Came across this today - worth sharing: https://www.theretirementmanifesto.com/the-best-retirement-advice-ever/

Good Monday. Every Monday I ask one small question here. No homework, no wrong answers, and a one-line reply is a complete answer. This week: what's one thing on your calendar that you're actually looking forward to? Not something you have to do. Not an appointment or an errand. One thing you'd be a little disappointed to miss. And if the honest answer is nothing, say nothing. That's a real answer, it's more common than people admit, and noticing it is worth more than pretending otherwise. I'll go first: I am meeting good friends for dinner on. Looking forward to catching up with them. Let us know what's on your mind! Matt

Good Monday morning, everybody. Here is something I have been thinking about, and I want to know if it lands for you. For most of your working life, somebody handed you something new to learn whether you asked for it or not. A new charting system. A new set of regulations. A new machine, a new curriculum, a new boss with new expectations. You groaned about half of it. You learned it anyway, because you had to, and because people were counting on you to know it by Thursday. Then you retire, and that stops. Completely. No one is going to email you a new protocol. Nobody is going to require anything of your brain ever again. And the strange part is that it does not feel like a loss at first. It feels like relief. It can take a good while before you notice that the last genuinely new thing you learned was something you were made to learn, back when you still had a badge. I am not saying you need to go sign up for a class. Please do not go sign up for a class on my account. I just think this one is worth noticing, because it is quiet. It does not announce itself the way an empty calendar does. So here is the check-in question for the week. What is the last thing you learned that nobody required you to learn? It does not have to be impressive. A recipe counts. Figuring out the settings on a camera counts. A name of a bird you kept seeing in the yard counts. And "I honestly cannot remember" is a real answer too, and probably the most useful one in the whole thread. I will go first in the comments.

Happy Monday, everyone. New week, clean page. Let's do our simple Monday ritual together. Pick just one part of your life that could use a little light this week. Your health, a friendship, your sense of purpose, your mind, the spaces you spend your days in, whatever has felt quiet lately. Just one. Now name one small step for it. So small it is almost easy. A ten-minute walk. One phone call to someone you miss. One page of the book on your nightstand. That is the whole thing. Small and doable beats big and someday, every single time. Drop your one step in the comments. Saying it out loud here, where a few other people can see it, makes it far more likely to actually happen. And it gives the rest of us a nudge too. I will go first below. I just wan to get back to my posting routine here and on Facebook (It will work on my Intellectual and Social dimensions for sure and probably boost my emotional one as well. What is your one small step this week?

One year retired. Finding more to do: workouts, church events, family visits, plus visits back to Fort Stockton, where I moved from, to see my dad and sister.