Evolving retirement

Welcome to our new age, this golden age of retirement. Finally having retired from fifty years of excellent service as a full time and part time educator, I am gazing at some personally relaxing and refreshing past times. Turning seventy last season was a milestone. Now I can focus on enjoying and exploring some new and traditional ideas for healthy ageing.

Being a long standing member of a supportive and positive women’s craft group, I sourced online ways to create dolls and elves, even witches, or bunnies with limbs that can be arranged. Elf on the shelf is the ideal. To do this, I browsed the modern format of Youtube demos on how to use pipecleaners in craft projects.

“Right,” I thought, “I shall launch this year off in a good way, I shall purchase some pipecleaners.” Shopping online as normal, I learnt that our modern young ones cannot pollute their thoughts with acknowledging that pipes were even smoked. Such were some of our grandpas, they smoked tobacco in pipes, and needed pipecleaners to somehow clean their pipes.

For long ago craft projects with pipecleaners, one needed proper clippers or pliers to snip them as required. But the latest format of such are known as “Chenille sticks,” Lordy, we are all up to date with the politically correct jargon. Wool was also purchased, I keenly set about crafting my own elf on the shelf, with chenille stick limbs, then realized I had no suitable tool to trim the inserts in my elf.

Fortunately, these chenille sticks are not as rigid or stiff as pipecleaners, easy to snip bits with my craft scissors. Next Christmas gifts for gal pals’ younger rellies ended up quite pleasing.

That is only one way of evolving my own golden age of fun. Crafters do find many ways to locate and share making gifts and woollens, including charities. It is our hobby, and none of us can be humanitarian enough. As if any of us need more patterns! There are lots of ideas for anyone in retirement, wake up and think, “What do I feel like doing today?” We can enjoy a coffee or tea, get any stuff done, pacing ourselves, being our own gal boss or bloke boss.

A bloke boss of his own senior ageing, also seventy years and forever young, has decided to join a yoga group. He now does yoga three early mornings per week, in between planning his long standing dream to travel around the globe. He is continuing on, exploring any destination that he and his beloved wish to. Good luck to them.

Each to their own. In retirement, we can all think what we like. I am definitely not a gypsy, this fat buckles is staying in, considering, “East west, home’s best!” For more leisurely creativity, I bought some charcoal and pencils, to practise any artistic ideas, it is fun. Charcoal sketching images can be found online too, or in books. I merely browse, do not even print off copies, finding that online drawing lessons are very helpful.

Ah, retirement at last, not waking up to a daily to do list, never needing to tick things off. So far, we oldies can awake and know what needs to be done, as long as we can. I keep going as always, seeing the bright side of everything, planning a rather low key attitude to whatever hurdles that may occur. Seniors and their rellies can face difficult situations at any stage in the future, so we all have adequate planning for such sitiuations in place.

This golden age now can mean being boss of your own diferent practical ideas for evolving each person’s retirement. Let’s keep staying forever young!