Category: Learning

I had a birthday … 67 and damned glad to see it. We did the usual. I made coconut layer cake and helped Dale make my favorite mushroom and Italian sausage lasagna with red pepper tomato sauce. It takes the two of us most of the day to make it.

We each had a piece of cake, and the rest went into the freezer. We’ll see how long it lasts there! I made a vow to quit eating candy, mostly jelly beans and my all-time favorite, Bottle Caps (a Wonka product).

But I did not give up sugar completely – just trying to be more sensible about the whole thing. I figure a piece of cake or pie now and then is an essential and joyous part of life, but lying in bed with a book and a bowl of compressed dextrose is unnecessary.

Tonight is another run at lasagna, and then it’s off to the freezer for him. The last piece usually goes down around January. For two people who love to cook and eat, plenty of freezer space is a gift.  

I was feeling out of sorts about the creative activities that fuel my retirement and spent some time reflecting on why I continue to beat myself up for not doing more or being better at it. I think it goes back to childhood – wanting to be seen and heard by parents who were largely absent. There’s this drive to succeed at all costs, but the true cost is the toll it takes on my self-esteem because I’m mostly disappointed in the outcome.

As I was browsing around looking for a lifeline, I stumbled on an article by Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote, Eat, Pray Love, a book I could hardly get through. There’s also a notable TED talk on the same subject. All of it relates to her book called Big Magic. My library had it, so I hopped on over there, killed it with my library card and dragged it home, whereupon I found my spot on the comfy couch and spent the day reading.

The book was published in 2015, but it was new to me, and I loved it. It is hands-down the best thing I’ve read about creativity and how to deal with the frustrations of fear, expectations, success, failure – all the little demons that try to drag us down.   

In one of my favorite passages, she compared being creative to having a border collie. She said you have to give it something to do or it will find something to do, and you will not like the thing it finds to do.

“A creative mind is exactly the same. My experience with having a creative mind is that if I don’t give it a task, a ball to chase, a stick to run after, some ducks to herd, I don’t know, something, it will turn on itself. It’s really important for my mental health that I keep this dog running. So give your dog a job, and don’t worry about whether the outcome is magnificent or eternal, whether it changes people’s lives, whether it changes the world, whether it changes you, whether it’s original, whether it’s groundbreaking, whether it’s marketable. Just give the dog a job, and you’ll have a much happier life, regardless of how it turns out.”

I know there are a lot of creative dabblers out there – if you need some positive reinforcement, I highly recommend this book. I should probably just go ahead and buy it in case I need a booster shot. It was exactly the medicine I needed to keep this dog running.

Which leaves me with my latest piece of woodburning art. You got a peek at this earlier, when I burned in a couple of the golfing cats. I like it, but I don’t love it yet. However, it’s early in our courtship. I wasn’t even going to share it, but after reading the book, I said, who cares if it isn’t perfect, put it out there. You can see the details better in the image I uploaded to the gallery.

Just keep practicing creativity. Give the dog a job.

One of my golf buddies worked at the course as a volunteer in exchange for playing privileges. But then he got uppity and got fired. As he shared the story with me, I realized I’m probably unemployable at this point. Not that I’m uppity, but my bullshit meter is pegged. Oh, and my inside voice is now my outside voice. You can see where this is going.

Lucky me! While I salute those who want and/or need to keep working, I was born to retire. People ask what we do all day. Like working for the man is all there is. Don’t they know there’s a whole life beyond what we do or did for a living? I’m not saying I’m productive, but my dance card is full.

As I wrote on my About Me profile, “My full-time job is to take care of myself, be kind to others, enjoy simple pleasures and indulge in creative pursuits. I especially like to play golf, walk, swim, cook, read, write, watch TV, listen to music, make art and grow cannabis.”

Deep Water Running

I’ve added a couple of new things. In addition to regularly swimming laps, I now do what is called deep water running. In this exercise, one wears a floatation belt and mimics jogging. Your head is above water, and your feet don’t touch the bottom. You do travel a bit, but it’s easy to maneuver to keep yourself in roughly the same area.

It’s great because it’s something you can do in your backyard pool. The downside is that it’s kind of boring. However, I’ve noticed a huge improvement in my chronic lower back pain. I don’t know if it’s strengthening my core or what, but I must figure out a way to keep this up all year. It’s that good.   

There are other exercises you can do in the deep end, and I’m beginning to explore those. I tried cross-country skiing, but that one seems to aggravate an old knee injury. So, he got chopped.

If you’re going to try this out, my suggestion is to go slow. No more than 10 minutes at first to see which body parts react. With running, I did feel a reaction in my back at first, but it wasn’t pain. It was more like muscle fatigue, but that has passed.

Learning to draw

My last piece of art motivated me to try and get better at drawing. For many years, I’ve said if I could draw, I’d draw cats golfing. Sure, there’s the lingering question about why cats golf, but it’s also a thing I have … a fixation.

Surprisingly, the art world is largely devoid of golfing cats. Finally, I said, well, shit, I guess I’ll just have to teach myself.

I started with the Ben Hogan classic book, The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, which is finely illustrated. I practiced drawing the humans and then tried to convert them to cats. I also Googled golf clip art and copied some of those positions. It’s still hit or miss, but I find this activity disturbingly satisfying.

For next steps, I ordered a book from Amazon on how to draw cats. A bit of professional help, as it were. You would be shocked by the huge selection! My tribe is out there … I just haven’t found them yet. I’m also trying to translate the drawing to my woodburning. It’s hard to get the detail, so I’ve had to make some accommodations.

Overall, I have a lot to learn about drawing. I’m not sure where to start. There are boatloads of books and websites on the subject, and it’s a bit overwhelming. I’m thinking basics. Special pencils? Paper?

As with all things retirement and maybe life if I had to do it all over again, I think it’s important to resist the impulse to seek quantifiable results and simply enjoy the experience of seeing how it all unfolds.

My friend, Carole, is an amazing artist. Her house is filled with all kinds of creations using different mediums, different techniques. She casts a wide net when it comes to art. I love it all, but my favorite is what you see in the pictures above. Paper mache (or papier-mâché for you fancy folks).

I didn’t even know it was possible to do what she does. I’m a novice artist, a dabbler, really, but every time I see Carole’s work, I am inspired to take a leap.

While Carole has been at it for years, I didn’t even consider trying to create art until retirement. I’ve always messed around with writing, but other than a little photography many moons ago, I avoided anything visual or hands-on.

And then as the story goes, I salvaged some wood from my neighbor and couldn’t decide what to do with it. Eventually, I landed on burning designs with a pyrography tool and then filling in the designs with color. Kind of like making my own coloring book. And yes, I always colored inside the lines.

I’ve previously suggested I would be interested in selling my pieces, but I’ve decided to keep them. They are part of my life experience, and I like looking at them.

The latest is slightly different than the rest.

My other neighbor was doing some work around his cabin in the mountains and brought this back for me to play with. I don’t know what kind of wood it is, but it was hard to burn. It’s a good bit larger than my typical pallet scraps.

After visiting Carole’s home recently, I realized there is no end to her artistic drive and creativity. I mean, I’m just a grasshopper, but couldn’t I stretch myself at least a little?

This time around, I attempted to draw a few real things other than just random doodles. I’m not particularly good at what I call representational art, but who cares? The thing I love about art is that it doesn’t have to be realistic. I decide what a mermaid looks like. Mine has gray hair!

I’ve learned a lot from my experiments with art … and from seeing different types of art and hanging out with people like Carole and my sister, who is an accomplished quilter and fabric artist. So many different ideas! So much to learn!

All it takes is commitment. Curiosity. As a friend of mine used to say, you don’t need talent. You either do art or you don’t. Some other revelations:

• Perfection is overrated.  
• Art teaches you to trust yourself.
• The act of creating art might be as free as you’ll ever be.
• Retirement is the perfect time to find your inner artist.

I’ve been sort of a slacker when it comes to writing, but I like to think of it as refining the art of the slack. I’m exhausted by the high standards of productivity some people set for themselves in retirement. Certainly, my days are reasonably busy, but I don’t document my activities with quarterly reports and the dreaded self-assessment.

While big goals typically require planning, preparation and commitment, in the art of the slack, it’s important to set a low bar for the routines of daily life. This is contrary to my former approach, which was anything worth doing was worth doing with disturbing ferocity. I used to say my tombstone should read, “She tried hard.”

Retirement has mellowed me. I’m learning to enjoy life with less effort. It turns out the universe will nudge you one way or the other, and it all works out in the end. Still, I’ve learned a few important lessons you’ll want to know about.

1. Try to wash your sheets once a week, but they can wait if you’ve got something better to do.
2. Dress for less. You probably have all the clothes you’ll ever need.
3. Go gray. It’s less work, less expensive and beautiful.
4. Dust settles and will sit quietly minding its own business longer than you think.
5. Weeds look like flowers if you squint.
6. After a shower, squeegee and wipe it down with a towel. It’s a pain in the ass, but you might only need to scrub the shower once a month or less.
7. If you have a dishwasher, skip the pre-rinse. Google it if you don’t believe me.
8. Go ahead. Make a top-10 list but stop at eight.

If you’re among those who enjoy gathering metrics, please feel free to call bullshit on me. For the rest, I’m eager to know … how are you refining the art of the slack?

We’re all here to learn.

For most, a job forces us to be competitive, whether we like it or not. We crawl our way to the top of the pile to make more money, validate our self-worth and provide for our families.

Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between competition against others and competition against ourselves. When all is said and done, there might not be much of a difference – a standard of being better than someone else or better than you can ever hope to be?

And then you retire, and you still have this competitive drive all dressed up and nowhere to go. We may channel that energy into sports, hobbies, side gigs or travel, and like so many others, we often compete for attention on social media. We want to be good at something. We want to be seen.

I’m beginning to think the holy grail of retirement – or maybe just aging in general – is choosing to become less competitive and more mindful. While competition can be motivating, it’s all too easy to judge yourself harshly. I’ve always been way too hard on myself, and at this point in my life, I’m trying to focus on enjoying the experience more than the outcome.

For example, golf is one of my passions. I play in a women’s league at a local club. The rules are quite persnickety and the prizes are meager, yet competition is fierce. Bragging rights, I guess. I took pride in suggesting I didn’t care about winning, although I freely admitted I didn’t want to be DFL – dead fucking last.

What a surprise to wake up and realize if you care about losing, you care about winning. Even striving to be in the middle of the pack is its own little contest.

All that said, I’m not suggesting people abandon competition completely. It’s not about giving up. I still like the idea of challenging ourselves to do exceptional things. But I definitely think retirement is the right time to moderate our expectations and find new ways to feel rewarded.

Try to forget about winning or losing. Be kind to yourself no matter where you rank in the hierarchy of achievements. Focus on the pleasures of the game itself, your interactions with people, sharing your work with others or the creative process of making art or putting a business project together.

At the end of the day, whatever drives you, ask yourself this: would you do it for love?

Prior to my 1999 cancer diagnosis, I did not have many creative hobbies outside of work. My interests were mostly physical. We were avid scuba divers, and I was a competitive racewalker. Oh, and golf, the crack cocaine of hobbies.

Cancer and therapy helped me realize there was more to life than work, and I vowed to broaden my horizons. I saw Martha Stewart’s beautiful cookies decorated with royal icing and sanding sugars, and I thought, I could do that! Two large bins of cookie paraphernalia later, and dozens of cookies cutters organized by season or theme, I still love making decorated cookies.

Then I started an online business selling golf shirts with embroidered logos designed by me. After a couple of years, I broke even. One smart thing I did was trademark my business name. Somebody else with deeper pockets wanted the name, and I ended up assigning the trademark to them for $50,000!

Next, I started a blog – Rock the Silver – about embracing gray hair. And because I couldn’t help myself, I sold t-shirts with the logo! I did that for about six years, until my job became increasingly demanding, and I just couldn’t do both.

Work sucked my creative juices dry, and I didn’t take up much of anything new until I retired. First the blog – Retirement Confidential. I figured this would be a journey worth writing about. Then I started playing around with ceramic coasters. Then woodburning. And my food fixation has never abated. We are both avid cooks and love experimenting in the kitchen.

Since I retired, I’ve learned to grow cannabis and make cannabis tincture, cannabis balm, naan, English muffins, scones, baguettes, no-knead rye bread, a variety of savory pies and sourdough bread. The next thing on my list might be melt-and-pour soap. For Christmas, my sister-in-law gave me a bar of soap made by a friend of hers who is an organic dairy farmer. I can’t believe what a difference it makes on my skin, especially since we’re all washing our hands so much. I thought, well, maybe I should just make some?

I have a book from the library, and I’m studying soapmaking for now without making any purchases. Although it’s a relatively low-cost hobby, I sent plenty of shirts to the landfill, so I’m now careful to approach all activities with caution – not just about the costs, but how much specialized equipment is involved? Do I have room for it? Or is this just a passing fancy? I only go all-in on hobbies I think will stick.

And that’s the thing. I’ve always tried to put a name on whatever affliction this is. On this very blog, we have discussed renaissance woman, dabbler, polymath and dilettante. I’ve also seen serial hobbyist.

Yet another word I just discovered is multipotentialite … pronounced multi – potential – ite (rhymes with bite). The term was coined by Emilie Wapnick, who hosts an entire website for multipotentialites, sometimes referred to as multipods.

The word multipotentialite is a mouthful. But I sort of like it.

Much of the website is how to earn a living when you are distracted by so many interests. It has made me wonder if that’s why my jobs were mostly disappointing – it just isn’t my nature to do one thing. As I look back, my father was a super-creative multipotentialite, but he struggled with actual work. Perhaps it was his example that helped me find the strength to tough it out.

I’m somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, which might also explain why I was able to hang in there job-wise. I like variety, but too much of it can be overwhelming.

For many of us, becoming overwhelmed by too many interests is the biggest threat to having balance in retired life. Sometimes I’m like a ball of frenetic energy, but if I take on too much, something slides through the cracks, usually household chores, and that unsettles me. I also need idle time with absolutely nothing on the schedule to just hang around and let my brain wander.  

While much of the content about multipotentialites is about finding a way to focus your talents and earn a living, those of us who made it to retirement have different challenges. If you are driven by varied interests, chances are you are plenty busy, but are you doing what matters most? What matters most to you?

As a multipotentialite retiree, you’re probably going to go down a rabbit hole or two or three, and that’s part of the joy in being who we are. While you may not need the laser focus of someone in their earning years, I think it’s important to periodically hit pause and re-balance your fun portfolio. As Dale says, you can make work out of anything.

I’ve decided to cut back on golf, postpone soapmaking, write more and plan lots of pandemic-safe outings with Dale. That still leaves me plenty of time for art, cooking, walking, swimming, reading and tending to my cannabis plant.

And chores, but I don’t consider them fun.