A Fun Way to Keep Your Mind Active After Retirement

You have been a hard and dedicated worker your whole life. You worked with for your family on the farm or in business or in your trade. In fact, you have worked for so long that it is all you have really known.

You have dreamed of the day when you could hang up your working boots and retire to a life of leisure and possibly travel the world with your spouse. However, you have been retired for a while now and the travelling thing is fun, but getting old.  You still have energy and cannot see yourself sitting around the house just watching soap operas and fishing shows all day.

In short, you want mental stimulation and you would really like to meet new people while you are at it. How can you do that without taking up gambling, going to MacDonald’s or Starbucks or the community center, and playing bridge every day? Well, one of the best ways to do that is by signing up for some continuing education classes.

Continuing education classes can help keep your mind sharp and help you learn a new hobby or subject all the while meeting new people who share the same interests. Most community colleges, recreation centers and universities offer a wide variety of continuing education courses throughout the year.

The easiest way to find these classes is to call up or go online to the website of your local colleges and recreation centers to find out more about their upcoming class offerings and how you can register. For example, you can take a class to learn how to make jewelry, learn how to sew or knit, learn how to throw pottery or write the next great American novel.

Or, you can take more of an education type course like a Spanish language class or a literature course. The choices are only limited by your imagination and drive to learn.

The best part, you will probably find like-minded people in your courses. More than likely, they are probably in the same boat as you and are looking for a way to occupy their time in retirement. You could form a friendship with these people and build new relationships. And who does not like having a lot of friends and acquaintances?

The most important thing, it helps you continue to feel like you are doing something productive. You have spent the majority of your life doing things for others: your parents, your spouse, your children and your employers. Now it is your time to take up a hobby that you have always wanted to try but did not have the time for. Why not! You have worked hard your whole life and completely deserve this time.

So, pick up the phone or go online and find out more about the upcoming courses in your area. By this time next week, you could be creating the next blockbuster novel or painting a masterpiece that will eventually land in a famous museum. If you dream it, it is possible and continuing education can be the missing piece to make that happen.

Massive change starts small

Avalanches landslides, fires, mudslides or floods are very scary if you have witnessed one or have seen one close up you know that they can be life-changing. All of these massive events can start out as massive events, but more than likely they start out as small perhaps even insignificant events. A fire can start with a tossed match or a massive lightning strike; a mudslide can start with a pebble or a cliff giving way; an avalanche can start with a snowball or a side of a cliff dropping suddenly. 

No matter how they start, they can grow into massive life-threatening or life-changing events. It is the same for any action you take, any small step or decision you make can lead to massive action on massive dreams even amidst massive uncertainties.  You know this is is pretty much where anyone who's ever done anything massive had to start. The problem is not the massive action, it is the starting of the action that causes us so much pain and uncertainty. Once we start, things just get way easier as we get caught up riding the massive event we started. The key is to be on top of the action, not caught up in the action. For that to happen requires courage, strength, planning and good luck. 

Grocery Shopping has changed.

I noticed the other day when I was out getting a few groceries that the isles were full of staff members filling up bags. The bags were in a large cart and there were three levels. I noticed but did not think about it until today. I was in the grocery store and as I turned the corner I was almost hit by one of the carts. Lucky for me that the lady steering the cart was quick and she stopped. I apologized as I was the one not paying attention. 

I then said that it looked like the store was getting a lot of online shoppers. She said yes, and went on to explain that her store did not charge for the pickup, whereas all of the other competitors charged for the picking. She said, "Phone us, give us your list, your brand preferences if any, and then we pick it up and you come to the store and pick it up." She added, "If you wanted it delivered there was a nominal  charge." 

I asked if this was new and she said, "This area of shopping has picked up in the last few months, and she was glad as it kept her working and out of trouble." I laughed and continued my shopping. But I got to thinking that grocery shopping has changed for many.

One of the concerns that many seniors have is losing the ability to stay in your own home because they cannot get out to do the chores, see the doctor, or shop for groceries. Modern businesses are meeting the need of people who cannot get out, or who do not have the time to spend shopping.  It appears the millennials and Gen Xers are leading the charge in the use of this convenience, but I think Boomers will start to use this to help them.

According to the latest data from Prosper Insights & Analytics’ November 2016 survey, 7.7% of U.S. consumers shopped for groceries online in the past 30 days, up from 5.7% two years ago. Not surprisingly, younger generations are driving the uptick. One in ten millennials and Gen Xers did online grocery shopping in 2016, up from 8.4% and 6.8% respectively in 2014.

The “convenience” of online shopping and grocery delivery means different things to different people. For some in crowded urban areas, getting to and from the grocery store may be a transportation issue. For busy working parents, grocery shopping may be a time issue. Others may just dislike grocery shopping and do anything to avoid the store.

While Wal-Mart and Amazon will continue to fight it out on the national level, the store I was in was a large regional supermarket. The management of this chain clearly see the trend and are starting to make their mark in the areas they are competitive. the frontrunners and will continue battling it out in the online space.

It is nice to see a Regional competitor that is local to my area not sit idly on the sidelines and developing an integrated and seamless multi-channel shopping experience that will benefit the store, and the consumers in my area.

Facing Death

One of the blogs I read and very much enjoy is called Time Goes By. The author of this blog has been fighting cancer and recently went into remission, however, she just posted that her cancer has come back and this time the chemotherapy will not stop it, but only slow down its progress. That is very sad news for he and her family, friends and the thousands of us who read and enjoy her writing. 

She has realized that she will soon die, and so at this point, she is in good humour, if her blog post is any indication. She says: 

Because I know that regular and fairly heavy exercise goes a long way toward staying healthy in old age, I've been doing that (with the exception of the months of recovery after the surgery) five mornings out of seven for six or seven years - and I despised every moment of it. Now there is no reason and I am relieved.

Another upside is that I don't have to worry about dementia anymore. No more of those little online tests about what are normal memory problems and what are not. Whew. I'm glad to be done with that too.

I'm sure that in the coming days and weeks I'll find some other things I can happily leave behind.

So what should I do with the time left to me? Yeah, yeah, I know – everyone is dying every day but believe me, I now know that it is quite a different thing from that abstract platitude to a closely defined period of time.

She goes on to say and with more courage than I might have, 

My main daily occupation is this blog and its subject – what it is like to grow old. I've been doing this for about 15 years and still am not tired of it. It feels a lot like the years I was employed – going to work every day doing something that I enjoy.

Five days into my new circumstance now, I have decided to keep doing these things as if I had all the time in the world. That may change in the weeks and months to come and if so, I'll figure out then what is next.

For now, from time to time I will write here about this final journey hoping that what could be taken as overly self-indulgent might, for some readers, be of possible value as another person's way of approaching the end of life.

Another quotation that has helped drive my life is from the British writer, E.M. Forster. I discovered it when I was in my twenties realizing then that it describes perfectly how my mind worked and still works:

”How do I know what I think until I see what I say.”

For me, it takes writing it down (on paper or, these days, on a screen) to know with any clarity what I think and believe. So writing for you is also for me and will help me work out this frightening last mile or two.

If you have not had the opportunity I recommend that you go visit her blog. I will continue to read her and hope that medical advances will take place that will help in her journey.