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I reached back into my archive of possible topics for this week. Back to November 2023, in fact, and the Edmonton Journal.

In part, here is a key paragraph.

But it’s also that my viewpoint is changing in retirement. It’s as if the camera lens of my cellphone has flipped around from photo to selfie. No longer pining to capture that different, distant place, I find myself more comfortable where I already live, both metaphorically and literally.

That made me curious to explore whether the idea applied to me. I didn’t think it was right or wrong, or good or bad. It was just an idea I was curious about.

Let’s see where this reflection takes me.

First, I would separate the concept of retirement from that of aging. I retired when I was 69 years old. My financial and health situations have remained very stable from my retirement to my current age of 78. That stability could make a big difference in my viewpoint if my situation had included financial and health issues.

My plan for my older adult years was to act my age while thinking younger. That meant, for example, using the stairs more carefully. I never use stairs without keeping one hand on the handrail.

But I would be open to the unfamiliar, the untried, or the unexperienced. I would value the uncomfortable feeling of ‘different.’ I would use the senses to hone in on the possible directions these differences may take in my life.

I enjoy being in the kitchen and trying my hand at new recipes. I’ve been using herbs and spices I know come from distant lands. I am currently training my taste buds to appreciate an Ethiopian Berbere. It is a complex, fiery, and highly aromatic spice blend that forms the backbone of Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine.

I have made great progress and now regularly add it to food to bring out an earthy flavour.

There are a few music genres I struggle to enjoy and have given up on, so I don’t include them in my listening repertoire. My Spotify streaming service has shared its year-end review of my listening habits. Most listeners give a new track about 10 seconds before moving on. Apparently, I listen to the end of a new track about 90% of the time. I’m not sure that is a good thing, but Spotify is correct in its documentation.

Thinking isn’t one of the senses, but I’ll include it here as an important way of being young. My guiding principle in my older adult years is to ‘say yes more often.’ That doesn’t mean saying yes to everything, but when I jump to “no” quickly, I pause and give my decision a second thought.

When I said yes to writing a bi-weekly Blog, it was with great hesitation but also eagerness. No regrets. It has helped keep my thinking on many topics continually refreshed. I do my own ’bit of a think” each week, along with my readers.

Please give this a bit of a think. I still enjoy the art of taking awesome pictures. But I’ve challenged myself to learn, over the past few years, how to digitally paint some of the photos I’ve taken. I guess the modern-day equivalent would be a landscape picture with a ‘picture-in-picture’ of my happy selfie face in the bottom-right corner.

In what ways have you challenged yourself?

Please comment: Send me an email with your bit of a think. I am curious about your thoughts.

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And my thanks to St. Albert’s 50+ Activity Centre for making this Blog possible.

Volunteer Blogger