The Precious Days 5/10/24 The Precious Days 5/10/24

Reclaiming Sunday Morning Joy

When you are retired, the days of the week can blur together when they are no longer distinguished by the classic work week and weekend. So it’s been very important to me that my routines on Saturdays and Sundays take on a unique character.

There are many wonderful things about The Precious Days of retirement. There is finally time to luxuriate in both discovery and rediscovery of what brings me joy. Since I’ve lived more of my life than I have left to live, not in quality perhaps, but without question in quantity, I am becoming reacquainted with practices that were pushed aside by “not enough time” or trying to please others. But now is the time of life during which I can reclaim my time in ways that bring me lots of joy.

One of those ways has been to reintroduce some Sunday morning routines back into my life. When you are retired, the days of the week can blur together when they are no longer distinguished by the classic work week and weekend. So it’s been very important to me that my routines on Saturdays and Sundays take on a unique character. For much of my single-gal-thirties, I spent every Sunday morning, usually after church, with the Sunday New York Times spread out over the table or sometimes on the living room floor. I’d pore through each section, scanning each story and big city ad, stopping periodically for a bite of flaky croissant, or to warm my coffee a few ounces at a time from a French Press, or to sip some freshly squeezed orange juice. I loved that feeling of luxuriating in a slow morning breakfast, sun beams throwing light on the scattered pages of the Arts and Leisure section, and greedily saving the Times Book Review for later in the morning when I would lounge on the couch with another cup of coffee. Sometimes I’d clip interesting opinion pieces, saving them to read later in the work week. I loved looking at what was playing at certain theaters, remembering past trips to the city and hoping more trips would be planned for the future. For those few hours on a Sunday morning, I wasn’t a lone woman in my apartment in rural Vermont, I was part of a huge international community perusing the columns of the Sunday New York Times.

I don’t know what made me suddenly long for that Sunday morning ritual that I abandoned during my first marriage. I assume it’s the amount of reminiscing I do in this blog that triggered the thought of warm croissants and smudges of newsprint on my hands. I had been working on getting up earlier in the morning to have a more energetic grasp on my days, so I decided a few Sundays ago that I would check out my local grocery store to see what they had for papers on a Sunday morning. Strolling in at around 8:00 a.m., there they were, a huge stack of the Sunday New York Times where they’d always been, stacked alongside the local papers and the Boston Globe. I grabbed the paper, two extra large cinnamon buns from the bakery aisle, checked out, and headed back home to make a pot of coffee.

I set out the breakfast treats for my husband and I, and with my cup of coffee I settled in to read the paper, section by section. Commenting on the headlines to him, I still felt that something was missing. It occurred to me that the decade of Sundays I had lounged with the paper came with a soundtrack. It was the familiar opening of CBS Sunday Morning, trumpeting out Gottfried Reiche’s, “Abblasen.” I always had that morning news show on in the background when I read the Sunday paper. Charles Kuralt and then Charles Osgood kept me company as I half read and half listened to stories that often crossed over from the fourth estate to the fifth, and back again. So I turned on our local CBS television station just in time to hear, once again, that iconic trumpet solo and to see the giant sun medallion that’s been around the news show stage for 40 years, now the backdrop for Jane Pauley.

I’ve kept up the re-tradition for each Sunday since my first excursion to find my Sunday paper joy. Sometimes I buy my husband bagels at Feldman’s. Sometimes I get us muffins instead of cinnamon buns, sometimes glazed donuts, or the occasional croissant. Doesn’t matter…that treat, along with the Sunday New York Times and CBS Sunday Morning, are once again making the end-of-the-weekend morning something extra special.

On Wednesday of this week, I was checking out a book for a patron at the local library where I have begun volunteering. The sixty-something gentleman commented on the author’s recent passing. “Oh, yes, I read that in the Sunday Times,” I said. He commented that he had read the same article, and we chatted a bit more about the author and his books. There we were, a community of two, joined together in book love because of the Sunday New York Times.

It turns out, we’re not so alone. “‘Many boomers prefer to read the news the old-fashioned way, holding a paper in their hands,’ said Kraig Kleeman, CDO of The New Workforce. ‘There’s just something about the tangible feeling of paper and the ritual of reading it that they love,’” wrote Maddie Duley in 7 Things Boomers Still Spend Money on That Millennials and Gen Z Don’t.

There is, indeed, just something about it that I and many others of my generation love. There is comfort and joy in reading, thinking, musing, wondering, and knowing, all wrapped up in the sections of that once-a-week giant newspaper. And, of course, there is the nostalgia of it all, making it feel, even for just a morning, that I have been successful at slowing down time.

What are your Sunday morning rituals? I’d love to have you share them in the Comments.

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The Precious Days 5/3/24 The Precious Days 5/3/24

Day by Day

A week or so ago I was driving south on the interstate to meet a friend for dinner. I don’t enjoy driving, so one of the first things I do is turn on a hometown AM radio station to soothe my nerves. I love the familiarity of the announcers, the local ads for places that I know, and most of all, the oldies. There are just certain songs from your past that seem to hold long-forgotten feelings waiting to be unlocked if the timing is right. When I was commuting to work, I’d hear a song like that and immediately my mind would snap back to the work-related problems and tasks I was either driving toward or leaving behind.

It’s different during these retirement years. My mind engages in reflection mode as a default now. Oh, I love to anticipate something coming up, but my heart is in reflecting on the past to mine old interests, to relive youthful adventures, and to continue to explore what I have to learn from past selves at this stage of my life. So on this sunny April afternoon the song that caught my heart was “Day by Day” from the musical Godspell. As the song played, I was taken back about 50 years to another April, much like this one, in 1973 when I was 15. When I got home that night, I gave myself plenty of headspace to relive a quintessential memory of my teenage years.

Right off the bat, the year 1973 was full of events that would launch the United States into another time of upheaval we hadn’t seen since the sixties. Although Nixon signed off on an end to the Vietnam War, the war was far from over. The growing energy crisis and escalating oil prices were crippling the economy, leading to the stock market crash, which heralded the worst recession in memory. In spite of, or because of the struggles with affordable energy and the consequences of our dependence on oil, some of the best environmental laws of our time were passed during that year. Yet, it was the Watergate scandal that continued to elbow its way into the news on a daily basis as the focus. Most notable to me as I write this blog post, was that this particular teenage year marked the passage of Roe v. Wade. And here we are today, women of 2024, with fewer rights than we had 50 years ago.

But back in April of 1973, life for me was all naiveté and adventure. Early on a Saturday morning, my friend Paula and I boarded a plane bound for Boston. It was the first time I had ever flown in my life, and we were headed to Regis College to spend the weekend with her older sister at the dorm. Not only had I never flown, but I had never been to Boston or stayed in a college dorm. This was the stuff teenage adventure was made of! The flight was short, and I don’t remember being afraid, other than making a joke about bad omens when a nun got on the plane.

When we landed at Logan Airport, my friend’s sister and her roommate were there to meet us at the gate. Paula’s sister, Lili, was a stunner with large eyes and a head of dark curly hair. Her Farrah Fawcett-blonde roommate looked just like one of my favorite soap opera stars from The Edge of Night (Sarah-Louise Capice, remember?). These were college girls, so sophisticated and worldly. I was overwhelmed and numbed into silence by small-town-girl awe. This would be a trip where I was literally along for the ride.

Did we have luggage? Backpacks? I can’t remember, but I do remember once we got outside there was no car waiting for us. We would have to get to the dorm the way Lili and her roommate got there – we would hitchhike. Okay, that was undoubtedly another first from that trip. As we trotted toward an exit ramp to stick out our thumbs, we were picked up almost immediately. The 30-something driver had a hatchback type car (was it actually a Datsun?), and the back window was loaded with camera equipment. The four of us barely squeezed in, sitting on top of each other. He told us he worked for CBS, and that he was coming to cover the Boston Marathon, or maybe he had just covered it, anyway he took us all the way to the college dorm. We barely had time to drop our things off and change before we headed out for the first planned adventure, horseback riding. I made a quick trip into the locker room-style bathroom and saw several towel-clad college girls drying their dripping hair with the hot air hand dryers. College girls were just so cool.

Some other girls on the floor gave us a ride to the stables, where the four of us were matched with trail horses. My friend Paula and I both had horses and rode a lot, so I asked for a fast horse. What I got was a four-legged black sorcerer who ran at full gallop through the trails with his head turned sideways the entire time. It was hard not to focus on that wild eye looking back at me, but I barely had time to be terrified. Whipped in the face by branches and hanging on for dear life, I was convinced what would make this trip most memorable was my own demise. Finally, rounding the trail's end, he slowed down like he’d just been out for a village stroll. Stunned, I slid off to join the other girls, and the saddle ripped my denim work shirt right down the center! Fortunately, soap-star roommate gave me her sweatshirt. No one seemed to be aware of my wild ride, so I tried to shrug it off, and moved my wobbly legs toward the parking lot with the rest. I looked for the car with the girls who had dropped us off, but once again, no such car. Once more we headed to the main road to work our thumbs. This time no rugged network cameraman was coming to our rescue.

After what seemed like an eternity, a car finally slowed down on the shoulder and waved us in. This time, two guys were in the front, close to college age but definitely not college boys. When they got a good look at Lili and her blonde friend, they acted like they’d just won the Dating Game. The car was not the classic “unsafe at any speed,” but close enough. The college girls chatted flirtatiously, while I sat silent, motionless, and mortified. As the car rounded the corner into the dorm parking lot, one of the hubcaps flew off, and my memory says the engine even backfired. But we were safely back. The townies waved, smiled, and honked the horn on their way out. Pretty sure lovely Lili and the blonde had made their day.

Having finally been released from that damp and smelly backseat, we giggled all the way up to the room. Already mid-afternoon, Paula and I had just enough time to change into our teenage uniforms of bell bottom jeans, Clark Desert Treks, too small pastel cotton tees, and jackets that were not near warm enough for the current weather. We both brushed our hair (yes, we both wore it long, parted in the middle—so seventies), cleaned our teeth, rolled on some fruity Lip Smackers, and headed for the subway. Taking the T would be another first for me on this whirlwind Boston weekend.

On the subway, Lili pointed out a gorgeous woman, sitting tall and straight in her seat among the tired commuters. “A model,” she whispered to us, and we looked at her with fangirl reverence. To this day I have convinced myself we saw Beverly Johnson before she was on the cover of Vogue. When we came to our stop, Lili took us to Filene’s Department Store. I had never seen a department store like that. Coming through the door, we were squirted with perfume, and then instantly surrounded by beautiful purses, silk scarves, and jewelry and makeup counters with brands I recognized from my Ingenue magazines. Lili helped me pick out a brand name top that made me feel on trend. I felt like Cinderella when the impeccably dressed sales girl with the flawless makeup, hair in an updo, wrapped my Gunne Sax floral top in tissue paper and placed it in a shopping bag with the store’s name emblazoned in that signature script.

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It was a beautiful, warm late afternoon in Boston, as we headed for Boston Common. Everything about Boston was new to me, but this park was incredible. Businessmen, hippies, old couples, rich ladies, college kids–just throngs of people out enjoying the spring weather, walking, jogging, talking, singing and playing drums and guitars. And everyone seemed to be eating these ice cream cones rolled in what looked like oatmeal. We stood in line to get one (had we eaten anything since breakfast back in Vermont?), and it turned out the cones were actually raspberry frozen yogurt rolled in granola. I don’t think in 1973 I’d even had regular yogurt, and I had certainly never had granola. I had never tasted anything so good. Down the walkway from where we stood, someone had dropped their cone. A meticulously dressed and well groomed, middle aged woman grabbed a napkin and picked it up. Paula and I looked at Lili, shocked. Was she going to eat it? “Pigeons,” Lili said. “She’s going to feed the birds.”

Filenes Photo: @oldschoolboston; Boston Common Photo: majunznk; Wilbur Photo: Internet Theater Database

We finished our cones and moved on to Tremont Street to The Wilbur. Lili had gotten us balcony tickets to see Godspell. Yes, you guessed it, another first. I had never been to the theater. Sitting in the balcony made it extra special, and when the lights dimmed and the stage lights illuminated the actors playing the disciples, I was mesmerized. I loved the music, the pageantry and presence of actors who were about the same age as Lili and her roommate, and most of all, I was secretly thrilled that my childhood regular church and Sunday School attendance had given me a heads-up for each part of the play. Knowing what was going on allowed the music to really reach me, and to this day, I still pretty much know every one of those songs. At the end of Act One when they were singing “Light of the World,” and they sang the line, “We all need help to feel fine (let's have some wine!)”, we actually were served wine, up and down the aisles. Even Paula and I, two15 year olds were drinking wine in a theater during intermission in Boston – okay, so the wine wasn’t a first for me, but it was still darned special. I loved every minute of that play, and every song – as soon as I could I purchased the album (oh, gosh, I think I actually had it on eight track!). Up to this point in my young life, I had never experienced anything so joyful. The spirit of community in that theater was something that deeply affected me.

The next morning, my friend’s dad showed up to drive us back to Vermont. What a trip! A network cameraman, a wild horse, shopping at Filene’s, Boston Common, and an incredible musical created and performed by a new generation of young people interpreting the most ancient and moving stories. I felt, as I do now when I travel to new places, engage in the arts, experience “difference”...I felt transformed.

Now, when you are only fifteen, it’s hard to know what to do with such big feelings. It’s hard to have a “new to you” experience that is so overwhelming that you feel you are not the same you as before. It’s like a deep secret that can’t be explained. You have to hold on to it very tightly, guard it. So when my boyfriend at the time picked me up a few nights later to see a movie, I wore the special top I had purchased in Boston. I wore my hair up, like the beautiful woman at the counter in Filene’s. I jumped into the car, eager to tell him about my trip. I was still on a huge theater and city-fueled high. And you know what he said to me as we backed out of my driveway and I leaned over to give him a kiss? “You look weird.”

As we age, we often hear the question posed, “What advice would you give to your teenage self?” Revisiting these memories made me wonder what advice the adventurous, whole-life-ahead-of-her 15 year old me would have for me about how to live The Precious Days to the fullest. Here’s what I think she’d say:

Don’t miss a chance to have an adventure, especially with a girlfriend.
Make sure each of your remaining years contains at least one “first.”
Get yourself to a theater before it’s too late!
Continue to nurture your love of horses through art that you can appreciate and admire—it will bring back some happy memories.
Fill everyday with the music you love from back in the day. Your life really does have a soundtrack.
Roll a raspberry frozen yogurt bar in some granola – you’re welcome.
And, most of all, ignore comments that rain on your joy parade (and yes, Readers, I dumped that guy).

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The Precious Days 4/19/24 The Precious Days 4/19/24

Sometimes it Takes a Shadow to Bring out the Light

We headed out to the deck to sit and watch, special glasses in hand. The front and backyards of our neighborhood were already filling up with the watchers. It was a gorgeous spring day, uncharacteristically sunny and cloudless for early April. The gods were on our side.

Photo from Unsplash

“If it’s darkness we’re having, let it be extravagant.”

— From "Taking Down the Tree" by Jane Kenyon

On the afternoon of April 8, 2024, my husband and I were smack dab in “The Path of Totality,” and it was just about time for the phenomenon to begin. We headed out to our deck to sit and watch, special glasses in hand. The front and backyards of our neighborhood were already filling up with the watchers. It was a gorgeous spring day, uncharacteristically sunny and cloudless for early April. The sky gods were on our side.

I was afraid to look at first. These eyes need to last me at least another three decades, and I worried about damage even with the special glasses. So I put livestream local coverage video on my iPhone, so I could put my glasses on at certain intervals and look. My chair faced away from the sun, and I was intent on watching the birds as I waited for the much talked about shadow.

The day before was a beautiful day, too, and it seemed like all the neighborhoods on my Sunday walk were not only filled with out-of-state license plates and overflowing driveways, but more walkers than I would usually see. I passed my neighbor and her out-of-town guests on my walk, and we chatted briefly about what was to come on Monday. She remarked about the shadow that would descend across the backyard as the moon covered more and more of the sun, and how much she looked forward to that spectacle. I saw her again walking through the backyard on Monday as we were getting ready to settle in on the back deck, and she remarked about the shadow again. I think it might have been then that I decided that the shadow that would usher in the three and a half minutes of darkness was exactly the celestial drama I was here for.

The livestream gave me a good sense of when to turn and look. I wanted to be sure I saw the hallmarks of each of the stages that had been talked about. The birds, who had started out quite actively scooting from tree to tree in our backyard began to slow down both in flight and song. I checked the livestream and put my glasses on yet again. The moon seemed to have accelerated its pace in making itself known as the main attraction.

And there it was, just like my neighbor had talked about. As the shadow known as the umbra began to descend across our backyard, overhead a flock of blackbirds hurried across the sky in a panic to roost for the preemptive night. I donned the glasses again, not wanting to miss anything from this point. As the sun became almost fully eclipsed, in countdown fashion, the spectacle seemed to arrive painfully slowly, then unmercifully quickly. And with the darkness descended a stillness, a perfect stillness, and a noticeably colder temperature. At the point of totality, it was the dogs first, barking their questions, “Where’s my dinner? Who is taking me out for my nightly walk?” Then there was the swell of cheers from the sky watchers across backyards, across neighborhoods, across my entire city, and perhaps even the whole state of Vermont. Total darkness, stars, pure white corona of light all signaling our time with the darkness would be brief. Overcome, I was holding my breath (or was my breath taken from me?). As I exhaled, my face was wet with tears.

“Be here now, be present, bear witness,” the sun and the moon, joined as one, seemed to say. And for once we listened, we were, and we did. Hundreds of thousands of us watching, quietly in awe, in silent prayer, in deep meditation with the astronomical forces and enormity of the universe – reminding us we are small specks of dust, but not insignificant in our roles as guardians and stewards of the planet that provided us with a view to this celestial splendor.

And then as the sun began to uncover, waking us all from the three and half minute night, our neighbor played Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” the words ringing clear and sonorous across the hedges and patios and backyard swing sets. With the sun laboring through its re-emergence, families toted their lawn chairs back to their resting places, almost as if it were a common event. People hopped back into their cars for the long, grid-locked treks across several states to get back home before missing another day of work. There’d be backseat arguments over whether to recycle their eclipse glasses or keep them as a souvenir in a kitchen drawer. Children would rehearse the stories they would share back at school on Tuesday and what it had been like for them to be part of history. “Where were you when the moon covered the sun for almost four minutes of darkness?”

“Darkness swept the earth in my dream” is the first line of Galway Kinnel’s “The Comfort of Darkness.” I love that line. And at times, that afternoon did feel like a darkness swept dream. And I will never forget a sun too brilliant to be seen by the naked eye or the heralding shadow I witnessed on a Monday afternoon in April, serving as a great cosmic reminder that we are collectively alive. After all, the two touchstones of that April afternoon, the darkness and the light, are always with us all.

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The winner of The Precious Days One Year Anniversary Giveaway is:

EILEEN

She will receive a new copy of Kristin Hannah’s The Women.

Thank you to all of The Precious Days readers and subscribers.

The Precious Days 4/12/24 The Precious Days 4/12/24

Part Four: Go Find Your Stories

But I noticed something. I was choosing books, but not “finding stories.” I would finish one book, pick up another and just go, guns a-blazing.

This blog post is the final installment in a four-part series that explores the arc of my relationship with reading from childhood to the present. As I was responding to the theme of our most recent Women Rowing North Writing group, Our Relationship with Books, it occurred to me that the way my relationship with reading has evolved over time is as significant as the books I choose to read. My dispositions as a reader, like most of us, have been influenced by factors beyond my interests and passions. I examine where all this has shaped me as a reader and led me to where I am now here in this final entry of the series, Part Four.

In my last post, The Book Club, I highlighted some of my favorite reading memories as a teacher. They all happened to coincide with the proliferation of women’s book groups, thanks to Oprah and others. That period of my life still heavily influences my reading choices today: female authors, author studies, and a penchant for mysteries (especially the thrillers). That heyday of Book Groups with women friends came to a gentle close when I left the classroom and became a central office administrator in charge of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. For the next 17 years or so, administration in some form would be my role until my retirement.

For most of those years I read non-fiction that was related to my job. Some books were administrative team reads, some were books to read with new teachers, and many of the titles were used with my coaching groups in our schools. Between required reading to stay as “cutting edge” as possible, along with trying to stay ahead of the curve, my non-fiction library grew and grew. Fiction reading was relegated to vacations, and I would try to read a book during each of the prescribed school breaks, which usually included at least one week of summer reading. All in all, that was a paltry number of novels. I can’t remember the name of a single one. I do remember making sure I read another Natalie Goldberg title each summer. I never wanted to let the dream of writing die, and she has remained my all time guru since discovering her in the late 1980’s (I am thrilled she has a new book coming out this summer!).

I feel like I was reading, highlighting, taking notes, and summarizing during every free moment at work and then continuing the process evenings and weekends. It was critical that I could consolidate disparate texts on similar topics and synthesize and apply the content very quickly. That became my superpower, so whenever I tried to squeeze in a novel, I felt like I was cheating on work. Reading to improve my work skills did serve me well. Reading work-related nonfiction is highly recommended as a career booster. In 7 Ways Reading Helps Your Career, Rakesh Sharma shares the following list of the ways reading can boost your professional acumen:

Makes You a Better Leader
Improves Decision Making
Enhances Analytical Skills
Expands Vocabulary
Strengthens Writing Skills
Makes You Proactive
Reduces Stress

I would concur that my job-related nonfiction reading served me exactly in those ways, although I didn’t find it much of a stress reducer. Looking back, I was, like many of you, one of those people who was thinking about my work 24/7. There won’t be any pictures of beloved titles. They all just felt like work, even the ones that I couldn’t wait to discuss with colleagues or recommend at a subsequent meeting. Three years after my last day on the job in my last district, I am still weeding through bookcases full of those titles that pretty much no one (especially me) wants. The purge is real.

One thing I did continue to do through those years of work is buy books. As the dream of retirement came more into focus, the idea of slow days of reading all those novels I had been stocking up occupied most of my daydreams. I found a way to never abandon weekly trips to bookstores and every vacation away included searching out the bookstores and adding to my “someday” collection. I currently maintain more than one large bookcase, filled with To Be Read novels (gulp – did I actually just confess to that?) that are there for my pure reading joy. In those bookcases, I always try to leave space for new purchases to come off the random piles of books around the house and find a proper home in a bookcase.

The year before I left my job, COVID sidelined us all. From March to July, I worked from home like so many others. You’d think with greater control of my time, I could have gotten a jump start on reading some of those novels I had been hoarding for retirement. But like the Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough at Last” where bookworm Burgess Meredith can never find time to read until he’s alone in a post-apocalyptic world…and then breaks his glasses (it’s probably the best TZ episode ever), I couldn’t seem to focus enough to read! I actually started to be afraid I’d totally lost my focus, period. But after returning to work in July, thankfully routines that provided me with focus returned.

I left my job in June of 2021, and soon I would have stacks and stacks of books I’d finished all over the house. That summer I finally started reading all of Louise Penny’s books. A tiny book group with some of my dearest friends reformed over Zoom, and I read more. I had time for the beach and backyard lounging, and I read more. I found inspiration for titles from random book covers and blurbs as I browsed through my wonderful bookstore, Phoenix Books. Then in January of 2023 I joined Goodreads and set my first reading goal of 52 books. Although I already read a lot of books in that summer and fall, I still saw myself as the person who was probably reading five novels a year while I was working. A book a week seemed like a reasonable goal.

Back to my first retirement reading goal – I ended up reading 78 books (give or take) in 2022. So in January of 2023 I thought why not a goal of 100 books? And again I made my goal. I love keeping track of my reading on Goodreads. I have a wonderful memory for the past, but not so much for last week! You can follow along with my reading choices by checking out my Goodreads feed on my Resources page.

But I noticed something. I was choosing books, but not “finding stories.” I would finish one book, pick up another and just go, guns a-blazing. I didn’t really have time to think about the effect, savor the characters, plot, setting, comparisons to other books, author’s craft … the things I learned to love back in college as an English major. So this year my reading goal is back to 52 books because I am more intent on finding the stories that I think will really speak to me. I am loving books with protagonists who are close to my age, retired, searching, and finding meaning and purpose in their lives. Or women my age as narrators who are looking back, recalling major life events and how they still have an impact. Or I look for stories with protagonists who realize the clock is ticking, and they need to make the final act meaningful, sometimes scared and alone, but still determined. Those are my stories. I find characters like that from authors such as May Sarton, Elizabeth Berg, Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Strout, Alice Elliott Dark, Annie Lyons, Lore Segal, Shelby Van Pelt, Rachel Joyce, and even Fredrik Backman. Other stories that have me doing deep dives into the unknown like psychological thrillers and not-so-cozy mysteries also speak to me, along with novels that tell stories of the pandemic (I am working on a list of those to share). And, I also find stories that resonate with me in the book recommendations on Instagram from accounts like @heyjudereads, @sultanabun, @pearl_b_r, @agelesspossibilities, and @inthecommonhours.

Sometimes when people ask me what I do now that I am retired, I tell them I read books like my life depends on it. And that’s actually not too far from the truth. In Yale Study Finds Book Reading Can Add 2 Years to Your Life, the authors reported the following:

A study by Yale University found that people who read books live an average of 23 months longer than those who don’t.
The findings were based on data from the National Institute on Aging’s Health and Retirement Study, which repeatedly observed 3,635 subjects over the age of 50 for a 12-year period.
Participants who devoted more than 3.5 hours each week to book reading were 23 percent less likely to die than non-book readers and those who read up to 3.5 hours weekly were 17 percent less likely to die.
Subjects who read newspapers and magazines did not gain the “survival advantage” shown by book readers.
Although participants did not indicate the genre of books read, Yale researchers concluded that most were fiction based on a National Endowment for the Arts survey that found 87 percent of book readers choose fiction.

I have also written in this blog about my desire to preserve my brain, keeping my sharpness intact until I die. I don’t mean to sound morbid, I’m just being honest. And reading is an important tool in not only helping me add years to my life, but in making sure that time remains sharply in focus. Reading in retirement is part of my personal prescription for brain health. This plan is reinforced in Why You Should Read More Now You’re Retired. The article confirms that “reading more can help to reduce the likelihood of developing dementia:”

“Regular reading keeps your mind active, as it works your imagination and language skills. Depending on what you read, it can also help to support your problem-solving skills. Perhaps the most important way that reading sharpens your mind, however, is how it supports your memory. Reading helps the brain form new connections, and it can also help reduce beta-amyloid, which is involved in the development of Alzheimer’s. Therefore, one of the best reasons to read more in later life is to prevent cognitive decline and keep the mind sharp.”

Of course I do more to stay healthy and keep my brain sharp. Reading isn’t enough. And this is where the arc of my reading life is once again shifting into a new phase. In the here and now of my life, I want to learn to write better book reviews. I want to reincorporate more non-fiction into my reading life to learn new things and also to serve as research for writing, whether it be essays for my wonderful Women Rowing North writing group, or the blog, or some new venture in aging with purpose. I often read books through a memoirist lens (thank you Ally Berthiaume), and that bias continues to inspire me to go find more and more of my own stories as a writer. So at the end of the day as I look back on the origins of my arc as a reader up to now, I guess I would say the intersections of serendipity and intention will continue to fuel my varied goals as a reader. I do feel reading gives me a sense of purpose in my retirement. And as for where I’ll be as a reader in my seventies, eighties, or even my nineties…well, each and every day is “where your book begins…the rest is still unwritten.” Go find your stories, Linda.

It’s time! In honor of hanging in there with me, Readers, I would like to celebrate the one year anniversary of The Precious Days with a BOOK GIVEAWAY. Leave me a Comment below on Part Four, the finale of the series on my arc as a reader, and you will be entered in a BOOK GIVEAWAY for a brand new copy of Kristin Hannah’s The Women. Unfortunately, due to the cost of postage, I need to limit this BOOK GIVEAWAY to my subscribers in Canada and the US. If you are the winner, I will notify you be email, and an announcement will be made on next Friday’s blog.

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The Precious Days 4/5/24 The Precious Days 4/5/24

Part Three: The Book Club

After falling in love with the possibilities found in a classroom of 11 year olds as I mentioned in Nice Work if You Can Get It, I set off into the world. Off in search of a life, a job, and an apartment, all of my books fit snugly into a small two shelf “bookcase,” which was actually a converted beehive from the farm my mother grew up on.

This blog post is the third in a four-part series that explores the arc of my relationship with reading from childhood to the present. As I was responding to the theme of our most recent Women Rowing North Writing group, Our Relationship with Books, it occurred to me that the way my relationship with reading has evolved over time is as significant as the books I choose to read. My dispositions as a reader, like most of us, have been influenced by factors beyond my interests and passions. I continue to explore this here in Part Three.

After falling in love with the possibilities found in a classroom of 11 year olds as I mentioned in Nice Work if You Can Get It, I set off into the world. Off in search of a life, a job, and an apartment, all of my books fit snugly into a small two shelf “bookcase,” which was actually a converted beehive from the farm my mother grew up on. That little bookcase had been my childhood nightstand, holding toys and some of the books I mentioned in Blue Birds, Red Birds, and Yellow Birds. It went with me everywhere I went and was only lost to me in the early two-thousands when I divorced and hightailed it out of Dodge.

Well, I found an apartment with another teacher and with my bookcase in tow, I set out to find a teaching job. There were only two that seemed to come my way, and one was an intermediate school with a sixth grade that was looking for an English teacher. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect fit and began my teaching career in the fall of 1979. Unfortunately for those poor kids, I relied on my love of grammar as the backbone of my English curriculum, and I was NOT the reading teacher. So we diagrammed sentences (oh, those poor little souls), and I tried to instill my love of poetry into their little hearts. Did we play chess and listen to classical music, like my dream class? Sometimes, until I made one girl cry by stupidly playing Wagner during quiet time. I can’t even remember any memorable read-alouds during this period, my twenties were pretty much a blur. The only book I have a memory of reading was The Elephant Man by Tim Vicary. I’d curl up in a long discarded mid-century modern chair in the back of my classroom during my planning periods and read about the tragic life of Joseph Merrick, wiping tears away as my students returned.

Mercifully by the late eighties our teaching configurations changed, and I was able not only to teach reading, but had the opportunity to team with another teacher who added the fifth grade part of the equation to a new team.

Just before this change to my teaching assignment, which would include teaching reading as well as team teaching, I had had my first project-based experience with teaching reading thematically and comparatively, two of my college left-over loves. There was an inaugural “summer school” focused on literacy in our district that was coupled with a university graduate course in reading. A colleague and I, Carol Yarnell, who was a fantastic special educator, teamed up to offer a thematic experience for fourth through sixth graders we called “Chocolate Fever.” EVERYTHING was connected to chocolate, headlined by two featured trade books, Chocolate Fever by Robert Kimmel Smith and The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling. The students formed “Book Groups” to read and discuss the book, comparing and contrasting characters, plots, authors’ craft, and to share lots of laughs about these very humorous books. Groups who needed to could preview text to support both decoding and comprehension as all students rotated through language arts activities with myself, Carol, and paraeducators. I remember leading an activity called The Global Candy Bar where students learned how candy bar ingredients are sourced from all over the world and what life is like for workers in those countries. That was a little taste of humanities for me, and it stuck with me when I moved into my new teaming situation. The literacy experience culminated with a “Chocolate Bar,” which was like a salad bar, but ALL the offerings were chocolate! Another summer group that had an ice cream theme, which was well-supported by generous donations from Ben and Jerry’s, supplied ice cream and homemade hot fudge, joined us for sundaes. I don’t think I ever taught any other way than thematically after that experience.

As I was ending my first teaching decade and moving into my early thirties, the pebbles beneath my feet began to shift again and I climbed into yet another phase of reading. Being a language arts teacher in a two person team opened several doors. My classroom was equipped with overflowing bookcases filled with books we all loved to read. Besides language arts times, which weren’t always universally “loved,” afternoon read-alouds were a student favorite. Not only did I have the opportunity to discover many books right along with my students that I did not know as a child, but I could use what I’d seen work in the summer. With themes, I could expand the ideas of connections, comparisons, and choice to continue with the concept of Book Clubs with my students. The Blue Birds, Red Birds, and Yellow Birds of my own school experience were replaced with Book Clubs centered around themes. Winter Studies Book Clubs included Jean Craighead George’s Julie of the Wolves, Scott O’Dell’s Black Star, Bright Dawn, and Gary Paulsen’s Dog Song ,after which I read aloud to them Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”(talk about contrast!). There were other thematic units on children’s lives during WWII, deepening environmental perspectives using The Everglades as the focus, immigrant experiences, children’s life in historical fiction (feeling both teary and grateful thinking about them all). There were so many themes and so many wonderful books and related projects, with the humanities anchoring the themes and learning experiences.

Those Clubs led to evening sessions of Mother-Daughter Book Groups. We would read a book together and I would design activities for the mothers and daughters, including a shared journal in which they wrote back and forth to each other using prompts from the stories. I had written a grant to cover the costs of journals, books, pizza, etc. The books Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson and Where the Lilies Bloom by Vera and Bill Cleaver were the perfect fit for this bonding experience. The boys revolted and I opened it up to dads and sons, moms and sons, dads and daughters, big brothers, whomever, with more book titles. I ran out of money long before the enthusiasm dried up.

My childhood love of picture books was shared and celebrated in our Writers’ Sleepovers. I’d used a picture book, for example Mem Fox’s Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, to set the theme of “Memories as Precious as Gold.” We had an evening of writing and activities connected to the theme: music, suitcase theater, partner and group discussions, writing sessions, and lots of pizza. These events concluded with a read-around after breakfast the next morning that was always moving. The wonderful guidance counselor in our school, my dear friend Maddie Nash, partnered with me on these sleep-over events and helped to find so many ways to engage the group in meaningful discussions alongside the fun.

My love of the concept of Book Clubs or Book Groups was a sign of the times. Women were forming Book Clubs all over the world, and these group discussion experiences added to my own continuing exploration of genres, themes, and authors. I loved how the women in the various iterations of our Book Groups had such varied tastes and experiences with books, authors, and in life. The ideas flowed along with the wine, and we always shared a meal. In How women invented book clubs, revolutionizing reading and their own lives, writer Jess McHugh explores how historic “all-women circles” led to our modern-day Book Clubs. As women were marginalized historically from intellectual pursuits, their fierce desire to engage in ideas and books over time led to a quote worthy contemporary feat: “Once on the fringes, women are now one of the most important driving forces in the book world. They continue to amount for a staggering 80 percent of all fiction sales. One commentator went so far as to write: ‘Without women the novel would die.’”

I think more than anything, our Book Groups were consciousness raising groups for me. Living in rural, white Vermont, I could experience so much through the lives of characters crafted by some of the best female writers. I always felt that I learned so much about life, the world, and especially about myself during those get-togethers. McHugh again, “That feeling of self-worth is a through line … (in) book clubs…. ‘Talking about literature is not only about talking about literature. It is also examining one’s ideas, identities, thoughts, sense of self,’ said Christy Craig, PhD, a sociologist who examines the subversive possibilities of women’s book clubs.”

Along with my Women’s Book Groups, I was now regularly reading on my own, not because I had to but because I finally wanted to. Bookcases and stacks of books began to accumulate in my home as my trips to bookstores became my frequent outing of choice. It was the heyday of Barnes and Noble and Borders, and their novelty, along with flavored milky coffees, made a full-day weekend excursion the norm for me (oh how I miss those raspberry chocolate soy lattes accompanied by a dark chocolate covered graham cracker at Borders on a Sunday after the UU Church service). But the independent bookstores in Burlington, Winooski, and Montpelier were the best: Chassman and Bem, The Little Professor, The Book Rack (which became the wonderful Phoenix Books), and Bear Pond Books (which still exists in Montpelier, rebuilt after last summer’s devastating floods). Those were the places I would purchase books written by my growing list of favorite authors. The list of authors reflected cultural themes and personal author studies that were especially important to me during the late 80’s and throughout the 90’s: Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, Isabel Allende, Cristina Garcia, Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, and Barbara Kingsolver still stand out to me almost four decades later. And I have to give a special mention to Tony Hillerman’s books. His Detectives Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee are most likely responsible for my contemporary love of Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.

A sampling of my favorite books from the late eighties and throughout the nineties…

There are so many more authors and books I could name and would love to name, but having the memories of how the books made me feel during this period of my life…well, that’s enough. Whenever I see those authors’ names connected to books that are new to me (thank you Ann Patchett for your videos from Parnassus), the TBR pile grows (and joy swells). This time of my life as a reader seemed to bring out the best in me as a person. I was more aware, independent, and more curious about what life had in store for me. This special time represented both an expansive beginning and sadly signaled a bit of a brief ending to my growth as a fiction reader. A career change would take my reading in a different direction in the early 2000’s and over the next 15 years or so. I’ll explore that next week in the first half of Part Four.

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I can’t believe it’s been a year of blogging for me already here at The Precious Days. In honor of hanging in there with me, Readers, I would like to celebrate with a BOOK GIVEAWAY. If you make it to the end of this series (which is now in Four Parts), leave me a Comment on Part Four (to be published next week), and you will be entered in a BOOK GIVEAWAY for a brand new copy of Kristin Hannah’s The Women. Unfortunately, due to the cost of postage, I need to limit this BOOK GIVEAWAY to my subscribers in Canada and the US.

The Precious Days 3/29/24 The Precious Days 3/29/24

Part Two: Nice Work if You Can Get It

My reading eras continued to evolve through high school and college. The variety of influences on my reading tastes still surprises me. Not yet a “reader,” I would begin to form some lasting bonds with certain authors, genres, and books.

This blog post is the second of what has now become a four-part series that explores the arc of my relationship with reading from childhood to the present. As I was responding to the theme of our most recent Women Rowing North Writing group, Our Relationship with Books, it occurred to me that the way my relationship with reading has evolved over time is as significant as the books I choose to read. My dispositions as a reader, like most of us, were influenced by factors beyond my interests and passions. I continue to explore this here in Part Two.

The journey to adulthood causes many of our childhood passions to evolve into somewhat unsatisfying facsimiles. Before you know it, running to every destination can turn into lazing around. Play becomes “hanging out.” The angst of youth can turn curiosity into self-doubt. But reading? Shouldn’t that be a constant? My reading eras continued to evolve through high school and college. The variety of influences on my reading tastes still surprises me. Not yet a “reader,” I would begin to form some lasting bonds with certain authors, genres, and books.

I guess I would call high school my If I Have To Era of reading. I carried over my love of Ingenue Magazine from junior high, but no love of books had blossomed. Once in high school, I can’t remember reading books of my own choice that were fiction because there was so much assigned reading. Of course we were assigned the classics. Often it was the most boring ones that had been assigned for the last twenty or so years (at least), and the old torn copies didn’t make the task any more alluring. By my senior year, there was a Modern Short Fiction elective. I came away with memories of D.H. Lawrence’s The Rocking Horse Winner and of course, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. Prior to that, even Shakespeare hadn’t made much of an impression, other than a misguided sense of pity I felt for Richard III. I did read non-fiction for the utilitarian value of learning something. By chance, I had heard Baba Ram Dass on an FM radio station, and I was hooked on learning more about yoga and meditation. I remember writing a paper for psychology class trying to naively weave connections among Christianity, modern day psychology, and yoga. But I didn’t leave high school as a passionate reader. As a matter of fact, I have a strong memory of just leaving any personal books in my locker as I headed out the door on the last day of my senior year singing the Alice Cooper anthem, “School’s Out!”

College seemed to start out much in the same way. But my relationship with reading started to shift in an American Fiction class. Although I barely tolerated the professor (and he, me), I started to form an attraction, through critical reading (who knew!), with a group of writers Susan Cheever referred to as American Bloomsbury in her 2007 book (still one of my favorite rereads). The class focused on Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Melville (Did my old southern professor leave out Louisa May Alcott because he was indeed the misogynist I thought he was?). The class included a smattering of Poe for contrast. I was also introduced to literary criticism journals, mostly on microfiche (ah, the memories), and formed a second, even stronger attraction. Kirkus, Sewanee, and the Kenyon Reviews were three of my favorite journals.

By the time I’d taken my second literature class, Literature of the Southern Renaissance, something took hold of me. I declared English as my second major and entered my English Major for Life Era. Friends from the psychology department (my other major) asked what I did in my classes now that I wasn't running rats through mazes (yes, we really did awful stuff like that). “What do I do? Well, I get to read books, research in journals, and write a lot of essays.” How quickly that became my own little version of heaven surprised no one more than me. “Nice work if you can get it….” I smiled to myself as I watched my carpool crowd suffer through advanced economics and engineering classes.

Back to those books and stories from “The South.” We started our journey into Southern Literature with The Fugitive Poets. The poetry of John Crowe Ransom and Robert Penn Warren grabbed me by the lapels of my work shirt, and I became a devotee of poetry once again. I can still hear the lines from the last stanza of Ransom’s “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter”:

But now go the bells, and we are ready,
In one house we are sternly stopped
To say we are vexed at her brown study,
Lying so primly propped.

To be “vexed” by something as tragic as a child’s death seemed to foreshadow the tone of the fiction we were about to read. We read Faulkner’s Absolum, Absolum, in which the darkness of the past beats up the main character over and over again. Later we read Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter, whose main character showed us that the past does not need to be an oppressive nemesis.

But the goddess queen of my Southern Goth Era was Flannery O’Connor. To this day, when I see a peacock, I am transported back to college and those stories, and still wondering why I didn’t pursue a dream of vacationing for a week in the Vanderbilt University Library. As an author, O’Connor was pretty consistent in her themes and depictions in both novels and short stories. Her works were stark portrayals of poverty, class, violence, and ugly underbellies. In many ways I think I have her to thank for my love of psychological thrillers. I still have my large collection of her work and a biography that is yet to be read. I think both need to be on my TBR list.

By the time I had my last literature class in college, American Contemporary Short Fiction, the focus turned to characters’ lives complicated by ennui, existential crises, and blaming anything but themselves for their lot in life (often blaming women– looking at you, Saul Bellow). This was my It’s All Meh Era. Of the authors I remember (Updike, Bellow, Didion, and Oates), it’s the stories from Joyce Carol Oates’ Upon the Sweeping Flood that stand out. Clearly as influenced by Faulkner and O’Connor as I had become, these stories had similar regional and religious undertones to those two authors. But more than that, these stories had the gothicism, grotesquerie, and violence that characterized much of the southern literature I had read. So, in one of my final classes, I wrote a ten page essay about “Gothicism, Grotesquerie, and Violence in Joyce Carol Oates’ Upon the Sweeping Flood.” I got an A with a string of pluses next to it and comments full of gushing praise from my professor. But more than that, I had learned to marry literary criticism with comparative story, a skill that would serve me well in the coming decades as a reader and as an educator.

Although, technically, I still wasn’t reading for pleasure, what I did read in college English classes left me satisfied as a reader, if not a little big smug. My senior year of college was to be focused on some education classes so I would actually be able to find a job. During the long stretch of mid-May to mid-August before that senior year, this newly opinionated English major was anchored in a boring job that could only be satisfied by the heretical mass market paperback. My search for deeper meaning would be on hiatus for the summer of 1978. My job? I sold hotdogs from a cart in front of our family business to make just enough money to buy my fall semester books and party on the weekends. The stand, which steamed in the hot sun along with the hotdogs, was far from popular. I had hours to sit in a lawn chair, get a good tan, and read a growing collection of paperbacks from Houghton’s Bookstore, right across the street. That summer I read Looking for Mr. Goodbar, August, Attachments, and To the Precipice all by Judith Rossner. I read The Women’s Room by Marilyn French, Jessica’s Wife by Hester Mundis, and Small Changes by Marge Piercy. I remember every one of those books and how they made me feel. I would call my taste in fiction at the end of that summer my Cosmopolitan Era – not because I was worldly or sophisticated, but because I read Helen Gurley Brown’s magazine religiously. Those summer books were much like the magazine articles. But the portrayals of being a liberated female and the seeds of feminism were not lost on me.

In my senior year of college, I had decided I was on my way to teaching high school students everything I learned about literature as an English major (yes, the trap future teachers are all warned about). During that journey, a few notable things happened. My high school student teaching stint was a disaster. My middle school practicum was a bit better because the focus was on teaching writing. But it would be an understatement to say I didn’t love it. Discouraged, I had one more opportunity to teach English and Reading to a fifth grade classroom. It. Was. Magical. They seemed to be as fascinated by grammar and the stories in their readers as I was…because that’s how ten year olds are. And the poems we read aloud excited them to write their own, illustrated by watercolors we took long winter afternoons to paint. That experience, along with substitute teaching a group of sixth graders who played chess while listening to classical music, sealed my fate, leading to my next journey in my arc as a reader.

The arc of anything is both refreshingly ordinary and uncomfortably complicated. Neither has been the primary influence in my reading journey, although as an unreliable narrator of my own life, I’d lean toward “uncomfortably complicated.” As I continue to explore my arc as a reader, the ordinary and the complicated seem to be working in serendipitous tandem, bouncing off the universals of love, loss, stress, boredom, work, exhaustion, discovery, and joy.

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I can’t believe it’s been a year of blogging for me already here at The Precious Days. In honor of hanging in there with me, Readers, I would like to celebrate with a BOOK GIVEAWAY. If you make it to the end of this series (which is now in Four Parts), leave me a Comment on Part Four (published two weeks from now), and you will be entered in a BOOK GIVEAWAY for a brand new copy of Kristin Hannah’s The Women. Unfortunately, due to the cost of postage, I need to limit this BOOK GIVEAWAY to my subscribers in Canada and the US.

The Precious Days 3/22/24 The Precious Days 3/22/24

Part One: Blue Birds, Red Birds, and Yellow Birds

I grew up pretty much as a non-reader. That’s not to say that I didn’t ever read, I just didn’t “choose” to read.

This blog post is the first of a three part series that explores the arc of my relationship with reading from childhood to the present. As I was responding to the theme of our most recent Women Rowing North Writing group, Our Relationship with Books, it occurred to me that the way my relationship with reading has evolved over time is as significant as the books I choose to read. My dispositions as an early reader, like most readers, were influenced by factors beyond my interests and passions. I explore this in Part One.

When I started first grade, I ran to school each day with the gusto of an explorer and ran back home after school eager to regale my family with the stories of the day. On this one night I remember from the fall of 1963, it was just my mother and I at the dinner table.

“You know what?” I asked. “I am the best reader in the first grade.”

“Oh, and how do you know that?” my mother asked cautiously. I wasn’t really known for being the best at anything as a child, other than not being able to sit still…ever…anywhere.

“I know because I am the only kid in the class who reads with every reading group. I read with my group, the Blue Birds, then I read with the Red Birds, and I read with the Yellow Birds, too. I am Miss Corliss’s reading helper.”

I’m sure some of you suffered through those discriminatory groupings in school. In first grade, we were given colors to designate our reading levels. Blue Birds soared, Red Birds needed to land a lot, and the grouping of the Yellow Birds all but ensured they would be flightless. My mom offered me a puzzled congratulations and dinner went on. By the time the dishes were cleared and bedtime approached, I had scribble-scrabbled ten pages of coloring, given my doll a bath, cut her hair with mucilage-covered rounded scissors, moved the living room furniture to suit my play, changed the channels with a wrist snap that pulled the dial off every time, clomped up and down the stairs to get more “stuff,” and frantically done The Monkey to some song on the local radio station. I had done just about everything a kid could do by 7:30 except one thing – I never picked up a book.

I grew up pretty much as a non-reader. That’s not to say that I didn’t ever read, I just didn’t “choose” to read. I think several factors contributed to my non-reading era of childhood. Although my mother was an English teacher, there weren’t many books around the house. The only book I ever saw her read was the Bible. I don’t remember ever seeing my brother read, although he told me much later how much he loved reading the World Book Encyclopedia set my parents bought him for school. And my father was severely dyslexic, so reading was out for him. My mother brought home old discarded “readers” from school. They were full of old folk tales that I knew by heart. I did like to read from one frayed text as a comfort read. And there was a much loved little Rand McNally book, A Present for the Princess by Janie Lowe Paschall, that made me cry. It’s the story of a little blind boy who gives a princess a strawberry as a gift. But that’s about it. No bookcases full of books. No reading chair we took turns curling up in. If we wanted a story, my mother told us The Wee Wee Woman or Wyken, Blynken, and Nod. But perhaps the biggest reason followed me all through my elementary school years. Although I was a very efficient decoder (I was a Blue Bird after all), I just couldn’t sit still long enough to read more than a page or two. The words in the books didn’t move as fast as talking, singing, and real play.

Remember how I was the teacher’s reading helper? Turns out that had nothing to do with reading. It was because as a six year old I couldn’t sit still, tore around the classroom, and bothered the other children — nosing in their desks to see their treasures —balls, discarded Fig Newtons, little plastic dolls, marbles, and hunks of clay. That interested me so much more than Dick, Jane, Sally, Spot, and Puff. So Miss Corliss had me “read” with all the groups so she could keep an eye on me.

That restlessness showed itself in any kind of reading comprehension test, the kinds they would give us twice a year. I would skim the passages for key words to answer the boring questions. “What color was the man’s hat?” I’d color in the circle for red because apparently he had a dog named Big Red, but alas wore no hat – okay, so “none of the above.” Who cares? I just wanted to find a dog like Big Red to play with after school. Miraculously, none of the testing interfered with my privileged Blue Bird status.

Ah, but in the summer, I could satisfy the need to play and be active and discover some books in the process. During our summer breaks, I used to love to run (always ran) to the local library a few times a week. When it was hot and sunny outside, the library was cool. You could nose through the shelves without being scolded.I loved the picture books the most— just the right amount of vivid words and rich visual delights. I can clearly remember the day I discovered Dare Wright’s The Lonely Doll series with their pink gingham covers. The books are about an actual doll, Edith, who lives a rather privileged but lonely life, until she is befriended by two teddy bears, Mr. Bear and Little Bear. Together they had some amazing adventures, all depicted by Wright’s photographs. I took those books out of the library so many times. Over 50 years later, I happened to stumble upon them in a used book shop in Ithaca, New York. I bought two of them and lived that summer joy all over again.

In elementary school, the only book I can remember reading and loving was The Boxcar Children. I think I read it in second grade. The idea of little children living independently made quite an impression on me. When I was nine and in the fourth grade we moved. The idea of children living independently returned. I was pretty unhappy once we moved (actually everyone in the family was) and things began to fall apart. I made a plan in the spirit of The Boxcar Children. All I needed was an Easy Bake Oven, our red Coleman Cooler, and a staircase to the bedroom window, and I could live there as a nine year old completely on my own. Not surprisingly, I couldn’t get my mom to agree.

By the time I was in fifth grade, I had a bit more self-regulation, and the books our teachers read aloud were more interesting. Ironically, my mother was one of my teachers. She did share her love of The Secret Garden with her students, and I read the book on my own, loving it, too. Another read aloud that my mother shared with all the fifth graders was Loretta Mason Potts by Mary Chase. In the book, Colin Mason finds out he has a sister who has been sent away – an “awful, awful, bad, bad, girl—Loretta Mason Potts.” He sets out to find her and is introduced to a magical world where bad is good. That became my all time favorite children’s book. Clearly I was drawn to books that had mean, bully-like or struggling and troubled characters who were transformed through attention and love. This was my misfit kids era of reading. I felt like an outsider myself. It seemed I was always getting in trouble and with my “fattest kid in the class” designation, I could relate to not fitting in. Two other favorites of that era were Trouble After School by Jerrold Beim and My Brother Stevie by Eleanor Clymer. In fifth grade, I’d purchased those books to have for my own, each one a talisman. I’d like to say that the misfit era inspired me to read more. But in fifth grade I discovered a true passion in baseball, not books. Alas, most of my book orders were full of Peanuts and fangirl biographies of Roberto Clemente and The Pittsburgh Pirates.

If our arc as a reader is formed in childhood, was I doomed to a non-reader arc? As a child, I mostly eschewed sitting and reading for other indoor pastimes, nature play, dancing and jumping in front of fast moving black and white TV shows, and clomping my way into unfamiliar environments. Would I ever discover those same passions in books? Hmm, there is more to explore. I am grateful for parts of my “almost a non-reader” story as passions were discovered. And despite my childhood unwillingness to “sit still” without adult intervention, my first grade teacher must have seen something in my restlessness that signaled I was Blue Bird material, nonetheless, when it came to reading. Because who knew, underneath my purple scribble-scrabble and nosing through other kids’ desks, maybe there actually was a “best reader” hiding in there somewhere.

Join me next week for Part Two and details on a new GIVEAWAY !

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The Precious Days 3/15/24 The Precious Days 3/15/24

The Edgy Ager

This usually happy ager has been a bit on edge lately.

“How did I get to be this old and still have to put up with so much crap?”

— T.W. Lawless, Furey's War

This usually happy ager has been a bit on edge lately. I am going to try very hard, readers, not to turn the entirety of this post into a rant. Fingers crossed, through the process I’ll be able to gain an enlarged perspective on what I think is a very important topic for aging adults. There’s a lot to unpack here, so bear with.

The Context
On Wednesdays, my husband brings home a Seven Days weekly local newspaper. Seven Days, which is published in Vermont’s Queen City, is the only paper worth reading now that most news organizations have gone digital and have cut back. It’s full of actual news, commentary, and information on food and the arts. My husband usually gives me a Cliff’s Notes version of the stories as he drops the paper and his pizza box on the kitchen table. As the March 6 issue landed, he told me this week’s From the Publisher editorial was called “Senior Moment” and it introduced a year-long focus on Vermont’s aging population the paper was calling “This Old State.”

The Rant (stay with me)
Let me start by saying that I do understand rants (including but maybe especially my own) often represent an extreme viewpoint that, upon reflection, needs personal mediation. So please don’t stop reading here. But when I heard the focus of my beloved weekly paper, my hackles went up immediately. Leading up, during, and after (oh God, let’s face it, it’s every day) the Super Tuesday Primary, I was bombarded with news story after news story about Biden being TOO OLD. Ageism is the current ism darling of the media. But the sensitive, cautionary reporting reserved for the other rampant “isms” (and rightly so) is NOT afforded to the discussion of advancing age. Apparently if you are a politician, 70’s are okay, but once you break into the next decade, the alarm bells ring. When the President of the United States becomes the punching bag for rampant ageism, it all but screams, “Come one, come all, the bandwagon has plenty of room, folks!” Breathe, Linda.

Ageism has not only become socially acceptable, it’s become the gateway drug of both political parties and their pundits who look to place blame for a myriad of societal ills. “Boomers”are the problem, according not only to news outlets (digression: in Senior Moment, Seven Days publisher, Paula Routly, refers to half the “Boomer” population in Vermont as the “bad kind” who are selfish, resource consumers— the other half as aging hippies who made an “admirable choice to live simply”), but also to most Tik Tok videos that portray “Boomers” as ghouls who won’t give up their homes,“which they bought for peanuts,” and should just go someplace else so young families can buy their houses. What is further maddening to me is these media platforms at the same time are targeting these same generations with a barrage of information on lifestyles, supplements, and a smorgasbord of advice on LONGEVITY! The Blue Zones, green powder, and anti-aging (okay, let’s just point out that the term “anti-aging” is also ageist) medical advances messages are clear: “You, too, could be a centenarian!” That’s right folks. These messages scroll in the same feed as the stories about the problems created by an aging population. Neither is helpful in addressing serious and urgent issues.

Rampant ageism is a hot topic on the psychology front, too, turning some researchers into activists. In the APA’s Monitor on Psychology March cover story, Ageism is one of the last socially acceptable prejudices. Psychologists are working to change that, the author Kristen Weir points out that “most organizations now have diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) departments to tackle issues such as racism and gender bias. Even in those departments, age bias is seldom on the radar. “Ageism is this odd ‘-ism’ in that it’s still socially acceptable in many ways,” said Joann Montepare, Phd.” The article goes on:“What’s more, the negative stereotypes that fuel ageism often get aging all wrong. “When we say aging isn’t all negative, it’s not that we are putting on rose-colored lenses. This is based on rigorous science,” said Manfred Diehl, PhD, a professor of human development and family studies at Colorado State University who studies healthy aging.”

Yes, once again, “rigorous science” is there to point out what the news media is slow to report (or rejects out of hand): “The negative view of late life isn’t just false. It’s also dangerous. ‘The narrative that age is decline, age is burden, hurts everyone: individuals, families, communities, and society,’ said Nancy Morrow-Howell, PhD, a professor of social policy and expert in gerontology at Washington University in St. Louis. ‘Some older adults do need support, but mostly they’re giving it,’ she added. ‘They make important contributions to the workforce, including paid work as well as volunteering and caregiving. Those contributions to society are a resource, not a luxury.’” The article goes on to point out what some of those dangers are (I urge you to read the full article), along with some solutions.

One of my personal solutions to combat ageism is to listen carefully to language — including my own. I am trying to interject myself into conversations that equate age with competence and character. As much as I’d like to think of myself as wise and virtuous, I couldn’t merely chalk that up to turning 65 or any age thereafter. And that would be true for incompetence, etc. as well. It’s mythology. We need to decouple such appraisals, the positive and the negative, from aging. In Don’t call me “old”: Avoiding ageism when writing about aging, Stephanie Morrison, writing for the National Institute on Aging, offers helpful language advice, what to use and what to avoid, to ensure your own communications are not ageist (and to red flag/call-out those that are):

DO:

Choose neutral terms such as “older adults,” “older populations,” and “people over age X” to describe groups of people.
When possible, describe the population or age group more specifically, such as: “This study focused on disease risk in Black women between the ages of 65 and 75.”
Use “we” and “us” instead of “they” and “them” when appropriate. We are all aging, and many issues that affect older adults also affect younger populations.

DON’T:

Don’t use words that may have negative connotations, such as “the aged,” “elderly,” “senior,” “senior citizen,” and “boomer.” (Working on this.)
Avoid the term “elders” except when referencing American Indian/Alaska Natives, for whom this term may be preferred and culturally appropriate.
The term “geriatrics” refers to the branch of medicine that deals with the medical care and treatment of older people. Avoid using “geriatric” to describe individuals or groups of people.
Consider that terms including “aging well” and “successful aging” imply there’s a right way and a wrong way to age, placing the responsibility for healthy aging on the individual. (Guilty here.)
Euphemisms like “of a certain age” might suggest there’s something shameful about aging. (I need to watch this one!)

Cause and Effect
Now back to where we started with Seven Days and “This Old State: Getting On” . After being really rubbed the wrong way by the editorial, I tried my best to have a more open mind toward the inaugural article in the series. The reporter, Colin Flanders, covered a vast landscape of issues facing my state, sometimes tying them to Vermont’s older population. And we are a tour de force here. We are the third oldest state, falling behind only New Hampshire and Maine. By 2030, 1 in 3 Vermonters will be over 60. Having such a population creates challenges, but you cannot blame older Vermonters for being the cause of problems such as worker shortages, housing shortages, and understaffed health care and emergency care systems. As the article points out, a bigger issue is retaining our own younger people as citizens and attracting more families and businesses to the state. The failure to grow those populations is not caused by the over 60 population. If younger people don’t want to stay and new people don’t want to come to the state, that has to do with the economy, vibrancy, opportunity, and resources of our communities. That requires planning that most communities just aren’t focused on. We have had ample time. State leaders have trotted out this problem for decades without much impact, policy-driven or otherwise. And more recently, the pandemic has really impacted our capacity to think forward creatively, not to mention exacerbating all the problems outlined in the article. There is a plan to draw 200,000 new Vermonters to our state by 2035. Adding to our current population, is that the right size for everyone to have quality of life in this state, considering that 1 in 3 of those people will be over the age of 60?

As I read through the article, I still struggled to not feel “called out” as an older adult Vermonter. My husband pointed out to me that I was reading the article feeling sensitive that the article is blaming older Vermonters for our state’s problems. Hard not to when the editorial by the publisher asked, “At what point does your independence become someone else’s burden?” Ouch! He urged me to consider whether the article wasn’t simply pointing out the effects of having a disproportionately older population. Perhaps that is what the article is trying to lay out. We’ll see what the bias of the subsequent “This Old State” (come on, isn’t that title inherently ageist?) articles might be. I want to remain open minded, but I have no tolerance for perspectives that marginalize.

Reframing for Change
The aging population (and BTW we are ALL aging) should neither be a source of disdain nor discrimination. Both can only lead to greater marginalization, scapegoating, and problem-admiring. The “effects” (let’s use my husband’s word choice instead of the pejorative “problems” —which still feels too blamey for me) of aging populations are of course not unique to Vermont. By 2030, 1 in 6 members of the global population will be over 60. The World Health Organization (WHO) points out these Key Facts:

All countries face major challenges to ensure that their health and social systems are ready to make the most of this demographic shift.
In 2050, 80% of older people will be living in low- and middle-income countries.
The pace of population ageing (sic) is much faster than in the past.
In 2020, the number of people aged 60 years and older outnumbered children younger than 5 years.
Between 2015 and 2050, the proportion of the world's population over 60 years will nearly double from 12% to 22%.

It is critical that we work as hard as we can, in whatever ways we can, to change the systems and the structures of society that discriminate and marginalize — and that includes the systems and structures that are inherently ageist. One way to do that is to envision inclusive communities that both center and respond to voices and needs of older adults, specifically those 65 and beyond. In 2009, cultural anthropologist Phillip B. Stafford released the book, Elderburbia: Aging with a Sense of Place. The book addresses the same demographic shifts and resulting effects (and needs) that the Seven Days article and the Age Strong Vermont plan attempt to address 15 years later, only in a much more comprehensive way and with great examples of communities that are both inclusive and “elder-friendly.” The book is laid out to address Four Domains of Elder-Inclusive Community: 1) address basic needs; 2) optimize physical and mental health and well-being; 3) promote civic and social engagement; and 4) maximize independence. The premise of the book is not to isolate the needs of any one generation, exclusively, but to look at the collective needs from an intergenerational perspective. The book is an engaging and valuable resource for planning to address issues now and in the future in responsible, respectful, and inclusive ways.

Perspective Gained
I often use writing to explore ideas and perspectives. Writing is an incredible processing and therapeutic tool, especially when I am struggling to move from a place of emotion to a place of understanding. I have always been more of a change agent than a problem admirer, and that is where I choose to land when thinking about the current and future impacts of the demographics of my state. The challenges as well as their solutions will continue to get tied up in all the “isms,” and I feel all of us need to be vigilant about that. I know my ageism lens is hyper-focused right now…and I am offering no apologies. I know we need to stay present in discussions about the challenges of an increasingly aging population. I just want to ensure we are conscious about not being ageist in these discussions. That said, I remain hopeful, readers, that I will find ways to stay informed to fully engage with the issue through some level of activism. Thank you all so much for hanging in there through this long post. In the Comments, I would love to hear your ideas on some of these issues, both how they impact you (or your country, state, province, or community) and your experiences with or perceptions of ageism.

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The Precious Days 3/8/24 The Precious Days 3/8/24

Where I Write

To put it simply, place affects writing.

I write my Morning Pages, my blog posts, and my essays for my Women Rowing North writer’s group here in this room that is part writing room and part guest room. I sit at this bright yellow desk in a chair that belonged to my late mother-in-law, right in front of a south-facing window on the second floor of our home. On the best mornings for writing, the sun pours through the blinds onto my desk. From this window I have seen blue skies, endless clouds, swirls of snow, sheets of rain, and brilliant sun. In the spring I see children playing in the streets, men and women walking dogs, runners checking their time, trees swelling with buds, and scatterings of squirrels. In the summer my view includes my Writing Garden, bursting with purple echinacea, scarlet zinnias, and variegated yellow coreopsis carefully planted for such gazing when I look up from my laptop on draft number two or three. In the fall, leaves blow through the yard and across all the lawns on this small dead-end street. Tree limbs litter the roadsides after windy autumn storms. And in the winter, the snow comes, sometimes gently in giant sparkling flakes, sometimes pelting the windows with icy crystals.

On sunlit mornings, rainy dark-skied afternoons, or shade-drawn evenings, I have written at this desk on my laptop, yellow writer’s notebook nearby, along with my gold-lined folder stuffed with scribbled-on scraps of papers housing illegible ideas that hold a least a snip of a memory of a researched snippet or something I believed sounded brilliant a few days ago. Pens, post-its, and tabbed book quotes fill two trolleys, at hand as needed. Inspiration that doesn’t come from watching out the window often comes from the picture on my desk, a framed watercolor of my childhood home painted by my friend, Lauren. I can look into and out of every one of the windows of that house and be reminded of what is fueling almost everything I write today. And when I need to dig into a book for that certain something needed to strengthen what is still not feeling fully formed, I can sit in my rocker and read and reflect, and then return to my writing.

“You write by sitting down and writing.”

— Bernard Malamud as quoted in The Writer's Desk by Jill Krementz

Ahhh…the simplicity of the Malamud quote disguises how much we are influenced by where we write. I didn’t really understand that completely until I decided to get more serious about writing when I retired. I have a beautiful home office, with a large desk, bookcases galore, comfortable chairs, things on the wall that inspire me…but no window. It’s the perfect spot for “working” and served me well when I was working everyday. I would work there nights and weekends, creating everything I needed to be effective and efficient at my job. But that’s not who I am anymore, and the ghosts of a career past seemed to chase away all my creativity. And did I mention there is NO WINDOW! So the guest room, affectionately referred to as the “Bed and Breakfast Room” had to lend some space to my writing goals, and that space had to be right in front of a window. Oh, I can brainstorm or edit at the kitchen or dining room table or even in that office, but my real writing happens at my yellow desk.

Why does where we write matter so much to us? In 12 Ideas For The Best Places To Write, Moriah Costa points out the importance of your writing environment: “Studies have shown that your environment can impact your creativity. Having a peaceful, distraction-free place to write can help you be productive, whether you are a full-time blogger or a first-time author.Writers often overlook having a good place to write, but it can be as important as having an outline.Our brains often associate certain areas with certain activities so going to a place where you write can put you in the right headspace to start typing.”

In Writers and Places: Does Location Matter?, Joe Bunting digs further into how space anchors or inhibits creativity. “Environments affect all people; this has been confirmed in sociological studies of human life, and urban studies in particular. What surrounds us affects how we feel, what we do, what we think and how we channel these thoughts and emotions.”

To put it simply, place affects writing.

“I always work in the morning.... I don’t pace. I just stare out of the window. I have a large window and I can see a field and some woods, and a fence, a stone fence, and I stare.”

— Robert Coles as quoted in The Writer's Desk by Jill Krementz

There is no end to the places you can write, and you may need to experiment with different environments until you find your own space. Some people love coffee shops, some people love their kitchen tables, and some even prefer to write in bed. Whatever you choose, be true to yourself, keeping in mind what inspires you and what feels limiting. Personally, I am highly distractible. Getting any writing done outside of my home is a challenge. In coffee shops or a library, I have to switch to a notebook and take “writer’s notes:” snippets of dialog and observations, descriptions of something that catches my eye, colors, scents, the way a person moves. Sometimes inspiration will come, and I can jot it down in my notebook.

Dan Blank, in Writing Spaces: Where you Create Matters, suggests thinking of the goals you have for your creative space. It’s a wonderful article that is loaded with advice and inspiration on our need for a creative space. It features interview questions posed to writers and is distilled into 5 goals.The space you claim should:

Provide clarity on what you need to do. (In other words, you may need to develop some focusing routines in your space.)
Remove you from distraction. (I like having a door I can shut. And the window is inspiration, not distraction.)
Incentivize you to create. (Some people like to have a word count, or a task list/outline. I often have a really loose checklist of ideas, quotes, and/or references I want to include.)
Remove all barriers to entry for getting started. (There is nothing in this room or on my desk that interferes with writing (except sometimes the computer itself [looking at you, Amazon]. I open a new tab for whatever piece I am working on.)
Have all the tools you need at the ready. (Whatever isn’t on my desk is in my trolleys. I always have post-its and fast moving pens [thank you Natalie Goldberg].)

So now you have an idea of where I write The Precious Days. If you are looking for more inspiration on where and how writers write, I highly recommend Jill Krementz’s The Writer’s Desk. Published in 1996 by Random House, it is filled with black and white photos (mostly taken in the 70’s) that tell the story of writers in their writing spaces.The contents include a Who’s Who from my days as an English major in the late 70’s at the University of Vermont: Eudora Welty, John Cheever, John Updike, Bernard Malamud, Robert Penn Warren, William Styron, Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates, and Saul Bellow to name just a few. If you love to write, are curious to see writers at work, or you just love all-things-writing, this book will captivate you.

All of the photos in this week’s blog are my own.

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I’d love to hear about where you do your writing (any kind of writing) and why that space works for you. Use the Comments box below.

The Precious Days 3/1/24 The Precious Days 3/1/24

Lifetimes—25 Years at a Time

While on a walk the other day with a dear friend the conversation turned to aging, as it often does.

While on a walk the other day with a dear friend the conversation turned to aging, as it often does. I remarked that I hoped, and would be quite happy, to have about 25 years of life left. Now that may sound like a morbid conversation to younger folks, but at this age I find discussions of the life that remains, the “final future,” not only freeing, but a necessary part of this time of life. So the idea of 25 more years, a quarter of a century, feels pretty substantive and full of potential. If I can still be “with it” and reasonably healthy into my early nineties, I would consider myself to have been an extremely fortunate woman. Something really struck me about the concept of chunks of 25 years that I have lived through in my life, as I prepare for the final 25. It seems no matter what age you arbitrarily measure them from (birth to 25, 40 to 65, whatever), these time periods are distinguished not only by the events forgotten and remembered, but also — for me personally— for their stark contrasts in the way I experienced them.

Formative and school age years, let’s say birth to 25, which took me into the early years of my education career, seemed to take a lifetime. I remember so much from this time period. Mostly I remember the learning was more centered on what I did not want to do or be than it was in finding a solid identity. And that’s fine. My nightmare would be to be trapped in my teens and twenties for the rest of my life. I floundered around until my mid thirties, but as I’ll expand upon later, the period of my mid-thirties to my mid-to-late fifties was my “time of life.” My forties were a bit rough on me, but the bumpy ride led me to a much smoother and more joyful journey by the end of that 25 year period. A brief period of transitional years (winding down and gearing up), took me into the present, my final 25 years. And I plan to make The Precious Days of this final 25 my “best life” era.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.”

— The Writing Life by Annie Dillard as quoted in The Marginalian

As I mentioned, the 90’s began a significant time of life for me. It’s a time when my relationship with writing really began to mature. The Writing Life was a book I really enjoyed in the 90’s. So coming across this quote again, along with some others from the book in The Marginalian got me thinking about where these ideas sit with me now in this final 25 years. I remember when I read the book in my thirties. I was leaning more and more into wanting to be a more serious poet and writer. I remember carrying around a little notebook that had an ornate Chinese art themed cover. in that little red and gold book, I would write all kinds of conversational quotes from eavesdropping and observations on how people moved or sat or gestured. I would move some notes to first lines of poems, and some into story ideas. None of that really went anywhere until my mid-to-late thirties, when it really started to come together. The last half decade of my thirties were my most creative. I took poetry classes and ended up doing a reading of my poems in a bookstore. I went to a ton of lectures and plays, visited galleries, spent hours reading in bookstores and libraries, hung out in coffee shops (Muddy Waters in Burlington was my favorite), read everything by Natalie Goldberg I could get my hands on, and attended several “Keep the Pen Moving” retreats across the state facilitated by Michelle Demers. Once I reached my late thirties, it seemed like some peak creativity years had arrived. I was on one extended Artist Date during those years. I would say that by my late 30’s, a “powerful pattern” ushered in a period of 25 years that informs much of the way I intend to spend my last 25 years.

In The Marginalian, Popova summarizes the quote as “a poignant meditation on the life well lived, reminding us of the tradeoffs between presence and productivity.” And I would have been in total agreement with that appraisal in my thirties. But when I read the quote now, in what may be the final 25 years of my life, I can’t say that it resonates any longer. Oh, I love the first line (an often referenced quote),“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives” and at no time in my life has that been more true or felt more real than it does now. But the totality of the quote just doesn’t sit the same with me. During this last act, this glorious final quarter of a century, looking back on those “powerful patterns” feels anything but blurred. Now, there is actually a clarity about those significant 25 year periods of my past. That clarity has taken over many of my days, despite the murky navigation of purpose and identity. Looking back, with clearer eyes and a much needed mirror, I can see some of those past periods held joy, discovery, and a fair amount of pain, and now I am in a place in my life to be fully present to learn from them, no matter how hard the lessons might be. During this period of my life, that “presence” is my productivity.

When Annie Dillard wrote The Writing Life, she was in her early forties. During the 25 year period of my life from 32 to 57, each decade felt like a different lifetime. From my “writing life” period in my thirties, to a painful divorce and new role in my career, and to finally feeling a sense of belonging in my own life by my fifties, none of it feels like a “blur of same days.” Perhaps it only feels that way when you are in it. I think it’s the looking back that makes it “a life.”

I was truly one of the women who felt like life began at 50. That’s when my “forever life” began with my husband, Mark. It was also the peak of my career. My early 60’s felt like a conscious winding down from a career high, and also as a “looking forward” to the potential of an even bigger forever life.

So here I am in the final 25, readers (god-willing). I promise myself it won’t be a blur but a blessing. And I hope to recapture the spirit of that wannabe writer and poet, sitting in coffee shops with her notebook, a new copy of Griffin and Sabine, and a volume of Sharon Olds’ poetry. Little did she know back in the 90’s when she was curled up in a chair reading and pink highlighting The Writing Life that she was building me a lifeboat on which I’d find myself, decades later, ready to live on for the next 25 years.

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Retirement allows us the time to look back at times in our life when we felt excited, authentic, and full of potential. Sometimes those experiences had to take a backseat to our work lives. Are there certain “eras” of your past that are now taking center stage in the way you want to spend the years ahead of you? Please share in the Comments.

The Precious Days 2/23/24 The Precious Days 2/23/24

What Was I Made For?

But unlike during my work life, when the sheer demands of the job or a trajectory of change might snap me back into the “Let’s go!” motivated me, now it’s often the most unexpected things that throw me a rope to climb out of myself.

In late January and throughout February of last year, my goal of starting a “retirement blog” began to take shape. With inspiration from Ageless Possibilities, I started meeting via Zoom with a former co-worker, sharing my vision for the kind of site I’d envisioned as a newly retired woman fueled by a desire to reflect, read, research, and write as my purpose in the last quarter of my life. I told her my vision, and she worked her magic with some page templates and taught me how to navigate Squarespace on my own, and by March The Precious Days arrived. Ta da.

I am as new to this blogging thing as I am to retirement. I am a retirement neophyte by some standards — just three years since I left my longtime career in education in June of 2021. For my first year, I took another job as an executive director of a state-level organization for curriculum directors. So I only jumped into full retirement the summer of 2022.

I enjoy my newfound rituals and routines during this time of my life. I tweak them and adjust my attitude regularly. But just when I think I’m truly settling into this retirement thing, a blue funk comes along to cast its shadow. I have to do as much “picking myself up and trying again” as I did when I was working and stressed. I guess no matter what phase of your life you’re in, you’re stuck with one constant…YOU. These temporary funks are just how I roll. They are part of who I am, so OF COURSE they are going to be part of my retirement years. Turns out retirement life can be just as ordinary or complex as the ol’ work life you left behind, despite or maybe because of the new found time on your hands. And I do dig a hole for myself from time to time. But unlike during my work life, when the sheer demands of the job or a trajectory of change might snap me back into the “Let’s go!” motivated me, now it’s often the most unexpected things that throw me a rope to climb out of myself.

Case in point: The 2024 Grammy Awards and Barbie.

I watched the Grammys this year for the contemporary music, the sheer energy of it, and well, yes, to see Taylor Swift win some awards. But what knocked me out was Billie Eilish singing, “What Was I Made For?” I’d heard the beginning of that melody as the soundtrack to countless IG Reels and Tiktok videos, but I hadn’t really heard the lyrics until the Grammys. When I heard those first four lines: “I used to float, now I just fall down. I used to know but I'm not sure now. What I was made for…. What was I made for?” I welled up. That’s it! That’s how retirement can feel! You work decades at a career, and you do your best to get really good at it. There are accolades and respect, and you feel you’ve truly found your purpose. As the decades accrue and you’re well into your sixties, you start to look forward to the time you’ve earned…to retirement. And then, there it is, more suddenly than you’d wished for. No turning back for you, you’ve decided. After the euphoria of not going off to work, slow mornings, and pretty much doing as you please, you start to feel like you are moving through life on very wobbly legs. And the question smacks you in the face: “What was I made for?”

Oh my. The song was leaving me so raw. How did this Gen Z pop icon know so much about the deepest feelings of this old Boomer? As I listened to more of the lyrics, the emotions continued to build: “'Cause I, I, I don't know how to feel. But I wanna try. I don't know how to feel, but someday, I might. Someday, I might.” And it may not have been quite this dramatic, but those lines actually snapped me out of the funk I’d been hanging out in, sometimes languishing in since the start of the new year (maybe longer if I’m honest), and I may have actually whispered to myself, “I want to try.”

After a good cry, I had to remind myself that Billie Eilish didn’t write that song for retired women in the final third (or quarter) of their lives; the song was written for … BARBIE! I just had to know more about Eilish’s songwriting inspiration for those lyrics. In an interview in People, Eilish said before working on the song for the Barbie soundtrack, she wasn’t writing anything that felt good to her, and she started to worry about it a bit. Had the creativity well dried up? But they persevered. She explained that as she and her brother, Finneas, wrote the song, she wasn’t actually thinking about herself at all, just the character of Barbie. But as she listened to the song, she came closer to the realization that she’d been writing about herself without meaning to. Eilish said it “felt as if you woke up and someone had taken a photo of you sleeping” (CNN,). Exposed. Vulnerable. Relatable. Just the way I felt.

I am infinitely grateful to Gen Z singer/songwriter Billie Eilish for giving voice to some of the feelings I have about my Great Retirement Experiment — which is sometimes what it feels like—so much trial and error, so many unintended results. Ultimately, the song helped me the same way it helped her. By pushing herself to re-engage with her own creativity, she rediscovered the authentic creative self that had “fallen down.” Now I am not comparing myself or what I do on this tiny blog or during my ordinary retirement days with the phenomenal talent of Billie Eilish, whose music, veganism, and politics I love. But I am testifying that I can 100% identify with the feeling of a lack of purpose and direction she was experiencing as the first line of the song just spilled out of her. And the rest, as they say, is Grammy history. “The rest” for me was just the inspiration I needed.

But this story didn’t end with the Grammys and a little online research about Billie Eilish. My blog readers know I often use music and lyrics for my own creativity and personal reflection. I had to know: What was it about Barbie as a movie character that required a song with those lyrics for her? After all, it’s a song about a very personal version of a world falling apart and having to ask, “Now what?” A song like that for a fun doll? What had happened to Barbie? What caused that painful mix of confusing emotions swirling around a vortex of fear and longing, pushing her to the point where she would: “Think I forgot how to be happy. Something I'm not, but something I can be. Something I wait for. Something I'm made for. Something I'm made for” ? That’s the episodic angst of retirement, too, after all. I had to see the movie. (Spoiler alert: You don’t get to hear “What Was I Made For” until the closing credits, so hang in there.)

On the evening of Valentine’s Day, I planted myself on the couch with a bowl of air popped popcorn and a few Lindt white chocolate strawberry truffles wrapped in their pink Barbie-esque foil, and pushed the rental button for Barbie. And readers, for the next few hours I wasn’t watching a show, I was having an experience. Visually stunning (so much pink!) and full of entertaining characters (evoking so many childhood Mattel memories), I was overwhelmed by the emotions the movie conjured up for me. I laughed, I shed tears (oh, a lot of tears), I cheered. As a retired woman with a newly acquired off and on identity crisis, I was Barbie and Barbie was me. And when America Ferrara’s character delivered her monologue about the struggle of women in our society to “get it right,” I “amen sister” ugly cried. All kinds of women have watched, will watch, and rewatch this movie, as daughters, wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, grandmothers, friends, workers, bosses, and dreamers and they’ll all attest, “Yup, that’s our life, folks, up on that screen.” They will all feel seen.

In Barbie, director Greta Gerwig created not only a 21st century tribute to women, but a powerful commentary on feminism and the patriarchy in society…and just so much more. With one little scene on a park bench, she made generations of women think differently about aging.

**Barbie:** You’re beautiful. **Ann Roth:** I know!

My Precious Days are not only my Great Retirement Experiment in recalibrating my purpose, they are a marathon therapy session in self-love. The days on this journey can at times feel intoxicating and imperfect at the same time. Despite the ups and downs, the endless questions, and precious insights, this Barbie Boomer dude “abides” (IYKYK 😉). And at the end of each of The Precious Days, thanks to some unexpected support from Billie Eilish and Barbie, the “closer I am to fine.”

And I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
(The less I seek my source)
Closer I am to fine, yeah
Closer I am to fine, yeah

“Closer to Fine” by the Indigo Girls (chorus)
Source: Musixmatch;Songwriters: Emily Ann Saliers / Amy Elizabeth Ray; Closer to Fine lyrics © Godhap Music

What Was I Made For?

I used to float, now I just fall down
I used to know but I'm not sure now
What I was made for
What was I made for?

Takin' a drive, I was an ideal
Looked so alive, turns out I'm not real
Just something you paid for
What was I made for?

'Cause I, I
I don't know how to feel
But I wanna try
I don't know how to feel
But someday, I might
Someday, I might

When did it end? All the enjoyment
I'm sad again, don't tell my boyfriend
It's not what he's made for
What was I made for?

'Cause I, 'cause I
I don't know how to feel
But I wanna try
I don't know how to feel
But someday I might
Someday I might

Think I forgot how to be happy
Something I'm not, but something I can be
Something I wait for
Something I'm made for
Something I'm made for

Source: LyricFind Songwriters: Billie Eilish O'Connell / Finneas Baird O'Connell What Was I Made For? lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Universal Music Publishing Group

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Linda Keating 2/16/24 Linda Keating 2/16/24

Midwinter Magic

Whereas January lasted FOREVER, the ephemeral nature of February calls me to take notice, to linger, to appreciate that winter, too, will come to and end before I know it — and in this phase of my life, time is as precious commodity as The Precious Days it fills.

Photo by Unsplash

It’s February. Some people like to see February as the halfway point from when winter begins to take shape in Vermont to when we begin to experience a genuine spring-like pattern of weather, give or take the effects of climate change. But I have a more celebratory approach to February. After what seemed to be 182 days of January, I am not wishing February away too quickly. Most of the magic of February lasts only a day at a time, then the weather (or my mood and motivation) will change. Whereas the dark days of January lasted FOREVER, the ephemeral nature of increasing blue skies and sunshine in February calls me to take notice, to linger, to appreciate that the days can both remind us of the beauty of winter AND that winter will come to an end before we know it. So I will love it and not rush it. In this phase of my life, time is as precious a commodity as The Precious Days it fills.

So it’s time to pay tribute to a few of the beautiful aspects of this month that are bringing me joy. Events and experiences can feel life magic in the humdrum of cold, gray winter days in January. And I’ve decided that this year I am going to start celebrating February not as midwinter, but as the end of winter — March gets to be spring in my book no matter how much snow falls. 😉

What I am loving about February…

Noticeable amounts of light creeping in. By mid-February it stays light until almost 5:30. By the end of the month, it edges even closer to 6:00. The effect of that extra light is extra energy,
Brilliant sunrises and sunsets. With sunrise happening close to 7:00, it’s wonderful to wake up to pink ombré skies and end the day with the golden, fiery glow of the sky reaching toward the lake.
An entire week of sun, blue skies, and springlike temps. Here in Vermont, February often splurges by giving us an entire week of false spring. February 2024 gave us a spectacular one recently and it was just the midwinter tonic we needed!
Super Bowl Sunday. If I am invested in one of the teams, that’s just a bonus. My husband and I love to watch the game, enjoy our Super Bowl snacks, and comment on the commercials. It’s an all around fun night and a February celebration we look forward to.
Spring training. Right around the Super Bowl, pitchers and catchers report to spring training, followed by the rest of the players mid-February. By the end of the month, all teams are seeing pre-game action, and it’s time to get ready for opening day at the end of March.
Valentine’s Day. I love this holiday purely for the fact that it breaks up February. I still send Valentines and try to coax my husband into doing something special. This year he made me smoked salmon Eggs Benedict. ❤️
Fat Tuesday. I love to catch some of Mardi Gras festivities on television, and enjoy some pancakes. I’m reminded of a trip to New Orleans, years ago, the crowded streets, the music, the beignets, and those delicious Hurricanes.
Backyard Birds. early birdsong. By February the Carolina wren is beginning to serenade us in the mornings again. The chickadees trill a more spring-like song, and even the cardinals are warming up to join the chorus. And by February, I’m convinced the little red-bellied woodpecker on the suet feeder is my personal pet.
Waiting for a BIG snowstorm. We usually get one in February, and then another in March. I look forward to the quiet of the fresh snow, and a chance of seeing a bright red cardinal on a snow covered branch.
Harvesting the lettuce from our AeroGarden. After the holidays we always plant a variety of lettuce in our hydroponic garden. By February we are eating our own fresh lettuce from our little soil-free garden and discussing what we’ll actually plant in May.
Hot drinks all day long. Decaf lattes, London Fogs, and every kind of herbal tea you can think of (but I am partial to Pukka’s Chamomile, Vanilla, and Manuka Honey) occupy cup after cup once the electric kettle is plugged in each morning.
Shaking up my reading routines. In February, I start to turn to more non-fiction. I also begin to make “collections” of books I want to read and compare before the sunny warm days set in. This February, I went on an internet expedition to purchase used copies of May Sarton’s novels I haven’t read (note to readers — there were a lot!)
Store-bought tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils. No trip to the grocery store is complete without grabbing a bouquet of pink, white, or yellow tulips. A trip to Trader Joe’s produced one small bunch of purple hyacinths that had the house smelling glorious for days. Can’t wait to see the first display of daffodil bunches (last year they had to put up a sign in the produce section informing people they were NOT bunches of asparagus).
Time for the annual puzzles. Each year my husband and I gift each other puzzles. In February, we put them together. Last year I gave up, and my husband finished the 1000 pieces himself. This year, we’re going with a 500 piece puzzle, and I’m in.
It’s a leap year. So I will get to love February for an extra day!
Coming out of winter hibernation. During February, I come out of my January funk and hibernation. The end of February signals it’s time to get ready for spring. I’ll be doing a lot of thinking about my 2024 ONE WORD, renewal.
Looks like we’ve just about made it! 🙂

How about you? What’s delighting you about February?

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The Precious Days 2/9/24 The Precious Days 2/9/24

Dear Planner: It’s not you, it’s me.

Is it that I just don’t get planners and planning? Hmmm…. Thousands of YouTube videos channels dedicated to the planner and planning advice. Tens of thousands of pictures of them screaming creativity with their pages of hand lettering, ETSY stickers, washi tape, and glossy goals all over Instagram.

This year I made an attempt to choose another ONE WORD to inspire and guide my actions and reflections throughout the year. Most of my ONE WORDS are a distant memory by the spring, but this year — motivated by my word choice— I thought I’d give it another try. I was also re-inspired by one of my favorite bloggers, Katie Noah Gibson. I have been reading her blog, Cake, Tea and Dreams for years. When she picks her ONE WORD, she looks reflectively at how that word shows up in her life. So this year, I did pick a word, RENEWAL. Starting over (and over and over) is something I’ve become really good at…and I’m finally at peace with that. I am truly a creature of “renewal.” I am fond of saying “No attempt at learning is a failure” so I do persevere at certain things, refusing to acknowledge anything as an “epic fail.”

Taking a cue from Katie, I’ve been using my ONE WORD to reflect on and examine where and how renewal has been “showing up” for me. Coupling that with how unmotivated I have been feeling, I wanted to look, once again, at the idea of renewing some relationship with a “planner.” Why, you might ask, would I want to go there of all places? Well, my faithful readers may have noticed that I have been less than productive about posting here. The times between posts have gotten longer and longer. Could rededicating to faithfully using a planner keep me on track? According to Psychology Today ,using a planner can improve productivity, provide stress relief through organization, help to increase time for creativity, act as a life record, and even improve your health if you keep track of the right things. Sounds like a veritable ticket to renewal.

I do have an enticing assortment of planners to choose from. There are ones with dates, dot grids, cool layouts, and all of them with beautiful covers. Right next to them in my desk-side rolling cart are containers of colorful pens with every kind of nib, boxes of stickers, and tins of washi tape. But there are also stockpiles of them I’m less proud of. My stationary drawers and bookcases are littered with blank or barely-used planners tucked among the note paper and cards. There are also empty planners wedged between books where I don’t have to look at them “tsk tsking” me from their blank or barely adorned pages: July 22…um nothing. March 10? A lone sticker. Last year I purchased a gorgeous Angela Harding Diary to organize my blog planning, which I used for exactly one week in August. I bragged about my yellow planner in my September Reset. That one made it to November. Then (sigh)…they, too, joined the graveyard of unused planners.

It’s not that I don’t get how to use planners. Thousands of YouTube video channels dedicated to the planner and planning advice. Watched too many of them to count. Tens of thousands of pictures of them screaming creativity with their pages of hand lettering, ETSY stickers, washi tape, and glossy goals all over Instagram. Scrolled through them ‘til my finger cramped. I considered it time well spent. After all, what could be more fulfilling than creating your own organized, artistically-adorned life planner? The planner is the canvas for the perfect marriage of artistry and productivity. So why do I always end up in a quickie divorce with mine?

It hasn’t always been this way for me. When I was working, I had planning routines that drove my productivity in exactly the direction I wanted. As a teacher, my plan book was my second brain. That along with the Vermont Life Engagement Book I got for Christmas every year, kept me organized and focused. And later, when technology came into my life, Google Calendar became my planner of choice until my retirement. When I retired, I thought it would be fun to finally shift back to a paper planner. 5 Science-Backed Reasons Why Paper Planners Are Better Than Digital Planners and Calendars reports that paper planners are going strong, enjoying a huge resurgence. One of the scientific reasons for this, which is loosely based on some brain science, is that the paper planner is less distracting than its digital sisters. No pings or dings from a paper planner. And no screen time to alter your brain’s pathways. The physical act of writing has been shown to aid in memory. Writing in a paper planner may be more motivating. It appears that the language that we choose when committing things to paper has a tighter relationship to our thoughts than our personal shorthand used in a digital calendar, and that inspires us to “get er done.” Keeping a paper journal is stress therapy for many. And finally, using the paper planner as part of a routine (morning routine for most or a daily ritual) is a healthy habit, which can lead to other healthy habits. So, yes. I want all that. I left the digital planning behind when I retired because it felt like work. But there is, was, and has been a clear recalcitrance in my “retirement life” to follow through with a planner, and it seems to be spilling over into other areas (like writing a blog). I’ll be the first to admit that I struggle with any kind of authority, and for me the planner takes on a bit of an authority role in my life: “This is what you said you’d do, Linda. Now do it!” So, I guess the idea of a planner makes this old broad feel a bit rebellious. “Don’t fence me in, Planner. Turns out I DON’T actually want to do that on Tuesday.”

So what? What now? Despite my growing graveyard of planners, the idea, the “ideal” of keeping a planner is still mighty seductive for me. I still want the benefits: the productivity, the organization of thoughts and tasks, yada-yada-yada. Since it’s taken me weeks to frame and finish this post, I’ve given this a lot of thought. As I pushed that yellow planner from September around my writing desk like cold brussels sprouts on a plate, I came to some conclusions:

My idea of “regular” will never be daily again with a planner. That was from my work life.
It’s the practice of writing things down that lures me, but my own motivation to frame it into a daily plan is less reliable.
I love planning to plan. Making the actual plan is less motivating to me.
Once the vehicle for writing becomes A PLANNER, it’s almost certain it won’t actually be one for me.

So I think I have solved the planner problem. I have never struggled with writing in a notebook. I love a good notebook. I have filled up many notebooks with goals, ideas, lists, doodles, lettering, and taped-in pieces of paper. So, it’s pretty simple. I hereby turn my bright yellow dot grid planner into a NOTEBOOK. I can write in it after my Morning Pages or at night before I go to sleep or any old time of the day whenever I want. I do know this sounds like a bunch of nothing, folks. I get it. The Precious Days are far too precious to get stuck on something as simple as this, but sometimes that’s how I roll. And for all you Planner People out there, (and I know there are a heck of a lot of you — the last data I saw online from 2016 said there were $342.7 MILLION in planner sales) I will probably never stop envying and admiring your work. It’s not you, it’s me. 😉

For some fun bonus information on planners, check out The Daily Planner and its History.

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The Precious Days 1/16/24 The Precious Days 1/16/24

The Space Between

That transitional space looms large. It’s a space big enough to accommodate some hefty doldrums. Or…could it be a much-needed space set aside for some mental health self-care? If that’s to be the case for me, I need to try to understand my long-broken relationship with the space between.

I have recently fallen into an abyss I refer to as “the space between.” The fabulous frenzy of Christmas has come and gone, and the New Year has been hijacked by the “meh” of what already feels like an endless January. This stretch of time marks the transition from the annual ending of “the holidays” and the start of the new year to waiting for spring. That transitional space looms large. It’s a space big enough to accommodate some hefty doldrums. Or…could it be a much-needed space set aside for some mental health self-care? If that’s to be the case for me, I need to try to understand my long-broken relationship with the space between. More about that later.

It’s no accident that I am writing this on January 15…

Reason #1: I gave myself the first half of January to rest, reflect, and try to figure out how to not sink too deeply into the winter blues. In my first full year of retirement last year I really struggled, and I promised myself I wouldn’t go through multiple months of that again. I’d use some strategies — daily walking, using my light box, reading fiction and some good non-fiction, writing, planning, and developing some hobbies.
Reason #2: Today is known as Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. Well, the fighter in me didn’t want to use this day as an excuse to lean even deeper into the episodes of depression that have plagued me my whole life. How did this day get such an awful moniker (even though most people living in the northern hemisphere would agree that it kind of fits)? According to Forbes Magazine, a U.K. travel company came up with the idea in 2005 as a marketing ploy to get people to book travel plans to escape the winter hell. Based on a “depression formula” they cooked up with a psychologist, they came up with the date of the 15th as opposed to any other random January day. Although the company is no longer in business, the “curse” stuck, and here I am smack dab in the middle of the month, allowing the inertia of “I’m just not feeling it” to make a beeline into a vortex of “blah.” And before you knew it, the first two weeks of a new year were gone. And what happened in those two weeks that inspired the topic of this post? I fell into “a space between.”
Reason #3: That abyss I referred to hits a watershed moment today. January 15 has become a self-imposed day of reckoning for me. Since Christmas, I have been filling this big space in unhealthy ways.

Let’s unpack …

Some of you may be familiar with in-between spaces. They are created by any kind of task, event, time, or life transition. And wouldn’t life just have to be chock full of transitions! For some people, these transitions are just common occurrences. They just happen and pass without much mental stress. Not for me. For me they are periods where I begin to feel a loss of control. I experience January as a major transition. After six plus decades of struggle, the prospect of these first two weeks of January turning into an entire winter of discontent has brought this struggle into glaring focus: I have to finally deal with the impact of my struggles with transitions. If you are, like me, a person who has struggled with transitions for your whole life, then you get it.

Personally, I am aware of at least two effects of my own struggle with transitions, and I have experienced both at various times of my life. One problematic effect of transitions for me is that at times I would just plow onto the next thing in my life, not taking time to reflect on what’s occurred, enjoy it, celebrate it, learn from it, etc. Sometimes that would happen for me when I got too deeply trapped in work mode. I would work all day then line up 20 things to do as soon as I got home from work because I did not deal well with the transition of leaving work and coming home. That was evidenced on a grand scale when I “retired” in June of 2021 and moved right into a new role in July of 2021. And yes, it took a bit of a toll. Retirement is a massive transition…and the pace of its impact can be tricky. Some of its greatest transitional impacts for me occur as the seasons change because my 40+ years in professional education (not to mention the first 16 years of schooling) centered around the seasons and how they drove life’s rhythm.

But more often, it was the second transition-related problem that I was plagued by. I would become immobilized by transition. This would manifest itself in some habits that were really bad for my mental health. Some examples:

I would struggle with Saturdays and just waste them—sitting on the couch for long periods, watching meaningless TV, and later, with the advances of technology, endlessly, mindlessly scrolling. Before I knew it, it would be 6:00 p.m. Then I’d try to cram the weekend into Sunday. By Sunday night I would be so stressed, I’d just give up.
I would be a mess the first day of any vacation (school or travel), unable to make a decision or commit to anything until that day was over.
If I had a deadline of some kind or an upcoming event that I was anxious about preparing for, I’d sleep away my productivity time then panic.
I’d engage in a stint of retail therapy characterized by impulse buying that would leave me with tons of remorse.
But perhaps the most destructive way I would fill that anxious, uncertain “space between” was with what psychotherapist and life coach Julie M. Simon calls “transition eating.”

What is transition eating?

Julie Simon defines transition eating as a habit, rather than a pathology (comforting I guess). But the root cause of it may be much deeper than a habit to break for some of us. Transition eating is emotional eating, which is often characterized by mindless eating (sometimes not even being aware that you have overeaten), a desire to “fill up” an emptiness, or often just pure avoidance of moving on to something that is making you uncomfortable. My own root causes go back to childhood feelings of fear, uncertainty, and a need to self-soothe due to some dysfunctional family dynamics. Intellectually, I know, of course, that my transition eating (or overeating) is unhealthy and is most likely responsible for the 10-20 extra pounds I carry around at various times. There have been periods of painful awareness of this problem, along with periods of healthy recovery. But I know I will probably never “cure” it.

Fortunately, these first two weeks of January have brought me into one of those “painful awareness” periods, and Julie Simon has some excellent coaching advice that I can work on and incorporate into these times of anxiousness and avoidance that lead me to transition eating.

Here are her strategies:

1) Make a list of all the times you engage in transition eating–remember, change begins with awareness.

2) Select one transition to work on. Pick a fairly easy one to start with. Don’t try to tackle all your transition eating at once. Keep in mind that your eating serves a purpose in your life and you’ll need to build in other, more adaptive, ways of coping before you can fully release it.

3) During the selected transition, set an intention to stop using food for soothing, comfort, pleasure or distraction. Take a pause when you want to grab food, and make a conscious choice to delay gratification for at least 10 minutes. Remind yourself that you’ll be fine without the food. You’re building a new habit with new associations and over time, these new habits and associations will feel more natural. You’re beginning the process of rewiring your brain circuitry for better self-regulation. Personally I would add…“feel the dang feelings!”

4) Practice self-affirming commentary every time you succeed in not eating during a transition. For example, “I’m proud of myself for going to bed tonight without first getting a snack.” Or, “I’m pleased that I didn’t go to a drive-through after I dropped the kids at soccer practice.”

5) Plan a non-food reward for yourself once you’ve conquered an area of transition eating. You deserve it!

6) When you’ve successfully released one area of transition eating, set an intention to tackle another area. Progress to more difficult areas once you have some success under your belt.

There you go. I’ll give it the ol’ college try. I feel like I’ve already started at the macro level by setting a bit of a boundary for myself to try to not extend my holiday transitional period (and the commensurate transitional eating binges) beyond January 15. I don’t regret giving myself that grace period at the start of the year, and it is probably a ritual of gentleness I’ll continue each year (hopefully in a healthier way). Speaking of rituals, I do have a strong desire this week to focus on some winter routines as I begin anew with trying some of the coaching strategies listed to more effectively deal with transitions. I do know that routines bind me more to the present moment, which is why I need them so much.

And, maybe next year, instead of sharing factoids about Blue Monday for January 15, I’ll just wish you all a “Happy New Year for Real This Time,” and you’ll get exactly what I mean (wink).

Do you struggle with post-holiday blues, a January slump, or the winter blahs? Or are you energized by a fresh start and outdoor winter activities? Let me know in the Comments.

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The Precious Days 12/31/23 The Precious Days 12/31/23

Happy New Year!

But I can’t call it a year, without a final shout out to all of you, dear readers. I think of you all so often going about your lives, living your own version of The Precious Days and taking some time out of them to read my blog. I wish you good health, an abundance of happiness and love, and as much wonder and joy as you can fit into each day in 2024.

Greetings readers! I wanted to hop on during this quiet, final day of 2023 to thank you for reading the blog and to wish you all a very happy New Year.

The whole “new year” schtick has never been one of my favorite parts of the holiday season. I am sad that Christmastime is coming to a close. It’s a good kind of sad — it just means I loved it all so much. I was never much for going out on the town on New Year’s Eve. Too much partying and loud talk always drained me and left me with an aching head and a “did I really say that???” case of remorse on New Year’s Day. I did love the parades as a child but the endless football was a bit much, and I love football, but not weeks of Bowl Games. I am terrible at goal setting (well good at setting, horrible at attainment), so the whole resolution thing doesn’t interest me much. I usually pick a word, which I forget by Martin Luther King’s birthday. This year I have chosen one based on one of the many fun Instagram reels that pop up to select a word. This year, mine came up as “renewal” and it really fit. A little dose of 2024 optimism there, maybe?

My husband and I have eschewed most of those traditional trappings. We spend a quiet evening at home on New Year’s Eve, enjoying some final indulgences of holiday food, a special cocktail, each other’s company, and a rousing game of Backgammon. At some point, we’ll hear the rumbling and know it’s time to step outside to our front walk to see the annual fireworks, which are set off in a local park. Then I will spend the rest of the evening reading, and he will return to his football coma. We may or may not still be awake to toast the New Year with a glass of prosecco.

So, some New Year’s Eve content—thanks to my online friend and women’s writing group guru, Helen, I have an idea. Helen had posted a list from Calm entitled “12 Questions: Reflect on 2023 and Move Mindfully into 2024.” True confession, this will be my first cold look at the questions. I am not sure what they might conjure up for me, and I am not sure how capable I am of any “deep reflection” today. I am still in that La La Land headspace that happens during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I’ll give it a try….

In 2023…

1) What challenges did you face? Well, the state of the world often challenged me to continue to put faith in a collective humanity. But I will hang in there, holding out hope this off-its-axis planet, especially the part my country inhabits, will come to its senses and once again value the lives of the innocent around the world, the rights of women, the health of the earth, and most of all democracy— which to me must involve some tough love sanity to have both the soul and the balls to stop the hate-fueled madness. On a more personal level, my health continues to challenge me, and I am compelled to make it more than an “in name only” priority.

2) What lessons did your challenges teach you? Ironically, in both circumstances, I need to remain vigilant and active. And, as hard as it sometimes is, I need to focus on an open-heart-love for more than I have let in currently, including more love for myself if lasting healing is to be possible.

3) What did you lose? Hmmm….well certainly not this extra 20 pounds I continue to haul around. Other than that, I am blessed that this was not a year of tremendous or profound loss for me.

4) What did you gain? Perspective. A deeper love for reading and writing. A huge appreciation for nature. An even deeper love for my friends and family. Bone-deep gratitude for the abundance in my life.

5) What happened that deserves celebrating? This blog and my wonderful readers!

6) What are you grateful for? See number 4 — and I am most grateful that the list I would include would be far too long to add in a single blog post.

OKAY, HALFWAY THROUGH AND LOSING STEAM, FOLKS!

In 2024…

1) What will you bring with you from 2023? I think more than anything a love for and appreciation of this time of my life and the people in it, which really are The Precious Days for me.

2) What will you want to leave behind? As much fear and anxiety as is possible — both of these were a constant specter in 2023. I have been working hard to get a grip on my perspective on certain aspects of my life. I wish I could leave the ugliness of the world behind….

3) What qualities do you want to cultivate? Oh boy, patience, perspective, optimism, and being more relaxed and joyful (a tall order for me ). And whatever the opposite of procrastination is…I want to cultivate that!

4) What habits or routines will support them? This is WAY TOO BIG to go into. What I do know about myself is that habits and routines save my life. More than anything, I need to remember this and make it my mantra in 2024.

5) How do you want to grow? I’d like to be more connected to the people that I care about. I’d like to read books and actually write reviews of them more frequently to deepen my connection to and appreciation of their value as stories, and what I can learn about myself and other worlds from the books I read. I’d like to continue to grow in my relationship with nature. And I’d like to continue to grow in and reflect upon this very special time of my life.

6) What commitments will you make to yourself? And there it is…the question that stumps me right now. I just don’t know, this one will take a lot of thought. Right now I can commit to working on being a better version of myself in 2024 than I was in 2023.

So there you have it. I guess I am more ready to wrap up 2023 than I thought I was. But I can’t call it a year, without a final shout out to all of you, dear readers. I think of you all so often going about your lives, living your own version of The Precious Days and taking some time out of them to read my blog. I wish you good health, an abundance of happiness and love, and as much wonder and joy as you can fit into each day in 2024.

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The Precious Days 12/22/23 The Precious Days 12/22/23

Winter Solstice

The stillness, the reflection, and the anticipation helped me feel more attuned with myself. Once I allowed the rhythms of nature to take center stage, rather than my dread of the long winter, the winter solstice signaled the start of my own personal quest to fully embrace the coming months.

Written on the morning of winter solstice — Thursday, December 21, 2023…

My husband and I will celebrate the shortest day of the year and the incremental return of much missed light with our annual winter solstice fire tonight. We’ll bundle up and head out to our backyard spot and ease our down coat-swaddled selves into our camp chairs by an open fire. As is our custom on our solstice celebration, my husband is responsible for having the fire ready, and I am in charge of a festive hot drink. This year we will have hot cider with butterscotch schnapps in our new insulated holiday mugs. Once we’re settled in, it will be time for star-gazing, sharing our thoughts about the current year, and our tentative hopes for the future. We try to keep any fears at bay and focus on gratitude. As the fire starts to die down, I’ll toss in a few slips of paper on which I’ve written what I’d like to let go of and what I hope to let in.

I have come to love this ritual with my husband. Before he came into my life, I didn’t give much thought to the solstice, other than the calendar’s pronouncement that winter had officially begun. Once we started celebrating, I really leaned into the feelings conjured up by this ritual. The stillness, the reflection, and the anticipation helped me feel more attuned with myself. Once I allowed the rhythms of nature to take center stage, rather than my dread of the long winter, the winter solstice signaled the start of my own personal quest to fully embrace the coming months. I began to view the onset of winter as my own personal time for restful hibernation and spiritual restoration. And with that, winter became a verb.

Since my retirement, I have wintered after the solstice in ways that didn’t occur while I was working. I enjoy checking the sunrise and sunset times to remind myself of the growing light that began the day after our late December backyard fire. I choose books to read that deepen the feelings of winter through their seasonal settings and also by the authors' explorations of both the dark and light sides of characters. I examine my own darkness during cold afternoon walks and do my best through deep reflection to release it. On those solitary walks I can imagine the flocks of winter birds leaving the bare trees and soaring high, carrying all my worries up into the late afternoon sky to dissolve into nothing more than a distant flutter. And as each day grows longer, I let the increasing light travel inside me to illuminate visions of spring and intentions for new beginnings.

As the winter months pass, the days will warm, and I’ll shed my heavy coats and boots. I will also find myself shedding the anxieties of the previous year. Embracing the winter solstice is my preparation to create the space in my life for that. Solstice signals it is time to unburden myself of things about the past year that are just that…the past. And I will know that as I continue wintering, my inner landscape has the potential to become as vast as Vermont’s open fields of powdery snow.

Gazing into our solstice fire on this especially cold December evening, I will be reminded that there are patches of new green growth waiting to reveal themselves underneath the wet ground and islands of snow. Along with the growing light, they will be the symbols of promise and possibility. But just for now, on this still night, the earth and I will prepare to winter together, looking forward to emerging with renewed strength – nourished, restored, and energized after our long winter rest.

TO KNOW THE DARK

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

—Wendell Berry

Do you celebrate the winter solstice? Share your rituals in the Comments. And to all of you, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the days of celebration if you celebrate. Whether you celebrate or not, I wish you all an abundance of peace and joy in The Precious Days.

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The Precious Days 11/24/23 The Precious Days 11/24/23

Thankful for so Much

Each morning another day of life unfolds, and I feel it’s my new found purpose in life to actually “experience” it all. Retirement gives us that gift. It was mostly of my own making, but while I was working I was too busy, too preoccupied to fully experience my own life…always thinking ahead or regretting something that had already passed. I don’t want to be that person anymore. But, honestly, it’s work.

I love Thanksgiving week. So many wonderful childhood memories and always new memories to make each year. This year my husband and I did our annual Thanksgiving morning walk at the golf course. It’s a great spot for a brisk walk. This year our walk was under cloudy skies, but I was just as grateful for it as I would have been under a sunny blue sky. “Grateful for it all” was the theme of so many Instagram Thanksgiving posts, and I have to agree. I am finally learning to be grateful for it ALL. Each morning another day of life unfolds, and I feel it’s my new found purpose in life to actually “experience” it all. Retirement gives us that gift. It was mostly of my own making, but while I was working I was too busy, too preoccupied to fully experience my own life…always thinking ahead or regretting something that had already passed. I don’t want to be that person anymore. But, honestly, it’s work.

So for this post, I want to focus on some of the things I am so thankful for in the spirit of this Thanksgiving week. There are so many things, but these are the things that stand out. When I reflect on them, they are the observations, the lessons, the joys, the serendipitous glimpses and the deliberate pauses I often take to remind myself that my life as it is is just plain enough. And enough is beautiful.

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. ”

— G.K. Chesterton

So here we go.

I am thankful for…

Long walks filled with noticing birds busy with their instinctive tasks, trees holding on to last leaves, families coming and going, changing skies, and my strong sense of place.

Watching my dachshund prance around in her neon-lit collar during her late evening walk under a star-filled sky, breathing the night air deeply into my lungs before both our bedtimes.

Morning texts with Dena, Lauren, Laurie, and Brenda through every season, wishing each other happy and productive days, describing plans to look forward to, sharing memes and little jokes along with Wordle scores and just-in-time advice and support as needed. This sisterhood of wise and funny women is the bedrock for so much joy in my life.

Spotify playlists that fit every mood and occasion, some songs with lyrics that sing what’s in my heart or on my mind so poignantly that they are played over and over.

Phone calls with my brother and sister-in-law, chatting about our shared past, sharing complex memories of those who have left us, and how we continue to navigate the ordinary days of our lives, as family.

So many books, my new retirement best friends. Reading challenges, nourishes, and entertains me. These books enrich my days with new perspectives, deep thoughts, places to explore, resonant emotions of kindred characters, shared humanity, and of course, laughter, tears, and downright awe at the wonder of stories.

British everything…cups of tea, The Archers, Acorn TV, Britbox, old Sherlock Holmes black and white movies, and carrying on my mother’s very English holiday traditions that Thanksgiving signals it’s time to begin again.

My book group friends, Maddie and Mary Lynn with whom I’ve have shared about 40 years of history and the bonds of abiding friendship.

My online women’s writing group friends who inspire me to be a better writer, a more thoughtful and realistic sojourner as I age, and a stronger and more grateful woman in each and every moment.

Each and every moment of shared joy and unconditional love from my husband. He continues to be the greatest blessing in my life.

And of course, dear readers, I am thankful for all of you, sharing The Precious Days with me through these posts and your thoughtful comments. Thank you all so much.

What are you most thankful for this year?

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The Precious Days 11/10/23 The Precious Days 11/10/23

The Yellow Light of November

November’s gray morning skies and golden sunsets offer us days to breathe and to be thoughtful and thankful. It’s a month of space.

"The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of. The mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July." — Henry David Thoreau

This rambling blog post is my love letter to November. I love the yellow hues of November. The “thin yellow light” Thoreau praises is only seen in spring and then again in fall, especially in November. There is a certain slant of light and moodiness of the sky that only comes in those two seasons. And when it comes in November, it turns the treetops golden against the blue-gray sky.

Welcoming early November is a celebration for me. I have actually declared it my favorite month, and I am quite sure from the looks I get that I don’t have a lot of confederates. It’s neither flashy nor full of the bucket-list pressures of October. I confess to feeling a bit manic in early fall. This is me: Cider donuts at the farmstand, come on let’s go while they are still warm! We need mums for the front walkway! Let’s get our pumpkin! Get in the car for a foliage ride! Let’s get pictures of all this color while the light is good! Fall picnic! It’s both exhilarating and exhausting.

Enter late fall…and the Zen Master, November. The ostentatious hoopla of “everybody’s favorite season” in Vermont has calmed down, if not disappeared. The leaves have taken on their yellow hue, many already having turned an earthy brown. There is less of the sun that lit up the oranges and reds, and the clouds of the contemplative month roll in. November’s quiet arrival heralds a month of potential stillness. November’s gray morning skies and golden sunsets offer us days to breathe, to be thoughtful and thankful. It’s a month of space. The space between the first of November and Thanksgiving is just right for long solitary walks, quiet reflection, curling up with a mug of warm tea and a book, resting, and just being. November is my psalm, and I praise its arrival.

“God bless our perfect, perfect grey day
With trees so bare, so bare
But oh so beautiful, so beautiful
The grey, blue sky, the world is here”

— "Thoughts on Grey Day" spoken poem on Fleetwood Mac's Bare Trees album (1972)

By mid-to-late November, you can begin to feel the transitional phase of the month. Punctuated by early, sparse flurries, gray skies, the last of the geese, bare tree limbs, carpets of wet leaves slippery and glistening with rain and melted snow, and of course, Thanksgiving, there is a quiet beauty that I love to savor. It begins to sink in that another year is almost at its end as thoughts of Christmas nudge their way into each day as the month moves on. So the end of the month becomes filled with anticipation, but there will be plenty of time for rushing around for the holidays in December. November, I will remind myself, is for paying attention.

I recently read a book that for me was meant to be read in November, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Sarah B talked about it on her podcast Time and Other Thieves (I listen on Spotify). It’s a painfully beautiful book by Jean-Dominque Bauby, the former editor of the French Elle Magazine. He suffered a massive stroke which left him alive, but with the rare “locked in syndrome.” I won’t go into a full review or any spoilers, but if you haven’t read it, put it on your list. It is the perfect book for a November afternoon. One of the things he comments on is “the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest.” These small events (capturing the moment, small slices of life, small gusts of happiness) are what I slow down and give my attention to in November.

My love affair with the month of November is indeed “punctuated by the small events” that capture my attention and mark the passage of its days. Those small events began as far back as elementary school and have become such special November memories. From great leaf piles of once flaming color, my friend Brenda and I kicked and shuffled the yellow and brown decaying foliage into neat rows in anyone’s front yard on the way home from school. On Veteran’s Day, which was a day off from school, we would run to the local park, jumping through more massive piles of crunchy leaves on our way to Ann’s Bake Shop for a candy apple. Then, wearing our red poppies, we were off to the local American Legion for a free bean and hot dog dinner with local elderly veterans. The waning sun, the smell of snow flurries, and damp socks inside wet shoes signaled it was time for us to rush home before the early darkness of the time change. Then there were the November preparations for Thanksgiving. My job as a child was to make sure the bread crusts were set out to dry in the oven for my mother’s Thanksgiving stuffing. And Thanksgiving, of course, was the crown jewel of the month, rivaled only by Stir-It-Up Sunday, a tradition of my mother’s Anglican, English family. Right after Thanksgiving, my mother and aunt would make our Christmas pudding, with future-vegetarian-me consigned to grind the suet. They each had a “drop of port” when the work was done. This tradition continued until we moved to another house. Through middle school and high school I spent our Veteran’s Day of no school downtown with friends, watching the parade, eating those candy apples (does anyone take more than two bites of a candy apple?), and loving the November day, rain or shine. Then later, in high school, my friend Paula and I discovered Fleetwood Mac’s Bare Trees album. And there it was (and still is)…my soundtrack of November.

November calls on me to pay attention, to be present. It coaxes me to gently plan, create, contemplate, rest, and reflect on how much I have to be grateful for. Although November may signal an end of something to most people, for me it’s the beginning of a contemplative season. Book in hand, I will make my slipper-clad way to the couch and make a toast to the month with my steaming mug of chai latte, then lose myself in thought, gazing out the window at a sliver of yellow light against a moody blue-gray sky.

“November is a bare branch caught in just the right amount of yellow moonlight, moving back and forth in the nighttime wind, holding steadfast to its few remaining leaves, not quite ready to let go of The Precious Days.”

— Me, it's a quote from me...🙂

What about you? Are you a November lover or do you have other feelings about the month? Let me know in the Comments.

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The Precious Days 11/3/23 The Precious Days 11/3/23

The World Tells a Story

But for now, as I often do, I turn to poetry to help me make sense of the senseless and express what I can’t. Poetry is solace for me. I share poems with friends to celebrate, to mourn, to reflect, to acknowledge, and to wonder and marvel. Poetry is a space to draw in a healing breath and exhale a confirmation that someone, a poet, has given voice to the moment in time you occupy. A poem can bear witness, too.

***Photo: Unsplash - Mark Olsen @markolsen***

DISCLAIMER: I wrote this post almost two weeks ago. I debated about posting it. I know many people come here for content about the joys and celebrations experienced in The Precious Days of retirement, and I know how much I love writing about those things. But there are sorrows and grief in those days, too, making the days that are ordinary and full of joy all the more precious. As I continue to navigate my days and move forward with life, I believe it’s important to bear witness to the challenges and tragedies this world seems to hold (with the greatest frequency I can ever remember in my adult life). I grieve for and honor the innocent people who are not able to move on. I have decided to post this as it is, and as it was earlier in the month.

Once again, this was not the post I intended to write. I was longing to return to topics more reflective of living The Precious Days. Yet from the horrendous events of October 7 and the deaths of so many innocent people to the horrific mass shooting in Maine, with communities far and near living in fear, I felt I had to bear witness to this “story to break your heart.” Even as the news was shared that the gunman in Maine had been found dead, there were fresh images of Israel advancing a ground war into Gaza.

So I felt I could not bring myself to write about the usual topics of my life in a blog post. And I don’t have the energy to go on about the politics of it all, and what needs to change in a country that has lost its way, along with this increasingly unstable and violent world. Nor do I have the words to express my sorrow, my anger, and my outrage. These heavy times are breaking so many of us. And so, I go about my life, weighted with sadness, but refusing to accept that we are powerless to change things. I am thinking through how I can take some action, to be part of positive change in a way that I can say, “This must change and here’s what I am doing.”

“What can a poem do? A poem is a not a tourniquet when you’re bleeding. It’s not water when you’re thirsty or food when you’re hungry. A poem can’t protect you from an airstrike, or from abduction, or from hate. It’s hard to write when our words feel like they’re not enough—they can’t do the real, tangible work of saving lives, or making people safer. But can they remind us of our humanity? I think they can, and I think we desperately need a reminder.”

— Maggie Smith - Poet "thoughts on singing in dark times" (Substack)

I love this quote from Maggie Smith. Mary Oliver’s Lead is such a poem. Sometimes it can seem like there are too many places in life’s journey where hope is not alive, where pain is so stark that it breaks our hearts. But if, as Mary writes, that deep grief can break our hearts open, then we must hold space to testify, to feel deeply, both the bleak and the beautiful. It is still my endless hope that such capacity is what defines us as human.

Lead

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing.,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

Mary Oliver, (New and Selected Poems Volume Two), Beacon Press.

Recently the sun has been breaking through to remind me of all there is to love. I will return to celebrating The Precious Days very soon. Thanks for staying with me here.

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The Precious Days 10/20/23 The Precious Days 10/20/23

Self-Sabotage

Well, it’s not quite that dramatic, but that pretty much describes the funk I have gotten myself into this October. I could have pulled from one of the many blog ideas I have ready in the wings. I could have dismissed my absence with a breezy, “Oh, I have been so busy this month, where did the time go” as an explanation for not posting a blog since October first. But that wouldn’t be honest. I promised my readers I would portray the ebb and flow of The Precious Days as authentically as possible.

*Photo from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/life-what-happens-you-while-youre-busy-making-other-plans-aumeerally/*

Self-sabotage — sounds so James Bondish, doesn’t it? And I must say there have been times this month when I felt out-maneuvered by phantom forces. Those forces? Just life being life. That is the curse of too much planning and too many expectations. When I fall into that trap, I can become paralyzed in procrastination. Things aren’t working out? Just avoid EVERYTHING. Well, it’s not quite that dramatic, but that pretty much describes the funk I have gotten myself into this October. I could have pulled from one of the many blog ideas I have ready in the wings. I could have dismissed my absence with a breezy, “Oh, I have been so busy this month, where did the time go” as an explanation for not posting a blog since October first. But that wouldn’t be honest. I promised my readers I would portray the ebb and flow of The Precious Days as authentically as possible.

I am learning so much about myself as the rhythm of the days, weeks, months, years, and especially seasons unfold. I have imposed some pressures on myself in the form of unrealistic expectations about how my life “should be.” Oh, I’d love to go with the flow so much it hurts, but I am not wired that way. For my entire work life I had to have a plan, a design, a framework that would help to make sense of multi-faceted goals and competing priorities. That’s the kind of hard-wiring that is difficult to shake. That careful planning and mapping and evaluating worked so well for me. Yet, one of the lessons I was loath to learn is that it has never worked for me in my personal life. If anything, I find a myriad of ways to rebel against it…to self-sabotage.

There are things about me that I guess I thought would magically disappear once I was no longer working. WHAT WAS I THINKING??? I find a lot of magic in my life, but spontaneous change of life-long struggles isn’t one of them. Darn. Readers, retirement is not my magic bullet. Womp, womp.

“Self-sabotage are patterns of thinking and behavior that lock us in a loop or send us to a downward spiral, preventing us from moving forward and achieving our goals. These are subconscious ways for us to generate our own stress either now or later on.”

— Rachel Bonifacio

In The Thin Line Between Self-Care and Self-Sabotage published in Medium, author Rachel Bonifacio points out the dark side of “self-care.” In many ways, retirement can feel like an opportunity for one long Saturday night of self-care. In the article, wellness coach and psychological counselor Rachel defines real self-care as “consciously choosing to engage in activities that will allow you to live the kind of life you want to create for yourself.” Okay, so that’s what I was going for. Where did I go wrong? Rachel again: “Self-care is all about facing, befriending, accepting, and moving forward with your shadow self, i.e. the parts of you that you think are not aligned to the life you’re trying to create or those that you don’t want to admit that you have (insecurities and weaknesses).” Oh…hello, shadow.

Rachel goes on to describe “self-care” as an umbrella with lots of categories that can actually get us out of balance if there is “too much” of a need to fill our lives with these categories. She further describes self-sabotage in much the same way, and the following categories really resonated with, at the very least, October me: numbing, procrastination, over-committing and unrealistic expectations, and another very interesting category she calls, “searching for chaos.” Hmmm….

Mercifully, Rachel lists some strategies that are very doable and wise. They all begin with practicing mindfulness and pressing the pause button (much like I am trying to do with this blog post), and then asking yourself the following questions:

What is the intention of this behavior or activity?

Will I feel emotionally or mentally recharged later by doing this now?
Is this something I need to do for self-maintenance?
What am I trying to avoid or escape from?
Which dimension of my well-being am I supporting by choosing this?
Will my future self thank me later? Or will my future self experience suffer or regret?
Will this allow me to do the things I need to accomplish more effectively?
Am I acting wisely or am I acting out my inner child?

The article is helping me think through my own “October Surprise” (and I do plan on having a much more flow-worthy November, my favorite month) with a great deal more reflection and compassion. Journaling has really helped. I highly recommend giving the article a close read if you ever experience something similar.

I write posts like this as a cautionary tale, in solidarity with those who are retired or thinking about it. There are wonderful days of flow and joy and intense appreciation. But it’s my mistake to think they will just unfold, like “yup, this is my life now, ain’t it grand?” That may sound overly simplistic, but in reflecting on “what the heck just happened” in the last month, I can see that was the issue for me. Slow days, autumn color, long solitary walks, yoga and meditation, good books, cozy sweaters, learning new things, etc. — that was the grand “self-care” plan for fall, a season I love so much it actually hobbled me when it didn’t go as planned. Home improvement construction (lots of it), inside and out, filled the sunny beautiful days of October. It seemed like the few days where I could get back on track with things I love were replaced with stress, paint cans, rain, and migraines. Then, another set of construction guys entered the picture. That’s not self-sabotage…that’s just life. The self-sabotage comes in the way I experience those things. In my former life, I would just throw myself into work as a distraction — “this too shall pass.” What I noticed about myself this October was not tactical distraction, but pure avoidance/procrastination patterns (see the categories from the article). And now the calendar days have flown by like a segue scene from an old black and white movie. I felt my beautiful fall reset had turned into a full-on shut down. If this post had a sound effect it would be the screeching of car brakes. And I think I got out of my own way just in time.

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. ”

— Lao-Tzu

This quote came into my life at the right time. It introduces a very helpful article from Zen Habits entitled 12 Practical Steps for Learning to Go with the Flow. It reminds me that of all the things I wanted so desperately to learn, to begin, meditation still is at the top of the list. Each time I have tried, I have either been so antsy I felt like fleeing or so relaxed that I simply fell asleep. The lesson in this is clear — those struggles are exactly why I need to show up, put in the mental sweat, and learn. It won’t kill me, but it might, indeed, make me stronger. My body is screaming for me to stick with the goal of stretching. I eschewed The Stretching Sidekick because it was too rigid and boring. That’s that self-sabotage again. I’m clever enough to adjust it and make it work for me. SarahBSeeking of the Time and Other Thieves podcast reminded me about Adriene on YouTube. I used to love those videos…I can come back and give it another try…slowly. No pressure. And I do love that Julia Cameron 12 week course…and if it becomes 12 months and I only intermittently do an Artist Date, that is totally fine. I love the writing parts and the solitary walks. I just don’t want the self-pressure. Now that’s the form of self-care I need that won’t lead to self-sabotage. I feel I am approaching this period of my life, this desire to learn to “go with the flow” in alignment with the steps outlined in the Zen Habits article:

Realize that you can’t control everything.
Become aware.
Breathe.
Get perspective.
Practice.
Baby steps.
Laugh.
Keep a journal.
Meditate.
Realize that you can’t control others.
Accept change and imperfection.
Enjoy life as a flow of change, chaos and beauty.

We are all going to experience retirement differently, so I do appreciate it when women share their ups and downs in the Comments. I had my first session with my women’s group for a new phase for us all. This session was led by Annie of Annie’s Journey. One of the things I love most about these women is the way we gently support each other. They actually inspired this post. All these joys, sorrows, setbacks, and triumphs are valid…they are parts of who we are. Although I may share a lot of my own missteps, I have never felt like any attempt at learning was a failure. That especially goes for my attempts at learning more about myself living The Precious Days.

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