Tag: Retirement

Focusing on retirement living, health, happiness and purpose or meaning, now so much on financial issues.

MOVING FORWARD & FINDING PURPOSE

Wow. Getting better, trying to take care of myself and taking it easy. Been exploring and working on self-improvement and healing. I believe that are improving myself and healing are parts of my purpose in life. In the process, I have been doing some reading, listening, and coursework. I have to recommend a free course in tapping that is available online now through March 8th @ www.thetappingsolution.com/2018event It is amazing, it is a kind of energy approach, like acupuncture or transdermal nerve stimulation but without the needles or electricity. It utilizes positive affirmations and exploring barriers to change. It is used for various applications, such as for pain relief, stress reduction, PTSD, depression, anxiety, etc . (I do not know what all). It does seem helpful so far and has helped me look at some of my own problems, but have only tried it for 2 days so far.

One of the guests I listened to was Cheryl Richardson, an author, most recently wrote “Waking Up in Winter: In Search of What Really Matters at Midlife” who was talking about life stages. Her take was that she related life stages to the seasons of one’s life, spring, summer, autumn, winter. WOW. Talk about relating. Choosing to focus on our lives at this point is like – if not now, when, this is our last chance to do what our heart speaks to us in our core.

Part of what happens to most of us as we get older is that we start facing our own mortality, I know that I have been blessed to have survived this far; not all of us get to be 64. I am no longer into working as much as I can (hence retirement) or being famous, rich or whatever, that are outside accolades that one may acquire over a lifetime.

Life is short, none of us knows how long we have and therefore I want to make the most of it. Now, I don’t mean grand plans. I mean what is important to me:  family, health, happiness. For instance, I want to spend quality time with my husband. My husband is 17 years older than I, and part of the reason I retired a bit early is to be able to enjoy some time together traveling or just being together while we are both mobile, physically able enough to enjoy ourselves.

Still listening to Cheryl talk about these things reinforced my own beliefs about retirement. It is important to simplify, focus on what is important, accomplish what needs to be finished.

It is important to do get rid of the extra garbage in our lives. Many of us are trying to get rid of our excess baggage, simplify our lives, distill down to what is important. Minimize, downsize. Clearing out a lot of my clutter is one of my goals, clear my space, clear my mind. I have difficulty letting go, and my husband, a child of the depression, feels like he cannot have too much of whatever he thinks we need. When my in-laws died it took us 2 years to finish off their soup collection. I have my work cut out for me.

Focus on what is important for me means finding one’s purpose. I do not think there is necessarily one purpose for each of us. I rather believe that most of us have many purposes to fulfill in our lives. Some we may never realize, as we are undertaking for others so they can learn and do what is in their life’s plan. Not all purposes have to be huge or have to any meaning to anyone else, like reading a particular book. For me, I am choosing several areas to explore and improve myself as part of my life purpose, such as writing this blog, learning about tapping (which I did not know about 2 weeks ago), learning another language, photography, improving my nutrition, exercising as able (I am slightly disabled),  working on improving our country by participating in our democracy as a precinct chairperson, spending time with family and friends. These are the things that are important to me and that I want to spend time doing, to improve myself and my life

I know that I have a limited time left on this planet and I want to make it count, I want to leave with the earth being better off for my having been here. I want to feel ready when my time is up, but I still do not want that to be anytime soon.  I wish to minimize any regrets. I want to be able to enjoy myself and feel comfortable with being me. How about you?

 

Each day can be one of triumph If you keep up your interests.

George Matthew Adams

 

GETTING STARTED WITH RETIREMENT-SCHEDULING OR WHY DON’T I HAVE ANY TIME?

Hey, I must apologize for not posting in some time. I have no excuse and every excuse under the sun. I retired, just before Christmas. I have been looking forward to being retired. I was going to change my life; my time was my own. I had such plans. I was going to take care of my health, exercise, eat right, clean my house, take care of my husband AND have time to do those things that interest me.

One of those things I wanted to do was to work on this blog. I was going to write, share what I have learned with others. Turn my life around to one that is shiny and bright.

What happened? One of my problems was that I let my sister get in my head. Now, my sister is a wonderful, talented person. Still, she thinks I am crazy for starting this blog thing; a big waste of time that people sign up for and then it eats up your time and you can’t do it. Kind of like a New Years resolution, it falls by the way side. So, that has happened, life got in the way and I haven’t posted in some time. but even so, I have found that writing is good for me. Here I am, back writing and posting again.

What got in the way? A lot of things but, really regular life. Especially as we get older, life, death and illnesses eat up a lot more of our time. When I was talking with my sister, we were going to an unexpected family funeral in another state. That ate up a week.

Then work was calling, my boss told me that I should work, not retire. Asked me to fill in for another worker, tried to get me to pick up some hours here and there. “Just12 hours overnight”.  Just for this one client no one else knew how to care for her problem and equipment (I am a nurse). I did help 1 day and have continued to take care of one client. I enjoy working but I am ready to retire. Then they found another nurse who knows how to access an implanted port; so I retired fully, I thought. Then that nurse fell and broke some bones, and I am continuing to care for this one client, which is fine, for now. I am finding that I really want to retire. There goes another week, or two.

Then my brother couldn’t urinate and I ended up taking him to the Emergency Room. Then, I got sick, then my husband got sick (he thinks he still is and thinks we both had the flu, though no fever, chills, body aches). As the cold/flu finished I then developed a nasty cyst on by back: it became HUGE, red, swollen and painful. That brings me up to today.  I know I have to go see the doctor, but, first I have to take my brother in for surgery tomorrow.

Nurses are not good at taking care of ourselves. I am on Obamacare for right now.  Will start Medicare March 1st. I was hoping to hold out until then, since it will all be out of pocket for now. Thinking I must go before then, crap.

So, I feel like I have accomplished nothing. I did not get organized. I did not get my house all cleaned. I did not finish my cooking class. I did not lose weight (I know not a great combo). I did not exercise or even successfully fix my treadmill. I did not finish my nutrition course. I did not find my camera and take pictures. I did not blog. I felt like a failure and like my schedule was out of control and that I was hopelessly behind in everything.

I look at this and realize that I have been unrealistic and putting a lot of totally unnecessary pressure on myself. The reality is my schedule still belongs to me. I will get things done as I am able. Life will continue to get in the way. I will learn how to manage my time better with a regular schedule and share what I learn. One of my favorite songs I found when my father died, was by Bob Carlisle called “We Fall Down” and talks about how we all fall down, then we have to get back up. I am getting back up. I am blogging, and it feels good. Life spins on.