The Retiring Sort

Many Thanks for the Fun Stuff

Posted on November 21, 2012 by The Retiring Sort

In this Thanksgiving Season, I have many important things, and a few fun ones, to be thankful for. Among the fun items are some blogging awards, and I’d like to share that bounty with my own nominees of varied and interesting blogs – including a few I have only recently discovered. I hope you will take time to visit them, as well as the kind bloggers who passed these awards on to me:

Illuminating Blogger Award – Campanulla Della Anna shared this one. I do hope some of my posts are illuminating, and I will strive to earn this going forward! The requirements are:

Leave a comment on the original award site – Done!
Share a random fact about yourself: I love the ocean.
Choose 5 bloggers to pass the torch to. See below.

Reality Blog Award – This one is new to me. It was shared by Jenn at the Serenity Space. This is kind of nice, as there aren’t a lot of rules, and no specific number of nominations – just a few tough reality questions. So here we go…

If you could change something what would you change? Too personal – in general, I guess I wish I could make my children’s childhoods perfect. I love them all so much, and I know I didn’t always get it right.
If you could relive one day, when would it be? Again, too personal. I would like to redo the day of my youngest’s Sweet 16 party so everyone in our family could have been there. Too many people were missing.
What’s one thing that really scares you? Losing my health… or my husband’s health.
What one dream have you not completed yet, and do you think you will be able to complete it? There are some places I’d like to go – and I hope I’ll get to them, but I’d like to have the discipline to complete a book, and that may be a pipe dream!
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be? I thought about my husband, so I could see the world through his eyes – but then, maybe I don’t want to know that much! I also wish I had some clever response, like President so I could change the world… but the truth is I was fearfully and wonderfully made, just like everyone else, and had probably best stick with who I am.

My optional nominees:

Wonderful Team Member Readership Award – I love the idea of this! Carol at Wanderings of an Elusive Mind nominated me, and this one does have some rules:

Display the logo on his/her post/page and/or sidebar – Done!
The Nominee must finish this sentence and post: ”A Great reader is…” : I think a great reader is one who takes time to read and respond to other blogger’s posts, and who takes time to acknowledge and respond to comments and pingbacks on his/her own blog. We’re all in this together, and the team works best when we support and learn from one another.
Nominate 14 readers they appreciate over a period of 7 days (1 week) – this can be done at any rate during the week. It can be ALL on one day or a few on one day and a few on another day, etc., naming his or her nominees on a post or on posts during the 1 week) period. See my list below. These are all people who have taken the time to reach out to other bloggers in comments.
The Nominee shall make these rules, or amended rules keeping to the spirit of the Wonderful Team Member Readership Award, known to each reader s/he nominates. Done, in comments on their blogs and pingbacks from this post.

So, my advance thanks to you for taking time to learn about these blogs – I hope they bring you some new friends!

Posted in Blogging, Giving Back | Tagged Blogging Awards, Gratitude, Illuminating Blogger Award, Reality Blogger Award, Thanks, Wonderful Team Member Readership Award | 53 Comments

100 Posts and Counting

Posted on November 14, 2012 by The Retiring Sort

This is a big milestone for me. This is my 100th post on The Retiring Sort.

In the ten months since I started this blog I’ve learned a lot about blogging. I really knew almost nothing before that. Before I started doing this, I had followed a couple of individual blogs written by friends, or that I’d found web surfing. But I didn’t understand about the blogging community.

I had no idea how many travel sites or photography sites there were. I didn’t know about writing or photo challenges or contests, or what kinds of assistance hosting services like WordPress and Google offer. I didn’t understand about awards and other recognition for blogsites.

What I did know was that I was about to be retired, and I wanted something to help me stay on track with some of my goals, and a place to record what I learned as my beloved and I planned for the next stage of our life. My daughter suggested I start a blog.

Armed with a blog title and a pile of projects to work on and write about, I did a little online research. I chose WordPress.com as my host, picked a graphics theme, and jumped in. The first few weeks I spent a lot of time looking at other blogs and reading blogging tips and technical info.

I finally started writing about my retirement and how I felt about it. I really wasn’t expecting anyone but a few friends to look at what I was saying, and for the first month or two, nobody did. Then two things happened that got me both on track and off.

The first is that I decided to try a photo challenge. The second was that my mom became ill, and I began spending a lot of time with her and my sister.

The photo challenge brought me a lot of hits. I got comments, I got a few followers, and I got hooked. Challenges and looking at other bloggers’ responses really began eating into my time. Retirement research took a back seat. My mom’s care also took my focus away from my other retirement projects, so I stopped working on and writing about those for a while altogether.

My blog became mostly photo and writing challenges, with a few travelogues and other items, usually centered around occasions, sprinkled in. In other words, I lost my original focus, but I met the blogosphere. We take the good with the bad.

Now, I’ve written 100 posts, and I’m at a crossroads. My mom passed away a few months ago, and although I’ll be helping my sister with a few related things through next Spring, I need to get busy again on some of my original retirement projects.

I need to finish up some research to help my husband determine when he will retire. I need to do more work on my house so we can sell it. I need to research a variety of potential places to live out our retirement. I need to finish archiving photos so I can get rid of all the hard copies. I need to continue developing a healthy diet and workable exercise regimens.

I need a new plan.

And here it is: I won’t frantically go through my archives trying to figure out how to respond to every single photo challenge. I’ll do the challenges that fit my original charter or make sense as part of my personal “ruminations.” I won’t spend hours struggling with writing challenges that I’m really not comfortable with (I never wanted this to be a current events opinion forum, for example.)

I will get back to researching (and reporting on) my lifestyle issues. And I’ll keep doing a monthly travelogue post. I will limit my online time better to allow for more of the “real-life” tasks I’ve been neglecting, but I will continue to follow other bloggers for a while each day.

Hopefully, I’ll manage my time a little better, and as a result The Retiring Sort will get better and stronger. Maybe in the new year I’ll even finally get around to cleaning up my categories and pages….

In the meantime, I hope you’ll stay with me as I tweak and find my footing again, looking toward my next 100 posts. I really love my blog, and the many other bloggers it has brought into my life. I won’t be giving those things up, just attempting to organize my life a little better to fit everything in.

Stay tuned for my continuing adventures… and thanks for helping me come this far.

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Picture credits: BLOG: © Alexandr Mitiuc – Fotolia.com.

Posted in Blogging, Ruminations, Writing Challenges | Tagged Blogosphere, change, DPchallenge, Focus, lifestyle, retirement, retirement planning | 63 Comments

Endless Cycles of Renewal

Posted on November 11, 2012 by The Retiring Sort

Isn’t it amazing, how nature fights to heal and grow, to renew itself? I’m always struck by the way seeds find their ways into the most unexpected places – in my garden, or in the cleft of a rock, for example.

The earth isn’t static. It reinvents itself a little every day. Volcanoes create islands, and continue to build them over hundreds of thousands of years, even as the ocean works away at the new coastlines they have created. Hurricanes erode our shorelines; tectonic plates and glaciers slowly move – constantly reconfiguring our world.

Nowhere is the continuing cycle of renewal more vivid than in our changes of seasons. After a vibrant show of colors in the Fall, Winter blankets our world in cold and ice. Then, miraculously, with the Spring and Summer the world comes back to new life.

Refreshment. Renewal.

It happens in each of us as well. It can come through marriages, the births of children, or more subtly. We finish school and begin our adult lives. We change jobs or retire. We suffer illnesses and heal.

And sometimes, we just make the decision to try something new. To jump-start our spirits with a new adventure. It doesn’t have to shake up your whole universe or disrupt your family. It can be as small as taking a walk every day or volunteering somewhere. But internal renewal doesn’t happen for us – it’s a conscious choice.

How will you refresh and renew your world this week?

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Click on photos to enlarge them.

This post was written in response to the Weekly Photo Challenge on WordPress.com’s Daily Post. This week’s challenge topic is Renewal. To learn more about the challenge and to see the fresh images posted by other bloggers, click here.

Posted in Photo Challenges, Ruminations | Tagged aging, lifestyle, photography, photos, postaday, postaweek, retirement | 18 Comments

Veterans/Armistice/Remembrance Day Musings

Posted on November 11, 2012 by The Retiring Sort

It would be wonderful if we didn’t need a Department of Defense, or of Homeland Security. It would be amazing if natural disasters never happened, and we never needed the National Guard.

It would be great if we could rewrite history and do away with the World Wars, the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, the Gulf War and all subsequent conflicts.

But that’s not the world we live in.

For as long as there has been a United States of America, there have been government militias, reserves, armies, and other armed forces. And with the notable exceptions of Pearl Harbor and 9/11, our homeland has remained remarkably secure.

For that, we must thank our veterans. These are not the people who made the decisions to engage or not engage. They are the ones who served.

Veterans Day is N0vember 11th, and actually began as Armistice Day – a celebration of peace and a day of remembrance. Today, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the VFW, and other organizations work to provide needed services to our veterans – many of whom were volunteers.

On this day, I hope you will spend a moment appreciating those who have stood where we can’t or won’t – at home or abroad – for the safety of those here and elsewhere, who cannot protect themselves. Whether or not you believe they should have been sent some of these places, they went for us.

I pray that our leadership, and other leaders around the world, will work to make this kind of protection much less necessary in the future, and that they will evaluate such necessity with great care.

In the meantime, for those who have served the people of the US in any of our armed forces, at home or abroad, I am grateful for your service,and your willingness to serve.

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Related sites:

Posted in Giving Back | Tagged Gratitude, Peace, Thanks, USA, Veterans Day | 17 Comments

Election Day 2012 – The Grand Responsibility

Posted on November 6, 2012 by The Retiring Sort

What a difference it makes to be retired. In past years, the polls opened too late for me to vote before work, and I had to join the beleaguered legions who voted after working all day. Standing in line, waiting for a polling station, watching the folks who faithfully serve by making sure each voter is in the right place, presents photo ID, is marked as having voted, and then at the end, is thanked for voting and receives a sticker in acknowledgement.

This year, as a retired person I was able to prance in mid-day with no lines, present my ID and step right into a polling station, drop my ballot into the counting machine, receive my thanks and sticker (after thanking the staff myself), and I was on my way – in less than five minutes.

Months of print and TV ads, junk mail, phone solicitations, Facebook rants, debates, TV interviews and press reports from every point of view have culminated in a few brief strokes, and my work is completed.

My responsibility to listen, sort the wheat from the chaff, and make a decision is over. Across the US, many thousands are still in the process of completing that obligation. And it is an obligation. We have the incredible right to exercise our voices and to vote according to our consciences and free will, and with every right comes a responsibility.

If we want the right to rant or whine, or to dissent in any way, then we must take part in the process. If we want the right to write to our congressmen and state our cases, then we must exercise our votes as well. In my state, many of the results are considered to be foregone conclusions – but that doesn’t mean any of us are exempt from placing our votes.

If you’re frustrated and don’t think your vote matters, think of it another way. Think about American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. How many times has it seemed obvious who would be “voted off,” until the popular votes were tallied? We can be surprised. It ain’t over ’til it’s over, in the words of the immortal Yogi Berra.

So I will now turn on my TV and watch the probably predictable results of my local battles, and await with extreme interest the will of the people in the national election. If you live in the US and haven’t voted yet, get thee to your polling place.

For this year, my work here is done.

Posted in Giving Back, Ruminations | Tagged Election, Election Day, Responsibility, United States, Voting | 17 Comments

Simple Geometry

Posted on November 4, 2012 by The Retiring Sort

Maybe it’s because there’s often been chaos in my day (and in my thoughts), but sometimes I really crave the orderly. Symmetry. Simple Geometry.

Architecture is one of the places where I have enjoyed many balanced forms. I’m drawn to the clean, crisp images of geometrically simple buildings like the triangles of the Transamerica Pyramid Center in San Francisco…

or the glass pyramids at the Louvre…

and the window in the ceiling of the (Hawaii 5-0) Court building in Honolulu…

and here are a few others…

a variety of geometric possibilities at the Eiffel Tower…

Montreal buildings, reflected in other buildings…

The Biosphere Environment Museum from Montreal’s Expo 67

What geometic shapes appeal to you?

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Click on photos to enlarge them.

This post was written in response to the Weekly Photo Challenge on WordPress.com’s Daily Post. This week’s challenge topic is Geometry. To learn more about the challenge and to see the shapely images posted by other bloggers, click here.