Archives for July 2018

I saw a promotion recently for a Netflix documentary about Bobby Kennedy. A black screen featured the overlay of large red numerals for 1968 and it struck me that I had forgotten what a tumultuous year that was. We think we are living in crazy times now, but in 1968 many baby boomers felt a loss of innocence that probably has stuck with us to this day.

The year began with the realization that the war in Vietnam was lost. Walter Cronkite of CBS news said so and we trusted him. Peace with honor was a bullshit way of saying stick a fork in it and the loss of life for this lost cause still boggles the mind, as does the after the fact realization that the war was prolonged for purely political gain.

Eugene McCarthy won the New Hampshire Democratic primary in March and LBJ announced his withdrawal from the race. Everyone was shocked.

More shocking still was the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in April. The riots that followed underscored the simmering resentment and frustration that African Americans felt when it came to their civil rights in a country that prided itself on believing that all men are created equal.

Just a few months later, after Bobby Kennedy had won California’s Democratic primary, he was assassinated in Los Angeles. Young baby boomers who were drawn to the charismatic politician were devastated. He represented the hope that we could be a better more compassionate nation and it felt like someone had cruelly doused the flame. His final public words have some powerful resonance still, especially at this moment in our nation’s history: “What I think is quite clear is that we can work together… And that what has been going on with the United States over the period of the last three years, the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions — whether it’s between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups, or in the war in Vietnam — that we can work together. We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. And I intend to make that my basis for running.”

And lest you forget, this was all happening 50 years ago. Maybe the innocence is long gone, but I would like to think that the optimism and compassion are still there for millions of boomers.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

Have you thought about how you’re going to spend your time in retirement?

Since I last wrote about the role of work in retirement, I’ve been cooking, sleeping, walking, reading, playing golf and cleaning the house. I’ve also been writing and gearing up to establish my business as a communications consultant. I’m busy and sometimes wonder if I am setting myself up for the same sort of drudgery I escaped when I retired.

Afraid to fail? Afraid to succeed? What if this isn’t my passion? My life is good, and I don’t want to mess it up by taking on too much. Or taking on boring. For many of us, finding a balance between work and play will be the challenge of our older years.

Retirement is freedom, and I love having more time to pursue many interests. However, my interests include some sort of work. Paid? Maybe. Volunteer? Maybe. Work redefined. I don’t want to go back to my pre-retirement life, no regrets there, but I’m not wired to take it easy, either.

As I explained this angst to my long-suffering husband, he said, “You can’t be rudderless.” And once again, he nailed it. I need to feel a sense of purpose. Jobs gave me purpose but not always passion. Writing gives me a sense of purpose, sometimes even passion, and part of me says that should be enough. But the other part of me wants to see what else I can do. What else?

But wait. Then there’s the voice in my head that says, why can’t I be rudderless? More is not better. Would learning to handle life without a rudder be a worthy pursuit?

For me, aging well is not only about being physically active but also about engaging in intellectual pursuits, connecting with people and contributing in a meaningful way. Retirement could be 30 years or longer, and we need hopes and dreams that will carry us through to the last breath.

All that to say I’m still not sure what this 30-year gig is going to look like, but I’m choosing purpose, and I’m choosing to stay visible. Whether you are retired, just starting out or somewhere in the middle, most of us don’t find an all-encompassing passion, but purpose is attainable.

Find your rudder.

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

I’d hammer in the evening, all over this land.

News flash: Millennials are more apt to end up in the ER from a DIY home improvement project. More than whom? More than baby boomers, of course.

According to a study done by SoFi (a finance company I’ve never heard of before), millennials are 23% more likely than boomers to end up in the ER due to a home improvement mishap. And two times more likely to require stitches. And twice as likely to be injured by power tools. You can find the full study here.

Here’s the kicker. The reason millennials suffer more injuries is down to overzealousness…they are just too eager to show off their latest project on social media. So really it’s all Facebook’s fault.

Boomers are 22% more likely to finish their DIY projects, but millennials are 65% more likely to finish ahead of schedule (and that may include time spent in the ER). It’s also telling that millennials are more than four times more likely to hire a professional for their next home improvement project.

Not surprisingly, millennials are twice as likely to post photos of their project on social media just to “show off.” Doing it for the ‘gram (that’s short for Instagram if you’ve been living under a rock) comes naturally to this cohort.

What happened to improving something in your home just for the comfort and satisfaction of a job well done? You might as well ask why we no longer have rotary phone dials.

I’m not making social media out to be the monster in the closet. It’s the go to destination for figuring out how to do literally thousands of DIY tasks. From replacing solenoids and brake shoes, to repairing toaster ovens and drying out smart phones that fell in the toilet, the internet (and specifically Youtube) has significantly boosted the success rate of DIY projects. Long gone are the days when you had to go to the library for a how-to book or struggled to figure the problem out on your own. Now there are thousands of “experts” posting DIY videos that take you step by step through the project and that has given many of us the confidence to tackle some tricky tasks.

Therein may be the difference between boomers and millennials. We use it as a tool, they use it as a megaphone. Vive la difference and stay out of the ER.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

My mother had a saying: “My get up and go has got up and gone.” It’s something I’ve lately come to understand all too well. After the past year with its ups, downs, and all arounds I’m finding it nearly impossible to motivate myself to do anything about anything for anything. Even getting it up to write this has taken a huge amount of mental effort over the past week.

I’m not fatigued, not tired, not depressed, I’m simply unmotivated. When I was younger, I mean up until 2008, I bounded out of bed the minute I opened my eyes.

I’ve done a lot of Googling the subject, but most of the articles are geared toward young people, who can’t seem to care about exercise or work. I only wish! I’d just like to do some yard work! I did find one article that explained that motivation naturally subsides as we get older, due to no fault of our own. That was in turns good news and bad. Good because I no longer have to berate myself or try to live up to the impossible standard I set when I was in my 20s and 30s, and bad because this may be my new normal. There’s been way too much adapting to new normals lately.

Some days it’s impossible for me to even get dressed, much less to trim the hedge under our windows so that the cat can more easily access his pet door. Most of the well-meaning advice comes down to just getting up and doing shite, but it’s not easy, is it. Not when natural aging is at the helm. Fortunately, I have great whopping loads of motivation where my brain is concerned. Puzzles, reading non-fiction and keeping up with current events keeps my mind young. It’s just the biological stuff, and all the motivational quotes in the world aren’t going to change anything, thank you very much.

I can’t say I have a firm understanding of all this—there just aren’t enough articles on the web about it for my age group. But now that Nettl is cancer-free and my knee is nearly back to normal, I have hope that some motivation will return. I’ll trim that hedge! I’ll clean out the flower beds! I’ll get back to cleaning the house every Friday! Just do it! will be my new mantra…

…when I find the motivation to chant it to myself.

SK Waller is an author and composer. Books One and Two (With A Dream and With A Bullet) of her rock and roll series, Beyond The Bridge, takes places in late 70s London. Read more at SK Waller SKWaller.com.

Men are wearing sportcoats, even suits, but with open-collared shirts. Old men, young men, middle-aged men — clear majorities of men in all age groups are tieless.

That’s particularly surprising in my little corner of the world. My Teeny Tiny Law Office is located in a building pretty much crawling with lawyers. There are lawyers everywhere around me, presumably, but very few of them are sporting ties.

Of course, I’m not wearing a tie today either. Truth to tell, I only wore a tie on Monday because I had to go to court. With the sole exception of one judge, since retired, I can’t imagine a male lawyer deliberately going to court without a tie.

Of course, accidents do happen. I came to work once, some years ago, wearing a flannel shirt — I think I was planning to move boxes or something — only to realize, upon arriving at the office, that I’d forgotten a court date. Desperate, I scrounged a jacket from a colleague — he was shorter than me, and thinner, so the jacket had no chance of buttoning and the sleeves came only about three quarters of the way down my arm — but at least I didn’t feel completely naked when I approached the bench. The judge — with whom I’d been friendly when she was a privatus like me (we’d had some cases together) — regarded me with exasperation: “Really, Curmudgeon? Flannel?”

But those kinds of accidents don’t happen if one comes to work dressed in the uniform of the profession — that is, wearing a jacket and tie. And it really was unusual for me to come downtown without both.

But that was then.

If this tieless look among professional men is a trend, and I think it is, what accounts for it? A few years back, I noticed that President Obama didn’t always wear a tie, even while giving speeches. In the 2016 presidential primaries, it occurred to me that a lot of candidates were campaigning without neckties. I guess the idea was to appear more a ‘Man of the People.’

Donald Trump, on the other hand, always seems to be wearing a necktie. Tied too long, but always on.

Oh, Lord, this can’t be a political thing can it?

Please tell me that the disappearing necktie is an American phenomenon — not just a Blue State thing.

Curmudgeon is a self-described dinosaur — an Ozzie and Harriet person living in an Ozzy and Sharon world. And sometimes it confuses the heck out of him. He writes a very amusing blog at Second Effort.