Freedom

I have nothing this evening to add to this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbcvWFrglg

What do you think?  Watch, listen and leave your thoughts in a comment.

Success As A Retired Person -- Beginning Exploration

I have been retired nearly thirteen years.  It hit me yesterday that I do not have my "usual" gauges against which to measure me degree of success as a retired person.

When working, I had a salary when employed, annual performance reviews, informal and formal meetings with both my supervisors and those I supervised.  I had the predictability of going to work every day, and being on time.  I could work a little extra each day.

In my personal life I had feedback from my wife, my children, my friends, my acquaintances and my neighbors.  "How am I doing" got answers of many kinds, but mostly from inside myself.

• Am I prompt?
• Am I trustworthy?
• Do people seem to grow because of me?
• Am I solving problems as they come across my path/desk?
• Am I giving at least all that is expected of me at work each day?  

You get the idea.

After retirement I did contract work quite steadily for about nine years, along with service calls and some volunteer work.  The answers to the questions above still applied.

Today I do mostly service calls each week, but I have a lot of extra time to invest, spend, use and waste.  (Scrabble, Cribbage or Solitaire, anyone?)

So I am trying to figure out what gauges apply to me in retirement.  They may not be appropriate gauges for you.  My questions is:  how can you know reasonably well that you are still a useful, wonderful human person?

More later, but first:  what do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Chasing Your Dream

I have a friend who has been chasing his dream since leaving college.  He has gone places, lived places, tried jobs . . . but!

But what, you ask?

His dream is to go back -- back to when the west was wild, back to when he was a child, back to when he was in college.  Rather than taking him forward into the future, he has been determined to go back to a culture and life that no longer exists.

I find myself torn.  I know what it is like to want something that might have made sense 50 or 100 or 200 years ago.  But that dream makes no sense, now.  I live in 2013, not 1963 or 1913 or 1813.  Not only has the culture, population patterns and economic matrix changed -- I have changed as well.  

But I can still dream for tomorrow and next year and the next decade.  Without putting my old dreams down I can dream for my future, and for the future of the world.  Even those are subject to change.

I know a lady who once dreamed of being a medical engineer who designed better knees, created better prosthetics, and so forth.  Part way through medical school, with more information and knowledge she allowed her dream to change and went into a different field of medicine.  Probably since then she has modified or radically changed her dreams more than once.  It's possible that a guy, a family, a home and other dreams were added to her dreams.  She is the kind of person willing to work to make those dreams become reality.  Real reality, not fantasy reality.

Do you have dreams?  Do you update them from time to time?  Will you allow yourself to live somewhere and sometime beyond the old dreams in the past?

Leave a comment and let us know.  

The Trial in Reverse

This editorial cartoon says it well:  if you are thinking, ask yourself about your community a moment.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

What is a Career?

I was listening to NPR as the BBC reported on the high unemployment among young people in Paraguay.  I have heard similar reports about unemployment among the young in largely Muslim countries, in South American countries, and on the continent of Africa.  Unrest, uncertainty, and anger seem to be close neighbors to unemployment.

I got to wondering:  if you cannot start a career, could you find a [ethical] way to make a living?

The I began wondering:  what is a career?

One answer:  working at a job or series of jobs in the same field for the same company.
Another:  working in a series of jobs with the same theme (IT, graphic design, sales, etc.)
Still another:  doing meaningful work, whatever it is.

I'm not sure I know what a career is, and when I ask people, few can give me an answer, but lots of young folks say they want a career.

What is a career?  Can people still have a career, if they ever could?  What do you understand a career to be? Leave a comment and let us know.