Tag: retirement

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Today I felt retired…

This was one of those incredible early Autumn Iowa mornings with the sun shining and the temperature in the low 60’s F. Ordinarily, at this time of year on a Thursday morning I would be at the university teaching a class. Instead, Nike and I took a 2 mile walk into the woods and along the bicycle trail. It was a perfect moment to savor the day as a gift.

Some have told me that adjusting to retirement is a process… perhaps it is, but it feels real fine right now… I’ve had the great, good fortune to travel around the world during my life… not everywhere, nor to the really exotic, but I do not feel the need to make grand retirement gestures by traveling… walking the dog, playing guitar, taking photographs, reading, and cooking for Annette are the little treasures of life being well lived during retirement… It seems to good to be true…

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On performing with guitar…

Recording artist Mike Dowling and me at a workshop in MN…

Throughout the summer, here in Cedar Falls, IA, the city offers several Friday night “Movies Under the Moon,” located in the downtown located Overman Park, proceeded by a series of short performances hosted by the Cedar Valley Acoustic Guitar Association. Local performing treasure and co-founder of the Association, Rick Vanderwall urged me to play and I somewhat reluctantly agreed to perform for my assigned 15 minutes on August 9, 2019.

I practice quite a bit daily and my guitar playing is slowly improving; however, playing before a crowd can only be prepared for by previous experience of which I have little. I’ve played (the less formal) open mic nights at a local coffee shop and experienced complete dissociation of my fingers from my brain, but that circumstance has reduced in likelihood as I’ve gain confidence by performing several times. On the other hand, open mic night is different from playing before a large expectant crowd so I have now some serious trepidation…

The advantage of performing publicly is that it raises the stakes in terms of my relationship with the guitar. We are in it together and practice is taken more seriously. In the same vein, the performance forces me to take myself more seriously as a musician, which has long term implications. This is not a painless process, but as they say, “if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.” See you next Friday night…

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A new road… or the end of the road…

Prairie Thistle… beautiful but prickly…

I am frequently asked two things in my early days of retirement:

1) What are you going to do with yourself;
2) How’s retirement treating you?

Both questions probe into the existential nature of what to do with the gift of time after devoting so much of it to a lifetime of work. The answer, within the boundaries of available resources and personal responsibilities is that “I will do whatever I want, whenever I want…”

That said, retirement is as I see it, an open playing field to accomplish as much or little as desired… One of the purposes of this weblog is help me focus and reflect on how best to take advantage of this open playing field. The headings in the weblog menu speak to my initial interests, which include music (guitars of varying type), digital photography, reading, and perhaps in the dead of Iowa winter, scale model building (usually WWII Allied aircraft). Though not listed, a considerable amount of time is devoted to maintaining physical fitness to perhaps extend and enhance the quality of my time before the end of the road…

I invite you to come along with me on this journey by reading and commenting if you wish…

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a first post…

Nike and me in Hartman forest..

I’ve been contemplating some time about finding a new space to post my thoughts and ruminations outside of social media, particularly Facebook (FB)… privacy issues as well as maintaining a sense of well being during my retirement lead me to question my continuing involvement with FB…

I do not want to compare myself to others, nor have others compare themselves to me, which I find problematic on FB… Further, I am increasingly wary of the utterly creepy instances where my involvement with FB indicates a lack of privacy and suggests that my “data” are being used for ill purposes I do not approve…

Consequently, I am going to wean myself from FB, yet I need a place to express myself, and for those who care to peek in, a place where friends and acquaintances can catch up with what I am doing… Call it a public journal… That is what I hope to accomplish on this website, which unlike FB, I must personally finance it, but it’s not that expensive… I do this with some trepidation because there are friends out in FB land that I have great affection for and will miss their reported activities, but after watching the Netflix documentary, “The Big Hack” I am convinced that extricating myself from FB is a good idea for myself and everyone else…

I invite anyone interested in my doings to follow along and comment (in a constructive way)…