Category: Learning

The boulevard of broken bones

Today marks five weeks since I tripped over a power cord and broke my arm. It was non-surgical, and I’ve been wearing the sling 24/7, except for showers, etc. In another 10 days I see the ortho for an assessment. If all goes well, he will say the bone is healing properly, I don’t need surgery and I can begin physical therapy.

I will not bore you with my boring itinerary here at the boulevard of broken bones, but just so you know. It’s boring. I can’t quite get into a book even though I have several in the queue. I’ve watched a little TV. I ate a box of See’s candy. I was losing weight, but I fixed that.

I’ve been able to walk a little every day. It’s awkward but manageable. I think about Lindsey Vonn and wonder how she passes the time. She’s probably good at this, too.

Dale, who fell off a ladder right before Christmas and broke his pelvis, is defying the odds. The PT is getting him stronger and stronger, and he hasn’t used the walker in a week. He’s up and down the stairs like an old pro, and I can only detect a slight limp at the end of the day when he’s tired.

It’s too early to even speculate on what we’ve learned throughout this ordeal. There will be takeaways for sure, but right now we’re just trying to get through it. I have calmed down a bunch and no longer feel like everything is an accident waiting to happen. I even opened the door to the room where I am sleeping, as I’ve sort of moved on from that existential fear of things that go bump in the night.

My goal is to move back into the master bedroom with Dale. He’s lost weight, too, so maybe he won’t snore as much. The main reason I’m not in there now is because I have a hard time finding a comfortable position, and I guess I’d rather not have an audience.

Oh, that’s right. Dale needs to sleep. That was my real reason – always thinking of others.

Everyone assumes the biggest thing I want is to get back to golf. And that’s true to some extent, but I just want to be able to do stuff around the house like I used to. I am amazed at what I can accomplish with one arm. Still, it’s not enough to chop vegetables or maintain the household.

We hired someone to come and help with stuff, but we got rid of her after one day. She drove both of us crazy. Dale agreed to step up, and it’s working well enough. Way better than having someone else in our space. If I squint, it looks OK.

Thankfully, he can cook. We’re back to pizza on Fridays. Last week’s was sausage and anchovies. I don’t know what’s on the docket for tomorrow. Yesterday we had spaghetti carbonara with a salad. Tonight is schnitzel with marinated cucumbers and home fries. I might need help cutting mine. That was the great thing about the See’s. Just pop them in, and they’re gone.

Aside from the candy, I have been eating well. Lots of protein. I actually like cottage cheese, which is high in protein, but I got tired of it pretty quickly. I prefer Greek yogurt, which is also an excellent source of protein. Tuna, sardines – both great. I cooked up a chicken breast just to make chicken salad.

I’ve squandered many an hour on the Epstein files. I want to see Trump held accountable for something in his miserable life of crime, and I thought it might be this, but who knows? The whole thing is bigger than my brain can absorb.

Although I said I don’t have any lessons to share just yet, I will say our accidents have given me an even greater appreciation for the simple things in life. And reading about all that awfulness with Epstein and his billionaire buddies only amplifies my desire to live simply, stay healthy, eat well and enjoy the time that has been given to us.

Facts aren’t what they used to be

So, here we are on the dark side of the information age, where you read something, you find yourself nodding in agreement and then you find out it’s AI. Lying and fakery has become the norm. Truth is almost always disguised. Facts aren’t what they used to be.

What’s real? What’s not?

While I feel good about challenging lies when I’m on solid ground, most of the time it feels like everything I know is built on a foundation of quicksand.

The good news is I’ve become much more comfortable saying I don’t know. And perhaps I will be among the first to tell you this is good relationship advice. You don’t always have to be correct. My husband and I seem to do better when we just accept we’re both clueless.

Before I realized I know nothing, he would say something obviously delusional. I would correct him, and then we’d start arguing until I went upstairs to get on the Internet and prove I’m right. Then he would start questioning my sources, like Wikipedia doesn’t count, and I would find myself defending some troll who saw Elvis last night.

Then it’s all about the art of surrendering. Backing out of a firm stance. Agreeing we were both wrong. It was a misunderstanding. None of it matters, anyway. That seems to be working.

Social situations are more challenging. What with my filter broken, I can’t stay silent when people spew absolute nonsense. I might not know all the facts, but in terms of a moral compass, I know right from wrong, so let’s start there.

These are trying times, and it can be hard to know when to be quiet or when to speak up, but I think most of us figure it out eventually. One thing I’ve learned for sure is friends and acquaintances can still enjoy fulfilling lives without hearing what I think about everything.

I suppose it’s about moderation and self-awareness. Speak up when it counts, muzzle yourself when it doesn’t. My group does a pretty good job managing all that. We eat a little, drink a little, talk about what we’re going to eat next, share pictures of our animals and coo.

It’s not bad. Not bad at all.

And on that note, I leave you with Number 48.

The opposite of bored

You know the age old question for retirees. What do you do all day? If you find the idea of being bored in retirement preposterous, this post might be for you.

My thinking on this subject has morphed since I started watching Astrid on PBS Masterpiece. The show features a brilliant autistic woman named Astrid who works in criminal records and is recruited by a detective to help solve crimes. It’s French with subtitles, which I hardly notice.

Her autism bugged me at first, but I grew more comfortable with it as the series and the characters evolved. Wouldn’t it be great if it worked that way in real life? You spend some time with a person, get to know them and maybe they don’t seem so damn odd after all. One can hope.

A common characteristic of people with autism is the special interest, which is an intense hyper-focus area that brings joy and helps them stay centered. To some, a special interest may come across as obsessive, but a few of us out here might be envious.

I’m talking about we, the people, who have too many interests and sometimes have difficulty focusing. As for me, I’ve spent a lot of time and dropped a fair chunk of change on things that interested me … for a while.

Retirement changes the game. The good news is we have time and hopefully enough money to dabble, and sometimes we’re like kids in a candy store. It’s exciting to think, what do I want to try next? But then you realize time doesn’t last forever, and it’s a fixed income, anyway, so you can’t get stupid with it.

I already have plenty of interests, but every now and then I’m tempted by some new shiny object. Sewing is one. I used to jump for it, but now that I’m older and wiser, I start thinking about the start-up costs, learning curve, space requirements, time commitment – and I get stuck.

Like Astrid, do I need something to stay centered? She inspired me to think about my current hobbies as special interests. Plural. These are the activities that have stood the test of time. Instead of spreading myself too thin, I want to make the most of what I know is sustainable.

My approach to these interests is haphazard at best. I grow cannabis, for example, but sometimes my yields are unsatisfactory, and I’ve done nothing to dig deeper and find out why. Cooking is a big one, but there’s no organization or the slightest bit of discipline to my approach. The house looks like a recipe bomb exploded, and no one came to clean up the debris.

One of the joys of retirement is that you can throw rigid schedules out the window, and I relish my laid back lifestyle. That said, it’s time to focus on my special interests in a more mindful way. Pay more attention to the details.

For starters, I bought a book about growing cannabis, and it has given me good ideas for how to improve my yield. I spend an inordinate amount of time on puzzles, so I might cap that at an hour a day. Swimming is 30 minutes of freestyle, but I could easily introduce some variations to my workout.

While I suppose there’s a certain charm to being the eccentric Bohemian who dabbles in what amuses her, retirement by shiny object can be stressful. I waste a lot of time doing not much of anything because I’m overwhelmed by choices. On the other hand, I don’t want a hardcore regimen about what I do when.

If this dilemma sounds familiar, I can offer a few suggestions that will perhaps help us maximize the pleasures and outcomes of things we already do.

Does this interest make you happy? How much time are you committing? Think weekly not daily – overall, is there balance? Do you feel calm? Would you enjoy improving your skill level or technique? Can you throw some money at it? Will a schedule or some sort of organizational structure bring clarity, improve your performance or just create unwanted stress?

There will come a day when I ignore all reason and go for it, but right now I’m saying no to sewing and other shiny objects so I can properly tend to my current garden of interests.

A bridge lesson

I was invited by one of the women in my golf group to participate in a series of beginner bridge lessons in her home, and I thought why not? They say this complex card game is especially good for the aging brain. It seems to me anything that might help us dodge dementia is a good thing. I’m retired. I’ve got the time.

Today was my first lesson, and that’s an hour and a half I’ll never get back.

Perhaps I should have known. When I told Dale, he reminded me math was involved. While it’s true I picked journalism as a major because it was about the only degree that didn’t require even the most rudimentary of math skills, I thought, well, it’s a card game. How hard can it be?

Many of you probably know this already, but it’s damned hard. I won’t even go into the complexities I tried to absorb during this first lesson, but it reminded me of high school geometry, when the teacher spent an entire semester saying, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

Because that’s what it sounded like to me.

The bridge instructor scheduled an indefinite number of lessons every Thursday at 9:30 a.m. Not bad, but not good for the retirement practice I subscribe to called, “The Slow Start.” But you know, staving off dementia, I guess I could move out faster for a good cause. Also, Thursdays at 10 is my preferred time for massages, and one must have priorities.

On the plus side, I wore jeans and my old Lucchese cowboy boots, which I haven’t done in a couple of years. At least I looked cute, and that takes a few brain cells, doesn’t it?

Bridge is interesting, and I can totally see the attraction. I generally like games. I really liked this group of women. If they had a Yahtzee league, I’m all in. I used to play Hearts back in the day, and that didn’t kill me. Backgammon. Scrabble.

But bridge, wow. I’m 67, reasonably intelligent and in excellent health. However, I don’t think I have enough time left to understand this game.

Even without the card counting and all that, there are all kinds of weird things including where you sit and what cards you play – north, south, east and west. What’s so wrong about left and right?

Sometimes your partner will show all their cards, and you play those, too. Like one hand wasn’t enough. And all these little codes to signal your partner how you want to bid. If everyone subscribes to the same convention, why not just say it in plain English? I have five spades!

I didn’t want to disappoint my friends, but I also didn’t want to pretend I’d come back when I knew it was a lost cause. While I acknowledge some stress is good for you, this is the kind of stress that makes me miserable. Rather than drag it out, I just laid it out for them. They were gracious, but now they have to find a replacement, which sucks for them.

When I got home, I told Dale he was right. Numbers gone wild! Crazy stuff! And all my Thursdays eaten up just to learn the basics? I’m pretty sure I would start dreading Thursdays, finding excuses to stay in bed, when in fact it’s a rather pleasant day of the week that has done me no previous harm.

He said, “So, you’re saying it was a bridge too far?”

The man’s still got it. 

All this is good news for those of you who enjoy reading my blog. I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks, and I had been thinking, maybe I’ll just quit writing. But that’s looking like a bad strategy now that I know bridge isn’t going to save me.   

I promised the bridge gods I would work harder at writing if they would just leave me alone.

You can quote me on that

    January marks five years of publishing Retirement Confidential. In honor of this anniversary, I suffered through pages and pages of old posts to cull some of my more cogent thoughts about life after work. I hope you enjoy the recap.

    Thank you for making it all possible. Happy New Year!

    • In large part, retirement is about making it to the finish line and doing whatever you can get away with.
    • Many retirees are probably unemployable. Not that we’re uppity, but our bullshit meters are pegged. Oh, and our inside voice is now our outside voice.
    • While big retirement goals typically require planning, preparation and commitment, in the art of the slack, it’s important to set a low bar for the routines of daily life.
    • I got my first Social Security payment this month. That was fun. While I don’t miss work, I do like to be on the receiving end of money.
    • As a childless couple, we want to spend our principal … just not all at once. I like the idea of “die broke.” However, I would like to avoid being alive and broke.
    • We add layers and layers of accommodations and behaviors to earn a living, and we start to believe that’s who we really are. Retirement is a journey toward freeing ourselves from expectations and accepting we don’t have to be more than we are.
    • One thing I’ve learned in retirement is there’s something to be said for wishful thinking. I have been on both sides of the attitude spectrum, and nothing good ever happened when I thought the glass was half-empty.
    • I woke up the other morning thinking, “I should get a job.” I used to like people. Maybe I could learn to like them again.
    • Retirement can be the opportunity to discover or re-discover who you are when nobody is watching.
    • What if we don’t need to continuously improve ourselves? Here’s a radical thought. What if being content is what it actually means to reach our full potential? What if being alive is our greatest accomplishment?
    • I’ve had weird retirement dreams lately. I’m working at my old job but wondering why there isn’t more money in my bank account. Did they forget to pay me? Then I realize I wasn’t working at all and haven’t had a job in years. I wake up happy.
    • Illness definitely affected my professional timetable. My first bout of cancer woke me up to get serious about work, and my second bout woke me up to get serious about life.
    • In the grand scheme of things, I haven’t accomplished much. I consider making enough money to retire my greatest achievement.
    • Retirement can be an unbelievable opportunity to pursue nothing – and that is everything.
    • I’m not one to document goals, accomplishments or disappointments. If I wanted to do all that, I would be working.
    • I never get sick of retirement. Even when I read the news, and it’s all horrible and depressing, I think, well, at least I get to sleep in.
    • On multiple occasions, my boss said I couldn’t take vacation. I think she just got nervous when the flock wasn’t there. When I retired, I had more than 30 days of vacation paid to me because I never got to use it. Yo, girlfriend, guess who’s on vacation now?
    • In many ways, it would have been easier to keep working. At least you get paid to avoid self-reflection.
    • Once you have enough to get by without a job, time becomes more important than money or stuff.
    • Waking up without an alarm is one of the greatest joys retirement brings. I waited my whole life for this.

    Saying what you think

    Most of us adapt to idiosyncrasies of the workplace to earn a living, but what happens to those behaviors when you retire? Do you still sound like the person from work, or is your inside voice blurring a bit with your outside voice?

    My inside/outside voice conflict goes back many years, when an Army lieutenant alerted me to the possibility I might not need to say everything I think.

    I was an enlisted journalist in the Army and worked in the Public Affairs Office at Ft. Bragg, N.C. We were part of the 18th Airborne Corps, which was often sent to global hotspots to assist in disaster relief. They’d usually send a journalist to help with press releases and such. I never got to go.

    One day, I approached the lieutenant in charge and asked him why I wasn’t selected for these assignments. He said, “Pekar, it has something to do with what’s between your nose and your chin.”

    Although I never did get asked to go, I managed to get out of the Army unscathed and eventually learned to keep my mouth shut, which was definitely career-enhancing.

    Retirement reduced my exposure to annoying situations, but it’s hard to avoid them completely. I recently played golf with a woman who announced she was extremely sensitive to sounds. She had rabbit ears and could hear even the tiniest whisper, requiring absolute silence when it was her turn to play. Even the rustling of a potato chip bag was terribly disturbing to her.

    I got paired with her again a few weeks later, and she got into a snit about scoring. Rules for the women’s golf club events are rather persnickety. We all keep each other’s score, and you have to capture that information at the end of each hole played.

    Around the fourth hole, she got a little huffy about our process for swapping scores and announced her demands for how it would be done going forward.

    Good thing I spent my career learning “advanced” communication skills to get through challenging scenarios without injury or lawsuits. Please select the best response:

    A) Thank you for sharing that. Let’s collaborate when we get to the next hole and get some consensus on a win-win solution.

    B) I appreciate your perspective – and to build on that – I recommend we circle the wagons on the next hole and get input from the rest of the team.

    C) Great idea! Let’s pulse the team and see if everyone’s on board.

    D) Who died and left you in charge?

    I chose D, haunted by the voice from the ethics videos we used to watch, “That is not your best choice.” Still, shit like this goes on in my head all the time, but I’ve learned to suppress it. Even on the golf course, I allow myself to be bossed around because it’s easier than conflict.

    When we got to the next hole, she said, “Did you just ask me who died and left me in charge?” I said, yes, I did. She never spoke another word to me.

    I hope I wasn’t too much of a jerk, and I hope I’m not put to the test again any time soon. However, it’s kind of interesting how it turned out. I shot my best score ever. What’s up with that?

    What I learned in a year

    I just hit the one-year mark on my retirement, although I was still on the payroll through most of October burning up the last of the vacation I could never seem to take for one reason or another. That means a year of not getting up at 4 a.m. or commuting 2.5 hours a day. Bliss!

    What have I learned in a year?

    1. I was better at work than I am at golf.
    2. The house gets messier when you actually live there.
    3. Libraries rock.
    4. There is no shame in going to bed early and waking up late.
    5. My husband never says no when I say, “I’m going to Target, do you want to come along?”
    6. The kitchen gets messier when you actually cook.
    7. An occasional beer with lunch is a nice treat.
    8. Worrying about money doesn’t make the stock market go up or down.
    9. Housework sucks but keeps you moving and burns calories.
    10. My wardrobe fits into a laundry basket.
    11. Cannabis in small doses reduces pain and makes me happy.
    12. The dishwasher runs more than I do.
    13. Crocs make great slippers.
    14. Writing for pleasure and practice is fun and therapeutic.
    15. Sometimes I start thinking about lunch as soon as I finish breakfast.
    16. It’s better to say nothing than to criticize my husband’s driving.
    17. Cooking delicious food at home ruins you for most restaurants.
    18. Men don’t see dirt.
    19. Birkenstocks go with everything.
    20. The idea of a job has become increasingly unattractive.
    21. Change is good.
    22. I still can’t get rid of my work clothes.
    23. My inside voice and my outside voice are converging.
    24. It’s no big deal to squander a day – lots more where those came from.
    25. Gray hair looks good and saves time and money.
    26. You can have a social life without social media.
    27. I like Kohl’s better than Nordstrom.
    28. Homemade yogurt is worth the trouble.
    29. My husband does not report to me.
    30. Walking is good exercise, and it’s free.

    The other kind of retirement dreams

    I was in the Army back in the 70s and to this day, I sometimes have a dream where I’m back in, but I don’t have the right uniform. I’m trying to get to the clothing sales store before somebody catches me, but I don’t know where it is. I’m walking around, knowing I’m about to be caught and in big trouble. Mercifully, I wake up.

    Sounds kind of like college dreams, right? It’s the big test, but you forgot to study. Or you didn’t graduate after all. I suspect everyone has a version of these dreams, which I assume are related to stress and/or anxiety.

    My dreams are vivid, and I remember most of them. When I tell my husband about them, the first question he asks is if I crossed state lines. The answer is usually yes, many times.

    So, I’ve had a few retirement dreams. Last night I dreamed my boss asked me at the last minute to sit in for her at the big Monday staff meeting. Sadly, I had worn slippers to work. I had time to go home and get appropriate shoes, but I was also invited to participate in a ceremony, where I would be honored for something that was not revealed in the dream.

    But I wanted to go, so I skipped the shoe exchange and planned to attend the ceremony – in my slippers. I forgot to tell the administrative assistant who runs the meetings that I wouldn’t be there. I couldn’t find the ceremony, and the staff meeting was already over by the time I gave up. I called the admin and apologized for being a no-show.

    She starts telling me how much trouble I’m in, the big guy is really mad, but in my dream, I’m thinking, wait! I’m retired! This isn’t really happening. Wake up! They can’t do anything to me. And then mercifully, I wake up.

    So, wow. I suspect for many of us, it will take years to completely unwind from the pressures of the workplace. As I think about it, the dreams are similar to a few unpleasant dreams I had when I was working. Doing something stupid and then coping with the fear of getting in trouble.

    Um, wait, I think that actually happened … the stupid and the trouble. However, I’ve been pretty lucky none of my mistakes were deal breakers. Although one time in the Army it came close. I had a pattern of saying whatever was on my mind. I asked the lieutenant why I never got any of the cushy assignments, and he said, Pekar, it’s got something to do with what’s between your nose and your chin.

    I did learn to control my stream of consciousness ramblings, and that served me well in corporate life. I’m grateful I made it to the finish line and even more grateful I can now wake up and say, wait! This isn’t real. I’m retired.