Category: Learning

Can you be bad at art?

Earlier this month, I decided to explore my inner artist. While I am creative in the sense I write and cook, I have never given visual art much of a go. I don’t read the comics, because I don’t relate to the images. I’m a word girl.

I started with a simple decoupage project to make coasters out of stone tiles. Coasters with inspirational quotes, because I’m a word girl. I was talking with my neighbor and said I was experimenting with art. I mentioned the coasters, and she said, “Oh, you mean crafts.”

That seemed a bit pretentious to me, the differentiation between arts and crafts, but whatever. I plodded on. All but one of my coasters is in the trash, and the other one is headed there soon. I don’t like the way the coasters look, and they don’t even come close to what I imagined in my head. However, I enjoyed the effort and am not quitting on decoupage just yet.

My next stop was a two-day class in making clay masks. The class was offered at a nearby arts center, and it was part of a grant supporting art therapy for women veterans. I’m a veteran, so the class was free. Nothing to lose, right?

Well, not so fast. I didn’t feel comfortable as a veteran or as an aspiring artist. The other women were a lot younger and have stayed connected to various veteran’s organizations. I got out in 1977 and never looked back. The women veterans I know got jobs with defense contractors and built high-profile careers.

These women didn’t have jobs and spent their days tending to husbands and children and juggling appointments at the VA hospital. I did my best to listen, contribute and be supportive. Three of us had bouts with breast cancer, and on a break, we compared scars. One woman told me she was 100 percent disabled from PTSD resulting from MST. I asked, “What’s MST?”

Military Sexual Trauma.

It’s heartbreaking to see such vibrant women defined by the bad things that happened to them. But here they were. Making art. Laughing and telling their stories. It wasn’t my community, but I was glad these veterans found theirs and were so open about their experiences. I was also happy they were good at art. I mean, somebody has to be, right?

Because it would not be me. Oh, I know all the talk. You don’t learn to play a violin by picking it up once. There’s no such thing as artistic talent. You either do art or you don’t.

All I know is my mask looked awful, and it got worse by the minute. I thought paint would help, but that was the beginning of the end. There was no rhyme or reason to the colors I picked. Toward the finale, I was just slapping paint on there, whatever color was left, eager to be done with it.

Go me – I finished first! The teacher will now put the masks in his kiln, and I guess we go back in a couple of weeks to pick them up. I don’t even want mine, but maybe it will serve some yet undisclosed purpose.

I suppose it was good to get outside my comfort zone, but honestly, I did not enjoy myself. I don’t have a deep appreciation of art in general. There was a little gallery adjacent to the workshop, and they invited me to look around since I was (of course) the first one there, but I could not have been less interested. Try as I might to change, I think I’m still all about starting and finishing tasks subsequently evaluated on the basis of perfection.

Hearing about the terrible experiences of these women veterans depressed me. I know. That is so self-absorbed. One of the women who had worked for the VA said she quit because it was too depressing, and she often sat crying with the veterans who came in for help.

The women and their stories left a mark on me. Maybe that’s why I was supposed to attend this class. It wasn’t necessarily good for my mood, but it was probably good for my soul.

At the end of the day, I don’t think art is my thing. Maybe my neighbor was right. I’m more likely to enjoy making crafts. Something that has a purpose – not just art for art’s sake. I know arts and crafts take practice and patience, but I do feel bad that so far, I suck at it.

On the other hand, I’m glad I opened my eyes to the possibility of creating something crafty or artistic, if there is indeed a difference.

My first slab pie

Although I don’t make dessert pies often, Dale and I both adore savory pies. There’s one with fresh summer tomatoes and basil with cheddar cheese in a biscuit crust. Oh, and the recipe from an old Gourmet magazine for broccoli and sausage pie with Swiss cheese and a whole wheat crust topped with sesame seeds.

My most important rule for pie making? Never trim the excess crust – just bulk it up so there’s more.

As a crust fanatic, I’ve made my share of winners and losers. I enjoy making pie dough, but there is nothing worse than screwing it up. I’ve done reasonably well since I abandoned fancy and reverted back to my old recipe with Crisco. But I’m all about continuous improvement.

I read about a new cookbook by Cathy Barrow: Pie Squared: Irresistibly Easy Sweet & Savory Slab Pies. At first, it didn’t appeal to me, because slab pies are big, and there’s just two of us. But then I saw the book at the library, and I had nothing to lose by checking it out.

What a unique and well-done book! I curled up on the couch and read it from front to back. She talks about pie crust in ways I have never heard it discussed. She’s an excellent writer, who explains the art of making good pies in easy-to-understand language.

Cathy includes great ideas for substituting ingredients and tips for making it ahead, which simplifies the process … because as you know, I’m retired and quite busy! She also tells you how to freeze it and how to reheat it. Stuff you want to know but cookbook authors rarely tell you.

Oh, and it turns out crust is not just flour and shortening. Recipes include cream cheese crust, caramelized onion crust, rye crust and a host of press-in crusts using crackers, cornbread, potatoes and more. The book is really a crust-lover’s dream. My only complaint is that she says to trim the excess.

Slab pies look huge, but when I saw they were made in ¼ sheet pans, it seemed less daunting. I started with Curried Chicken Pie with All-Butter Crust. The filling includes chicken, cauliflower, carrots and sugar snap peas. This is the first time I made a successful all-butter crust, and it was the first time I put the pie pan on top of a pizza stone in the oven.

I have some things to learn about rolling the dough for this new shape, but is that not a beautiful pie?

Beautiful and delicious. We’re having it again tonight. I assume it’s only a matter of time before I break down and buy the book. If you love pie, I encourage you to explore this book. I learned so much and can’t wait to try another recipe.

Maybe Poblano and Chorizo Slab Pie with a Hash Brown Crust?

Postscript: For second-night dinner, we found ourselves raiding the corners because … well … more crust. Then we had a whole middle to deal with, and that leads to the only downside of these pies. They are big. Even if you freeze the leftovers, it’s more pie than we need.

I’m still going to get the book. The recipes and instructions are fantastic, and I believe I can tinker with quantities to make a smaller round pie or even individual rustic pies, the kind where you just flap the dough over the filling. But if you have more people to feed, go for the slab!

Technology gremlins

I’m pretty good with Word, PowerPoint and Excel, but that stretches the limits of my technical expertise. When I started this blog, WordPress was supposed to be easy, but for me, it has been anything but.

From the very beginning, I had problems downloading a theme and experienced subsequent issues with the banner across the top … because it wouldn’t go across the top. That’s why I always had a weird box with the blog name in it.

The details are mind-numbing, so I’ll spare you that, other than to say a whole year went by, and I only discovered today my theme was linked to the wrong site. I guess that’s why shit didn’t work.

I’ve uploaded a new theme, and that took me through lunch because I was scared to push the publish button. Or as they say in the South, I was afraid to mash the button. Lots of reading on the Help site and lots of f-bombs later, but I did it!

I rather like the new template. It’s certainly easier than the one that didn’t work. All my content appears to have migrated, but please do let me know if you notice something missing or have problems commenting. My email is on the contact page.

I’ll probably tweak it as I go, but this is it for now. Only so many accomplishments in one day. I hope you find it easy to read and navigate. As always, I welcome your feedback.

Finding your inner artist

How long did it take you to decompress from work and adjust to being retired? Right from the get-go, I was happy to be done with my job and thought that meant I had adjusted, but I was wrong. Just read through some of my old posts, and you can see how my thinking has evolved.

Work? Not work? Who am I without a job? Who was I with a job? What’s my purpose? Is there a second act? Do we have to reinvent ourselves? Aren’t we pretty OK already?

Life’s eternal questions. I kind of stopped thinking about them and focused on what made me feel good and what made me happy. Amazingly, my creative juices are flowing. I’ve been feeling artistic!

While writing is an art, I’ve never been otherwise inclined to pursue artistic activities. My crafty quilting sister got those genes. If I needed help with a Halloween costume or gift packaging, she would take my emergency phone calls from Michaels, where I panic. Seriously, what is all this stuff?

And in minutes, she’d talk me off the ledge. She’s the Michaels Whisperer, “OK, stand with your back facing the door. Go three aisles down and turn right. Look up. No, not that way. 3 o’clock. Bend your knees slightly and reach out in front of you. Pick up the tube on the left. Glitter glue.”

So, where to start? I took this quiz, and it said I am destined to be a print maker. I got a book from the library, and making prints looks hard. Actually, everything looks hard.

I’m calling in all my lifelines for help deciding how I will scratch this itch. I have virtually no experience making art, unless you count a ceramic ashtray I made in grade school and cookies decorated with royal icing. My friend, Carole, who is an artist, recommended decoupage. I went to the library and got a book on decoupage. Looks doable.

My sister warned me I need to be patient. Immediate results are not to be expected. Like I need to be warned about patience! I don’t have time for such nonsense! We’ll be talking this weekend, when she will share other important sisterly advice.

I’ve been thinking about what might come naturally pursuant to my interests. I like things with function. Surfaces like wood, glass, ceramic and tin. I like kitchen stuff. I’ve been doodling spirals since I was a kid. I see more spirals in my future.

It’s exciting to think about getting started in art, but it’s even more exciting to think my brain is finally in this place. This is year two of retirement, but my first full year. I’m decompressing from my work life and embracing my creative urges. Urges I didn’t even know I had.

Are you an artist? Or have you found a new creative side of yourself in retirement? How’s it going?

As for other creative urges, Dale and I are embarking on a journey this weekend to make tamales from scratch. You know there will be a story.

Deconstructing Christmas

Today is the magical day of putting Christmas to rest. I would have jumped on it two days earlier, but golf was calling. This morning I started to deconstruct the tree and will soon begin putting the ornaments to rest. If I could give them a lethal injection, I would.

Oh, stop! Not really.

I will make Dale drag the tree to the driveway, where he will chop it up with a chainsaw and stuff it into the yard waste bin. It’s easier than taking it to the recycling center, and I suppose it’s possible he works out some frustration imagining he’s practicing for the real thing.

Yes, I read too many crime novels.

Perhaps I should deconstruct my perspective on Christmas. I’m not sure there’s any there, there. I just don’t like it much and can’t wait for it to be over. Nothing bad happened on Christmas when I was a child … no dead Santa Dads in the chimney. My sister is beside herself with joy during the holidays, and Dale is his usual jolly self, so obviously I missed something.

And you know what? I’m rolling with it. I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole retirement thing and all the helpful articles about reinventing ourselves for our second act and overdosing on an abundance of gratitude.

I must admit I am pretty grateful, and at least gratitude takes the heat off of mindfulness, which must be tired after such a long slog. Me? I just keep marching forward, although I always thought I could do even better. I told myself I had not yet reached my full potential.

While the reinvention message spoke to me at first, lately it has become nothing more than noise. The thing is, I’m not sure I can do better. I was incredibly lucky to earn an excellent living mostly by being literate. I worked for great corporations and organizations, but I was never a true believer. The mission, the vision, the values? Just widgets.

In hindsight, it’s entirely possible I peaked.

At first, the idea I had peaked was kind of hard to accept, but I let it simmer awhile, and it’s starting to take hold. At least I made it to the endgame with a decent retirement. I can still evolve as a human, and it’s possible a professional opportunity will surprise me.

But with every retirement day that passes, I find that I enjoy just being alive without the pressure to earn a living, reinvent the wheel or memorize the vision statement.

And for this, I am abundantly grateful.

In search of control

Today is our actual anniversary, which is double the pleasure because it’s also the winter solstice. I struggle with the winter blues, and gaining a bit more daylight every day makes me happy. I’m trying to be chill, but there is serious shit going down out there. When the going gets weird, I tend to seek order and control by tidying up and possibly creating a spreadsheet or two.

Did bathrooms and floors yesterday. Next stop was tidying up my digital house. As one reader suggested, I called to cancel my New York Times subscription. I’ve been paying $15 a month, and they offered to reduce it to $4 a month for 52 weeks. I said no. By this time, I had a new mindset and scrapped the whole thing.

As another reader suggested, I found it for free anyway. You need a New York Times account, but you don’t subscribe to anything. Then you go here to get this little code and – magic – free NY Times for 72 hours. There is no limit on how many times you can do it.

I thought canceling my subscription would help me back away from the news, but that’s a lost cause. Readers have different opinions about what’s going on in the White House, so I won’t list my complaints, except to say the stock market is making me crazy. Most retirees can relate to that.

Yes, it will come back, but it’s hard to see money disappear in the blink of an eye. My investment strategy is conservative, so I believe everything will be OK, but I still hate the drama.

If it gets really bad, I wonder about going back to work. The idea does not appeal to me. I love retirement, I love playing golf, taking long walks, hunkering down with a good book, cooking. There really is enough money in our retirement account to ride this out, but I tend to be a worrier. 

It occurred to me if I had to take a job, I wouldn’t pass a drug test! More and more companies no longer test for cannabis, so that’s good. I might have a shot. Certainly not in my former industry, which was defense. For me, cannabis is medicine, and now that I’ve experienced the benefits, it would be hard to give it up. I’ll just worry about it instead.

Writing about my worries helps me put them into perspective. I imagine myself three years from now wondering why I wasted all that time fretting when everything turned out OK in the end. I was like this with cancer, too. I spent years worrying about it returning but then started imagining a future where I said, “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I wouldn’t have spent so much time worrying about dying.”

I have to get there with retirement. Trust that we planned well. There will be ups and downs, spendy years and frugal years, but we’re fine. In the end, we’d like to die broke, but after a lifetime of saving, the most likely scenario is not spending it while we can enjoy it.

In the meantime, I’m hunkering down in the kitchen and on the couch – a bit of cooking and reading to lift my spirits.

I’m probably going to make Dal Makhani tonight. This recipe from Urvashi Pitre is the best, although I add a couple of Serrano peppers for heat. I also want to experiment with some sort of cannabis bath product. I’ll be perusing The Cannabis Spa at Home for ideas.

As for reading, I just finished The Woman in the Window. I would call it a psychological thriller. Hard to put down. I’m enjoying the Molly Murphy historical fiction series by Rhys Bowen. A young Irish woman lands in turn-of-the-century New York City and blusters her way into solving crimes. First in the series is Murphy’s Law.

I’ve started a spreadsheet with books I want to read and list series in order. I have a column for author, character, title, library/buy and status. I have access to two library systems, so I check to see which one, if any, has it and if not, I list it as a buy.

Of course, much of what we experience in life and retirement is out of our control, but every little bit helps. If it gets any worse, I’ll probably have to clean the refrigerator. Maybe create an inventory?

Calming down a bit

I wrote a post in October about the struggle to let go of the idea my life is only as good as my achievements. Here it is December, hardly long enough to make a batch of kimchi, but with every day that passes, I feel less tethered to success. I like it.

After retiring last year, I was happy to be done with my career but still felt driven to do something exceptional, something amazing to prove I’ve still got it. I had a million thoughts going in a million different directions. It’s not enough to retire and simply enjoy our joblessness. We must reinvent ourselves! Organize our frugal lives! See the world! Change the world!

But the weight of these expectations during my first year of retirement left me anxious and exhausted. Couldn’t I just calm down, think before I leap and accept I had a great career and my reward for hanging in there is a great life? What if I just focused on what feels good and see what happens?

A weight was lifted once it occurred to me I did not have to reinvent myself. I’m surprised by how quickly the idea took hold. Maybe I just had to say it in my outside voice.

The thing is, I’m still doing freelance work, but the idea of a real job is not the slightest bit appealing. Never say never, but I can’t imagine going back to all that – although I certainly don’t plan to wither away doing nothing.

In addition to my recreational pursuits, I’ll continue to use my skills and talents and make a little money, but I’m not feeling motivated to do something exceptional. It’s not about standard definitions of achievement or success. It’s more about intellectual curiosity and social interaction. And a little cash doesn’t hurt, either.    

As I worked through this drama in my head, I told Dale I would get a job, but I can’t work Tuesdays or Wednesdays, because that’s when I play golf. And I can’t work Mondays in the summer, because that’s when I play golf in the mountains. Maybe Mondays in the winter but not if I take up cross-country skiing. Reading, cooking, long walks, sometimes more golf – that’s what Thursdays and Fridays are for.

As you can see, I’m kind of busy.

Please say this isn’t a passing fancy. Retirement was an opportunity to jump the track, but I didn’t do a very good job of clearing a path for the freewheeling journey of my dreams. I just jumped to a new track. My brain was saying, “I will continue to succeed at something, damn it!”

Until proven otherwise, it appears I’m experiencing the joy of being trackless. But I’m curious about other retirees. Are you ambitious? What motivates you? Have your goals and ambitions evolved over the course of your retirement?

It’s still about the hair



This week marked one year of blogging at Retirement Confidential. During that year, I wrote 111 posts and published twice a week on average. I feel good about my progress, although I saw a decline in readership when I deactivated my Facebook account.

I miss the traffic Facebook generated, but I don’t miss Facebook, especially as information about the company’s business model continues to unfold. My life is better without Facebook. I’ll continue to pursue other strategies for attracting readers.

Why are readers important? Well, as a writer, I write to be read and to connect with a community of like-minded people. That’s pretty much it. 

I’m writing because I’ve always been a writer, mostly for my career in communications, but now that I am retired, I have the opportunity to discover my unfiltered voice. Writing is cheaper than therapy, and the beauty of a blog is there are no gatekeepers. Nobody to tell me it’s not good enough to publish. Maybe it isn’t, but no one else gets to decide for me.

I took a peek at my all-time most popular post, and I was totally surprised.

It’s my hair.

So much for writing! I keep my longish gray hair simple and usually tie it up in a messy man bun using a silk scrunchie. My hair credentials are solid. From 2008-2013, I wrote a blog about gray hair and other important topics of the day. The blog was Rock the Silver. I pulled the plug on it when my career became particularly intense, and it took everything I had to stay focused on making it to the end.

As for other topics, people seem to like the funny stories about my 40-year marriage. Among the top five posts: A new opportunity to annoy your partner and Driving each other nuts in retirement.

Categories help readers decide if this topic is of interest to them. And the categories are:

  • Cannabis
  • Current Events
  • Food & Drink
  • Health & Wellness
  • Lifestyle
  • Personal Finance
  • Style & Fashion

All the categories are represented well in the statistics, so I believe I’ve set a good focus for our conversations. But I would like to do better. Which categories do you like? Which ones not so much?

Technically, I am challenged. I finally figured out how to resize the images, and then WordPress changed how to resize images. Aargh. There will undoubtedly be mistakes along the way, but I will always do my best to keep Retirement Confidential clean and readable.

Thank you for joining me in this grand adventure. I truly appreciate your time and interest! Any other feedback you’d like to share? Anything else you’d like to see?

Taking big bites

My last post was largely about food, and I bit off more than I can chew. I was loving the idea of going through old cookbooks and magazines and somehow reinventing recipes to share on the blog from time to time.

I started with an old Gourmet magazine, November 1990, and I was blown away by the complexity of the recipes and obscure ingredients. We make a few complicated dishes, but we’ve simplified our cooking and eating over the years. Back in the day, Dale and I used to joke about recipes that started with, “Have your fishmonger …”

The guy at Safeway is as close to a fishmonger as we ever got.

There’s a section of the magazine called, “You Asked for It.” People write in about some specific thing they ate in their travels, and could Gourmet possibly get the recipe? I read this one out loud to Dale:

At the wonderful Hotel Romazzino on Sardinia’s shimmering Costa Smeralda, we had a dish of baked noodles and lobster, covered with pastry, that was almost too good to believe. Was it a dream, Gourmet, or can the recipe be obtained?

We had a good laugh over that one.

Still, the same magazine features Pumpkin Cheesecake with Bourbon Sour Cream Topping, and I have actually made that. Twice! Thinking about making it this year for Thanksgiving.

I’m not dissing the magazine. It gave us many years of pleasure, and I’m still excited to dig in and rediscover nuggets from the past. It’s a good retirement hobby for me, but I doubt I’ll make enough changes to call them my own. I will be lucky to call them edible.

Have no fear. I’ll continue to write about food in some form or fashion because it’s practically all I think about, and it’s important to enjoying life, especially in retirement. But even if a fellow retiree is inclined to cook fancy food, I hardly think they will be stopping by to get tips from me. There are too many great resources already out there.

At first, I felt embarrassed to have presented this grand idea before thinking it through more carefully. But then I thought, that’s what Retirement Confidential is all about – sharing true stories about retirement ups and downs in real time.

My progress on getting over the need to accomplish something was also a wee bit overstated. I mean, it has been less than two weeks since I decided to focus on the little things that make me happy. Although cooking makes me happy, in hindsight, reinventing 40 years of recipes sounds a wee bit driven to me.

As for retirement pursuits, it’s kind of like being a kid trying all the sports until you find one you actually like and are good at. Sometimes you have to take big bites. Go ahead, do it!

Political Postscript

In other news, I’m pleased Democrats took the House. I’m fine with Republicans having a majority in the Senate. In my opinion, democracy is stronger when power is distributed. The stock market seemed to agree, and that’s usually a positive thing for retirees. Overall, I know there is more drama to come, but I feel more hopeful about the future of our country.

An open letter to Hillary

I feel so helpless in the wake of current events, in the wake of evil, but I did vote, and I did my best to put people in office who will help us overcome this horrible culture of hate. As I read through accounts about the horrors in Pittsburgh, I saw another article where Hillary Clinton seems to be toying with the idea of running for president again.

I’m a liberal Democrat, but I have Republican friends, and I think there’s one thing we might all agree on: Hillary needs to bow out. I thought I’d drop her a note. Can someone please see that she gets it?

Dearest Hillary,

I have always admired you and happily voted for you in 2016. I was also a fan of Bill’s, despite his wayward behavior. You were a good political team.

But the time has come to tell you to go away. I wanted to see you president, but now I want to see you gone from the spotlight. I don’t mean that in a harsh way. Sure, you’ve made some mistakes, but the hatred many feel for you is completely undeserved. Let’s face it, you are polarizing. Educated people voted for Trump because they couldn’t stand you. I don’t get it either, but there you have it.

You said you’d still like to be president, but for the greater good of kind and caring people everywhere, please let go. This is an intervention – let go now! Stop dreaming about what might have been and what could still be. If you are your party’s nominee in 2020, we will undoubtedly end up with Trump again. Nothing could be worse for the future of our nation and the world at large.

Good job! Has anyone told you that? You were awesome. You still are, but now you need to find another way to express your awesomeness. The single most important thing progressive Americans can do is vote amoral politicians out of office and elect a leader who can bring us together and save this country.

I know it breaks your heart to hear this, Hillary, but it’s not you.

Thanks!

Donna