Tag Archives: retirement lifestyle

My Christmas Spirit Checklist

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Life is more than big plans.

2132772612 a7f420ccf0 m2 My Christmas Spirit Checklist

Image by paparutzi via Flickr

Building a retirement lifestyle means taking care of the big decisions and issues but that is only the start. It also means living on a minute to minute basis and making sure that those minutes count. The clock is ticking and no one knows how many of those precious minutes are left. That is a big problem for me and so I’m going to address it. I get really caught up in the big plans, the ones that take months or years to accomplish and while I’m working on them the short term enjoyments get forgotten. I have to schedule small trips like museums and local sights because on a day to day basis, I’m always too busy to be spontaneous. It is still a problem for me but not so much as before I made it part of my plan.

Short term is important.

These is another dimension of working in the future that I struggle with as well. You could call it enjoying the moment. In this case, the moment is Christmas and I’m fighting the impulses that tell me to just forget about it. The kids are out of the house and there are no grandchildren so it is easy to say bah humbug and keep working. I’m fighting that too because each day is a step on the path to my future and if I wait to enjoy myself until I’m there, it may be too late.

So what am I doing?

Last week I asked about five of the ways we celebrate Christmas: music, food, cards, a tree and lights. I asked you to vote your view about them and their importance to you this season. Well, my own indifference surprised me. I don’t have much Christmas spirit yet and the big day is closing in. I decided that maybe you don’t do those things because you have Christmas spirit. Maybe you have Christmas spirit because you do those things.

So I started doing.

300px Beef Wellington Whole1 My Christmas Spirit Checklist

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday I sent Christmas cards. It felt good but it was only a start. Today I started researching food for our Christmas dinner. I found a Christmas special from Gordon Ramsey The best part of it was his own version of Beef Wellington. I re-watched the video today taking notes. I’m starting to get a bit excited. I can already smell the mulled wine and the roasted nuts. I have to call the market to make sure I have the right cut of meat but there is still time. I’ve never done Beef Wellington but it is already seeming more like Christmas.

What else?

There is still the Christmas music to play. It’s in the back of the CD player cartridge. I just need to play it instead of the news while we fix dinner. I plan to pick up a tree sometime this week. Since they start trying to move them, I’m thinking I will get a good deal but that’s not the real point. Sure it is a hassle to put up the tree and even worse taking it down. The point is that that effort and commitment gives purpose to the season.

There won’t be any Christmas lights at the Carlson manse but that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate Mike across the street and the rest of lighted houses.

I’m beginning to feel the spirit moving and I like it.

My Christmas Spirit Checklist

What is RalphCarlsonBlog Part 3

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If you missed parts 1 and 2 you may want to read them now.

Each day is an experimental laboratory for understanding lifestyle design. No action is mandatory. I can stay in bed all day without consequence should I choose. But each decision forms my lifestyle, present and future. Exercise today and have more energy now and retain an active lifestyle longer in the future. Stimulate my brain today and promote a longer intellectual life. Engage in revenue generating business actiities nd support a richer set of lifestyle opportunities. Take the time to enjoy family and friends and reach out for social activities. Enjoy nature and the arts.

Each minute is an opportunity that will never come again and each minute is a foundation for the rest of my life. What I am able to do tomorrow is a consequence of what I do today.

If I make those decisions willy nilly, by whim or how I feel at any moment, I lose control of the future. I know that I cannot control the future and that at any moment a random action can change my life forever but since these are things I cannot control I don’t let them affect my decisions.

I know that by planning each day, I can influence the future days. Discipline in using my time is my tool to create the future lifestyle I want.  So RalphCarlsonBlog exists to document my efforts to create a satisfying retirement lifestyle and share anything that I have learned.

 

Thinking about work.

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300px Modern chain gang Thinking about work.

Image via Wikipedia

Retirement puts work in a new perspective. When I was working, the idea was that work was part of a career. You chose a profession or a calling and it defined your life and who you were. That was always the way I thought about it when I was young and getting started with my life. It pretty much stayed that way through my career although toward the end I found myself wondering about my choices. Was there a better way to manage my life and could I manage without a job altogether. And who was I anyway?

Still I maintain a pretty conventional outlook toward work. I couldn’t get over the feeling that my job defined me. Even when I was stimulated to consider the fantasy jobs I wished for in my life, I couldn’t get past the idea of a job and working for someone. Most people don’t have an independent income and need some way to support themselves. These days, the standard is a job, selling your time and talent for money. We like to rationalize that into a career or a calling but there is nothing noble about exchanging time for money and being dependent. A job is selling out a part of your life.

There is nothing wrong with this transaction but when we turn it into something noble and call it a career, your life gets perverted. Your priorities are all off.

Who are you really?

I was shaken out of that mindset by a comment on my post about career fantasies. Hansi said “Wait a minute. I didn’t have any stinking career. I’m not defined by what I did for 30 years. It was just something I agreed to do to support the lifestyle I wanted.” I’m paraphrasing and expanding his comment a bit but I think I’m pretty close. No bullshit about how much satisfaction and community value resulted from his work. Obviously value was provided but it didn’t define who Hansi was. He didn’t need the job to give his life meaning. When did I miss that lesson?

As a recovering career seeker, I wish I might have had a better perspective about work during my ‘career’. It might have saved me a lot of frustration and heartache. It might have given me freedom to be me. It might have changed my life and put me in a better place to manage my life.

As it is, my eyes are opening now as I try to design and manage a retirement lifestyle without the support from a job or career to define me. I am winging it but slowly I seem to be growing a backbone and taking chances both in ways to make money and ways to live. I still need work but no more selling out and no more career. I’m designing a lifestyle.

Thinking about work.

Are you retired? re-TIRED? or just tired?

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3148966978 cb8111dbc0 m1 Are you retired? re TIRED? or just tired?

Image by annechisholm via Flickr

Retirement lifestyle design has a big problem.  

That problem is the word retirement.  I’m not sure where the word retire comes from but as it stands it fails miserably at inspiring. It sounds lame. It sounds boring. It sounds… well, tired.

If you are TIRED in your re-TIREment, who’s surprised?

Retirement is probably a bad word to use to describe the last part of your life because it reflects a negative vision and suggests retreat instead of charge. You stop working. You stop earning an income.You stop dreaming.

But what do you start?

You know what happens when you drive someplace new without a map. You end up somewhere you don’t want to be.  So if you retired without a plan and a mission, expect the same result. And expect not to be too excited about life.  Expect to be re-TIRED.

Now stop and think.

How do you want to finish your life? Where do you want to go? What’s your vision? When you aren’t moving toward a goal you are falling back. It’s just a fact. If you don’t have a mission that gets you out of bed energized each day, then you are re-TIRED. What was your plan? How hard have you been working it? And how big is your dream? If you are re-TIRED, it means you don’t have one.

Retire re-TIRE!

If I had my way, we would retire the word retire from the dictionary because it sets up the wrong expectations and dynamic for a time of life that should be a blaze of glory. Retirement should be a time when you marshal all the skills, talents and resources from your life to this point and pull our all the stops to live life to the max. One of the problems is that by the time most of us retire, our bodies are beginning to fail. There isn’t the energy and resilience. It takes some effort to get it going every day. Who gets excited about being re-TIRED. It wears me out just thinking about it.

So get a dream and make a plan!

Rather than drifting into retirement casually and letting life happen, retirement lifestyle should be built on a mission and have a plan. And that mission has to be one that energizes you. When you have a mission in your retirement, that mission will create energy to overcome the complications from losing physical strength and keep your attitude positive.  Without a mission, retirement is boring and routine. Retirement is re-TIREment, each and every day.

Are you re-TIRED? 

So my question today is: what is your mission? What mission gets you excited and fills your day with activity and generated enough energy to overcome the inertia of life? Or are you just re-TIRED?  What is your dream that makes the difference?

Are you retired? re TIRED? or just tired?

Retirement Lifestyle:There’s no time to waste.

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6643270 a66e930764 m1 Retirement Lifestyle:Theres no time to waste.

Image by RaeAllen via Flickr

What are you waiting for?

I just celebrated my birthday; Even though I try to forget how many of them I have had, I can’t really deny that I am getting old. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I could pretend it isn’t so. As long as I didn’t look to closely at the image in the mirror when I shaved, I felt young – or at least not old. Lately, it’s not so easy. Despite the efforts of a personal trainer who has get me into the best muscle tone since basic training, there is no fooling mother nature. I need more sleep than I used to and my knees hurt all the time.

I’m not saying this to whine and complain. Whining helps me cope a bit but it doesn’t make the pain any less. Complaining diverts me from what is important. There is a finite amount of time left. My life is wrapping up and there are a bunch of things that I still want to do while I can. I don’t have all that much time left.

It’s not just the aging process.

There is also the possibility that I will suffer some physical injury or disability that prevents me from being active. I can’t control those events.  I likely have twenty or so years left but I can’t guarantee that those twenty years will be active and healthy. Each day that I can get up, take a walk and live a normal life is a blessing. I don’t know how many I have left but I want to live every one fully.

So this is what motivates me these days. I don’t have any time to waste. There are things I want to do, places I want to go and I need to generate some income to grease those skids. This gets me going each morning. It makes me pay attention to my work schedule and it and it motivates me to include fun breaks as well.

It would be easy to relax and go with the flow. 

It would be easy to accept my age and slack off. I could take it easy and coast to the finish line but imagine how I will feel twenty years from now on my death bed. What will I have to think about? What experiences will my wife and I share. How will I feel about my life?  Maybe siting on a rocking chair and watching the sunset has it’s charms and I’ll probably get to that point sooner or later. Still I want to have many exciting experiences between now and then. I couldn’t figure out what the point of taking riding lessons was and then I discovered horse trekking in Iceland. We haven’t even begun to explore the possibilities.

What’s your retirement style? 

Maybe you think that retirement lifestyle is making do with what you have. Maybe you are happy just sitting on a porch and letting your life wind down. Maybe you have decided that it is too late to do the things that you never had the time or money to do before. I’m not saying that you are wrong. I just know that I haven’t lived my life with the enthusiasm and spirit I wanted up til now. I don’t plan to continue that mistake. Nobody can tell me how much time I have left and how long I will have the physical strength to remain an active participant in life. So I’m not waiting any longer. I’ve got a lot of living to do.

Retirement Lifestyle:Theres no time to waste.