Picture Retirement
retired from work, not life
Make Your Own Music – January Recap
Instead of choosing a WOTY (Word of the Year) for 2021 I decided to rely on the basic elements of my contented life – mind, body, and spirit to guide me through the year. When balance is achieved within those elements, I feel satisfied, energetic and hopeful about the future. None of these are on auto-pilot and each requires intentional tending. This year I will write a monthly recap and share some highlights of my contentment here. Like my friend Tamara says over at My Retirement Project, “accountability is a good motivator.” January was a good month, especially weather-wise, so I was particularly motivated to be outside. What could contribute more to mind, body and spirit than a day filled with sunshine?
Read MoreWhat Does Blue Say About You?
This week Terri Webster Schrandt has suggested Glacier Blue for her Sunday Stills photo Challenge. I could not live farther away from a glacier, or ice, or even freezing temperatures, for that matter. My offering this week is brought to you from sunny South Florida – with a few notable exceptions.
Glacier Blue is likely depicted somewhere on the chart below, but, any shade of blue is pleasing to me. In fact, it is my favorite color. I actually wrote a full post about it here.
Read MoreIs Your Life the right size?
You may have recently read a series of posts from Janis at Retirementally Challenged who shared an original short story about an older woman who lived alone after the death of her husband. Her life was orderly, but very small. As the story unfolds, so does Eleanor. Feeling invisible behind a Covid mask Eleanor’s new-found freedom and curiosity take her on a journey toward a bigger, more satisfying life.
We don’t know exactly when Eleanor’s world began to shrink, but when we meet her, she seems content to go through the motions of a former life; even though it doesn’t seem to fit her anymore.
Read MoreFrom Our Home to Yours Merry Christmas
It has been a quirky, crazy, unpredictable year and I for one am very happy to see it come to an end. We would like to thank each of you who stuck with us this year as we adjusted and adapted to our new normal. It was not the year we expected, but, it could have been much worse.
Maintaining a Retirement Lifestyle blog presented challenges this past year, but next year we plan to return to our regular Picture Retirement format as we resume travel in the first quarter of 2021. We will kick off our adventures with a trip to Jekyll Island to celebrate Valentine’s Day and join the treasure hunt for beautiful glass orbs. It is a repeat of a trip we made a couple of years ago and loved.
Read MoreBehind Thursday Doors
One look at my Instagram feed and you will know that I favor seascape photography above all else. Those photographs dominate the feed by about 90%. I do have other favorite subjects though. People, churches and doors come immediately to mind. Of the three, my favorite is doors. There is something intriguing about a door, whether it be rustic and weathered or ostentatiously fanciful. I enjoy imagining the secrets they protect.
Some years ago, I posted the first door in the collage below on a local photography FB feed and asked folks to share what they knew about the doors. They are prominent in our community, but no one seemed to know why they were built. You can’t tell from the picture, but they actually lead to no-where. They are merely a façade. Unraveling the mystery of these doors introduced me to new friends and provided light-hearted entertainment for several days. Doors open doors….
The collage of doors below were individually submitted to Norm Frampton’s Thursday Doors over the period of time that he hosted that forum. Each one has a unique story.
JFK Jr. married Carolyn Bessette behind one of these doors, slaves lived in a cabin on a Louisiana plantation behind another, and wealth beyond measure lies beyond yet another. Beauty, pain, history, life….. the stuff of Thursday Doors.
Norm recently passed the Thursday Doors torch to Dan at No Facilities and he put out an all-call to his readers to create a Badge to represent the challenge. The final selection will be made by popular vote and Dan’s conventional wisdom. This is my entry.
If you are intrigued by beautiful doors, please consider joining in the weekly challenge. Click over to Dan’s blog to read the rules and to see some amazing doors.
update
Happy dance! The badge I created was selected by a vote of Dan’s readers to represent the Thursday Door Challenge for 2021.
