The blog
“Finally, I will have a war story,” I told myself early yesterday. Seriously, all my friends have them—tales of knee replacement, hip and shoulder replacement, ankle replacement (did you know they replace ankles?). These people spin their yarns with all the drama of war veterans, looking admiringly at one another as they explain in detail…
Now that the book signing is over, I’ll let you in on a secret. Half a week ago it looked like there would be no books to sign. Evidently, Hurricane Dorian interrupted service at the Amazon distribution center in Charleston, SC where my books were printed. When I ordered two weeks ago, my delivery date…
So I’m sitting in my 2006 Tacoma pickup in front of one of those drive-through oil-change places, and this young man pokes his head in my window asking if I want the more expensive oil for older vehicles. “Older”? “Yeah, have you driven more than 75,000 miles”? I glance at my odometer that registers just…
Talked with a marketing guy today who wanted to know how my book is different from all the others on retirement. First of all, I told him, mine is not different from all of them, just most of them. Most authors seem to believe the modern retirement crisis is caused by lack of money. I…
“But isn’t that the point?” My friend was responding to my reply to her question. She wanted to know if I was enjoying retirement, and I answered that I didn’t like the inactivity. “But isn’t that the point?” In the conversation to follow, her assumption was that one works hard for 40 or 50 years…
Facebook is making me sad. Because most of my memories this time of year point to a hiking adventure, most with students and most on New Mexico’s Mt. Wheeler. But I have no such plans this year. I guess it’s because the hiking buddy pool was much larger when I spent my days among 20-somethings.…
Dr. Nancy Schlossberg called it “the mattering test.” In Revitalizing Retirement, she wrote, “Leading a successful retirement is about much more than money. It’s about feeling you matter, that you are and will be noticed and appreciated.” A psychologist who has written for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, Schlossberg said if you…
What if your dream is blocked because of circumstances beyond your control? That’s the theme of “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” a recently released movie starring Cate Blanchette. Bernadette (Blanchette) is a once successful architect who has spent the last 20 years in a psychological tailspin because one of her masterpieces was destroyed. The tragedy caused…
Serendipity. Mirriam-Webster says we experience it when we “find valuable or agreeable things not sought for.” Other definitions add the words “unexpected” and “unplanned.” Which happened yesterday. I woke early, planning to begin my bike ride at sunup. But it was raining—not that slick pavement keeps me home. But in this part of Texas, in…
Professional writers call them “elevator pitches.” If you had only a short elevator ride to pitch your book to a (pick one) agent, publisher or reader, what would you say? Well, here’s mine: Retirement can be scary. It was for me. The temptation is to see it as an ending—to physical abilities, mental agility, important…
On Christmas Day, 1959, my brother Craig and I found 410-gauge shotguns under the tree, and we wasted no time taking our first hunting expedition through the field behind our house toward Tierra Blanca Creek. We were looking for jackrabbits, but when we found none, we decided to try our luck with ducks. If you’ve…
Had dinner last night at the Bellah Building on the corner of 15th Street and 5th Avenue in Canyon, so named because Bellah 1927 is written on a large, cement block just below the roof line. R. A. Bellah built the structure when my dad (his grandson) was four years old. He constructed it for…