retirement

Get Close to Amenities

Back Story

Amenities or country – Seems that’s a choice you have to make in these parts. Our charming little town has never seen much action beyond a country music artist on the way up or on the way down, at the county fair or the long-ago scandalous hoochi-coochie girls at the annual carnival. Yet they tell us now that amenities are important. Hmmm.

Get Close to Amenities

Where do you live? Does it make you happy? A new survey reported by The Atlantic says that living within a short radius of amenities can change your life.

Live near facilities like parks, libraries, coffee shops, and gyms and you’ll do better, according to the report. Best is being no more than 15 minutes away.

This study is of particular interest here in the Shenandoah Valley, where there is concern about isolation, especially among the elderly in outlying rural areas.

Living closer to amenities encourages social interaction. More access to all-important low-stakes friendships. Neighbors tend to trust each other more and folks become more involved in local activities.

Bill and I lived for years at the foot of the mountain in Toms Brook. We loved the ten-mile trip to Woodstock along Back Road. Incredible mountainscapes everywhere, but no amenities.

Recently, we moved to a small, charming community just off Hisey Road. As Bill says, we’re now three minutes away from a hamburger. It’s convenient. We like it. We sure did not realize, however, that the move was actually adding to our happiness.

Hope you, too, are close to game night at the courthouse, poker at the Moose Lodge, Rotary meetings at the Brew House, and weekly non-profit fund-raisers, so you too can enjoy the amenities of life in our beautiful Shenandoah Valley.

P.S. Still sound like we’re lacking the gourmet restaurants, concerts with $500 tickets and nights on the town? For those of us retired from the fast track, we’ve been there, done that. Your turn.

Change

Backstory

It seemed to be taking place all around me. Kids moving back with their parents . . . mother carried off to a nursing home . . . a widow heading west . . . a bachelor heading east. . . a classmate moving to Ireland. . . someone asking about moving in here. Lives used to be all neat and tidy – and suddenly everything is changing. It motivated me to write this story.

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Change – #345

We have several friends who have had to change their living location in the last year. It’s been such an experience, to see how they acclimated to their new environment.

One elderly gentleman decided his home on the mountain was just too much responsibility. He listed out the tasks that needed to be done to live in his house. He decided that most of them, he no longer enjoyed doing.

He carefully reviewed assisted living facilities, went to visit several, decided on one and moved in. He now lives in the nursing home portion, quiet and content. He can do for himself all that his efficient new setting requires.

He still enjoys all the daily activities he liked, such as dining with friends, reading the newspaper, playing cards and watching sports. He says he brought the best of his world with him and left behind the things he had outgrown.

Another friend retired and moved across the country to be near her only daughter. But daughter has a career and a life and little time to spend with mom. My friend wound up moving back and even getting her old job back. Retirement did not suit her nearly as much as a busy workday.

She prospered in a setting where she had respect and appreciation.

I’ve learned from these friends – not to be afraid to change things…

And not to be afraid to go back, if it doesn’t work out.

P.S.

I started analyzing all the options open for when it’s my turn to change. Guess what? Can’t do it. Somehow I have not found the crystal ball that tells me what will be needed by me or my loved ones or those around me. I can’t begin to guess what it will cost and whether there will be bingo or pot parties or midnight skinny dipping. So, just like the rest of us, I will wait and try to make good decisions while the universe determines my future. I just hope it does it with panache.

[Show #345]

Retirement – A Second Chance

Backstory – Retirement

Looking around at retired friends, I marveled at how active and involved they are. No rocking chair sitters, these. Taking a better look, I thought about what an opportunity retirement is to reinvent yourself. That thought inspired this week’s show.

Consider This Show – Second Chance

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Second Chance – #621

You know what’s great about retirement? It gives you a second chance at having an authentic life.

Thank goodness baby boomers are strong and healthy, well into their sixties, seventies and even their eighties – something our grandparents could not even wish for. They were tired at 50 and spent at 60. That’s not the case today.

So when folks retire, they have a second chance to have an authentic life, if it didn’t work for them the first time around. And they have the wisdom of experience, to enhance their success.

I have many friends who are enjoying a new authentic life, since retirement.

A non-profit executive from NYC – opened a flower shop in California, something she had always wanted to do.
A retired nurse became a care-giver.
A retired public speaker started writing a 90 second radio show. You’re listening to it right now.
A physicist started studying the Russian language. He traveled to Moscow to test his linguistic skills. There he found access to opera and ballet at the price of a box lunch in NYC. He keeps going back for more.

Whether your work life was authentic or not, in retirement, you could start out on a new path, if you want.

Psychologist Carl Jung told us, “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” And life after retirement offers that privilege, a second time around.

[Show #621]

Evening

Backstory – Evening

Retirement, with all its opportunities, can also lead to a life that is quieter, safer, softer. Can that lead to boredom? That was the concern of my beloved, when retirement was new to me and well experienced by him. This is the conversation we had about that.

Consider This Show – Evening

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We were sitting on the porch, watching the early evening clouds change color as sunset approached. He turned to me and asked, “Do you enjoy sitting here quietly, just taking it all in?” He referred to the mountains that rose from the other side of the road…the flowers in the swaying trees…the birds twittering happily in the evening shadows. “Sometimes I wonder if this is too staid for you,” he added.

How could I possibly express to him, all it meant to sit next to him and take in the daily miracles that so often go unnoticed in our hurried world. To hear the sounds of nature instead of the ringing of the house phone, the office phone, the cell phone. To sit there knowing this is the final destination of the day. No more need to wedge my way into the traffic and claim my share of blacktop to get me home. The most peaceful time of day when my heart sings and my hand touching his is divinely intimate. It is the essence of every love song.

“This is my favorite part,” I shared softly, tears of joy gathering in my eyes.

And I believe he understood everything expressed by those few little words.

[Show #198]