perceived well, when it is all a data-dump of ideas all at once. So, I intend to intentionally have more specific face time get togethers with them.

I would like to do the same thing with our granddaughters. Being 6 years apart, the are definitely in different worlds from each other, so again, one-to-one will definitely be more fruitful. I look forward to just hanging out, talking, doing some things together, and helping them to talk through their “stuff” and hopefully being able to learn from my own story. After all, while it is a different world I grew up in, I was a kid and a teenager once! And sometimes us grandparents can have an influence that parents can’t. I want to help support my daughter and son-in-law in their goals for their daughters.

So, my “purpose” will include more intentional relationship growth with both our daughters and granddaughters. Whether your children and/or grandchildren are local to you or not, I encourage you to think of ways to communicate with them regularly, face to face as often as possible, and through text, e-mail, phone and even perhaps Skype in between times. We have a lot of good experiences to share, and we need to pass along our family heritage to them.

So far, this “purpose” thing is looking good, but more ideas are bubbling in my head!

Have a great day!
Mary

Social Media

Welcome back!! Today I wanted to talk about one specific “to do”, OR perhaps I should say “not to do” from my retirement list. I am talking about social media and other forms of media.

My list says that at least one day a week I will “fast” from social media…in my case, Facebook, as well as online researching or news sites. Ideally, I would like eventually to make that only 2X per week that I DO engage in these online activities. This may or my not be a problem for you, but I can tend to start looking at Facebook and at my e-mails with links to all sorts of news-related articles, and before you know it, I have lost 2-3 hours. I may not have a full schedule when I retire (though I suspect it will fill up faster than I imagine…that is a topic for another blog!), but I don’t want my free time to be all sucked up by being online, linking from one thing to another.

My goal is to keep informed but not feel I have to be “up to the minute” all the time. Unfortunately, much of what is out there online is bad news…and I don’t want that to be what I dwell on when I am trying to have an interesting, active, enjoyable retirement!

So, this short blog is just food for thought for you. I actually don’t think this is a bad goal even if you aren’t retired yet…there is just too much other stuff to do than to fritter away valuable time in cyberspace!

If you disagree, that is A-OK! Remember, this is all about having the freedom to do what YOU want to do!

See you next time…take care!!
Mary

My Revelations!

Hello! I had some revelations this morning! Seriously!

As of today, I am only 4 more months from my expected retirement date. It has been a long road…looking back over 40ish years of working, raising a family, triumphs and tragedies, it is kind of hard to realize this milestone in my life is about to come to fruition. We have worked hard, planned financially and otherwise, and now I am very excited…and, to be honest, a little scared!

As I have communicated these past few months with my manager and team at work and shared plans with family and friends, I realize that, while they see me get ready for this moment and are happy for me, there is some bit of wistfulness about some of those I know…those who have from 1 year up to probably 40 years before they too reach this milestone. I understand that since I have experienced it too when seeing others retire ahead of me.

But, here is what my real revelation this morning was…whether you are 1 year or 40 years away from your own retirement time, NO ONE has to wait till then to do what we have been talking about…that is, everyone could benefit from our “notebook of ideas” we have been talking about, to dream and plan for next week, next year, or whenever, to list things that you want to do! And, I don’t mean just things to do when you retire, but RIGHT NOW!  I realized I needed to tell this to everyone before we proceed too far down the line in this blog, not just those getting ready to retire or retired, but all of us who are living life in EVERY phase!

Life is busy…no revelation there! LOL! But sometimes it gets SO busy, just keeping up with working,  the daily stuff, relationships, meaningfully engaging with family and friends, that we don’t realize we can make time for at least some stuff that we would otherwise think of as only for “when I retire.” WHY? It is fantastic to look ahead to the “golden years” as they are called, but why can’t where we are right NOW be golden, too? I know some things just take more time, so when you retire is ideal BUT not everything you want to do takes so much time that you couldn’t do it NOW if you thought about it and planned for it!

If we don’t think about and plan for the things we are interested in doing, they won’t ever happen, whether that is in our retirement years, OR….right NOW! 

Of course, some of you may never actually “retire” in the typical meaning of the word, whether by choice or by need; or your retirement may look very different from the typical definition (e.g., a second career, your own business, foreign missionary work, or whatever!)  So that makes it even more important not to let time fritter away till there is no more, to make plans for yourself, for your NOW, and also for your typical retirement, your non-traditional  retirement, OR your non-retirement!  There’s no right way to get to this point, but everyone has a NOW we  should make the most of!

So, if you are in your twenties, thirties, sixties or anywhere in between or beyond….I challenge you to think today about the things you would really like to do or accomplish! Get yourself a notebook and brainstorm, just like we have been talking about! Check out my previous blogs to get yourself started.  Goals and plans that don’t get written down don’t happen.

EVERYONE can have fun with this, and if you start now, by the time you retire in whatever form you choose (or don’t retire!), you will be on such a roll with your habit of incorporating plans and goals into your life that your  ongoing future will just be OVERFLOWING with purposeful ideas!

I hope you take this challenge and continue to follow along with all of us on this journey. Even though this blog is called “RETIRE with Joy and Purpose”, it is really “LIVE IN ALL SEASONS with Joy and Purpose”!! We only have one life – be sure to plan now to live it joyfully and purposefully every day!

Take care, Mary