It’s been a tough couple of weeks emotionally. Nothing major, just my negative thoughts spiraling me down. I try and work on positivity with daily gratitude, journaling, getting outside in my garden, doing things I love to do. But there are times when my critical inner voice and my natural pessimism seem to overpower the positivity practices. Working on positivity also means giving yourself permission to feel the pain of negative emotions. Some of this negative spiral is retirement focused, some is just life and the accumulation of little jabs at my psyche. I share so that others who also stru ..read more

Part of my retirement lifestyle vision is contemplation. Active Body, Connected Heart, Creative Spirit, Contemplative Mind. I noted in my end of the year review that my contemplation element was down, so I’ve added more tarot card reading into my monthly routine. I use the tarot cards to aid in self-refection and to allow my unconscious mind to be more conscious. This is not divination on what is to come, but an opportunity to quiet my mind and allow my intuitive self to emerge. I recently relooked at my winter to spring readings and was not overly surprised to see a number of common them ..read more

I feel like I am becoming jaded. After we went to the Florida Strawberry Festival, I even said, “Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt”.  And yes, I did buy the t-shirt. However, I could have said what was awe-inspiring about the event! Too many times that I recall in the past year, I’ve been less-than-impressed and focused on the negatives aspects in the things we do. Because jaded just feels so negative and I truly want to be a positive person, I need to switch from jadedness to wonderment Recently Kathy over at Smart Living talked about becoming a wonder seeker. Check out her compl ..read more

My intent with my blog posts is to try and provide insight, in some manner, into retirement living. Recently however, I just seem to be living my retirement with not any major insight emerging.  Here are a few of my less-than-insightful happenings this week: I’m on a “two for two” with planning fiascos.  First, while I was in transit to a planned evening festival, the first arrivers of the group discovered they had moved the event…12 miles in another direction. For many, the reaction would be, “12 miles, no big deal.”  But in our county, 12 miles is a 30+ minute drive. And we we ..read more

One of the fun tools I played with early in my retirement transition was writing 5 vignettes (short scenarios) based on 5 years in the future. I was learning about my love of writing and this sounded like a fun way to write creatively and also push my thinking on where I wanted to be in retirement. The core idea was to write as if it was 5 years in the future and you were telling the story of how you “came to be there”. Each vignette was to capture a different aspect of your future life in detail.  The other fascinating thing about this tool was, after writing these stories you were suppo ..read more

When one hears the phrase “Living a Life of Leisure” it often brings a sense of over-indulgence, selfishness, lack of responsibility, having no life purpose, or simply wasting time. Maybe that’s just my innate workaholic or the Puritan ethics I was raised on, but I have a hard time to not feel guilty with living a life mostly of what would be described as leisure activities. Recently two articles have me more accepting of my current life of leisure as I acknowledge that I was truly a workaholic, and that is not a healthy thing to be! Terri over at Second Wind Leisure  (link here) is all a ..read more

When you transition into retirement, there are often new habits that need to be formed as your old structure goes away.  Some folks might not need a structured day, some do.  But almost everyone has to create new habits. Many of us set being healthy as a retirement focus with beginning (and keeping!) new exercise habits a big part of that.  As I had this as a personal challenge (no exercise program at all pre-retirement!), I was recently asked about tips or secrets to making my new exercise habits stick. I now have a few exercise -focused things on repeat (blog link), so it was ..read more

It is often amazing to me when synchronicity happens.  Of course, the first time a message is coming at me, it is easy to ignore. The second occurrence, I wonder, “Is that a message coming through?” By the third time, I have to follow it down the rabbit hole!  Such was the case on chakras recently. I have explored chakras in the past, delving deep into the meaning of each, how to work on balancing them or unblocking them.  I’ve had my chakras “read” multiple times, by different empaths and intuitives. I’ve intentionally worked on unblocking certain chakras that were pointed out ..read more

Early in retirement I found the idea of 52 New Things (find that blog link here – from June 2018!) and implemented it.  Combined with my idea of Possibilities List (original link here – from Sep 2015), this started me on a continual path of finding new experiences. For a number of years I’ve tracked my New Experiences (link to blogs discussing this – may 2019, dec 2019), not to hit any number but to be able to reflect back on the fun things and to encourage me to keep trying new things, not get stuck in a rut. In fact, hubby often complains we never go back to restaurants he enjoys becaus ..read more

Even approaching 10 years in retirement, I still stumble over answering the question, “What do you do?’  For 30+ years, my total identity was singular and tied to my career, to what I did. I was a Products Researcher at P&G.  [For those not familiar with the Corporate lingo, that’s a product designer for Procter & Gamble, a global consumer products company.]  I’ve come to realize that the answer to this question (“What do you do?”) is often a challenge for many retirees.  It used to be simple, especially for career focused individuals and/or workaholics.  Simil ..read more