Fall brings dramatic color to Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Colorado. Dense colonies of aspens grow in moist soil, sharing a root system and changing their leaves in unison. Like a river of gold, these gorgeous trees fill Morris Gulch, high in the mountains above the sand dunes. Photo by Patrick Myers, National Park Service.
Grupo MM, a Mexican architectural firm that designed the Casa Concreto – or Concrete House – in 2015. The home is located in Ciudad López Mateos, Mexico, and covers a total ground area of 400 square meters. The structure’s light concrete walls create a stark contrast with its surroundings in terms of color, though its rough texture makes it feel right at home. The architectural firm’s intention when designing this..
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Casa na Praia Grande is a private residence designed by Ribero de Carvalho Arquitectos, based in Colares, in the municipality of Sintra, in Portugal. The home itself is located in Praia Grande, which is also located in the municipality of Sintra, in Portugal, and was designed in 2011, covering a total ground area of 676 square meters. The home boasts stunning views over the Atlantic Ocean, and so it is..
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Kate Millett invented feminist literary criticism. Her urgent, elegant 1970 masterwork, Sexual Politics introduced a new and remarkably durable idea: you could interpret literature in light of its gender dynamics. You may wonder whether literature is the right medium for consciousness-raising, but you can’t deny that Millett made reading a life-changing, even world-changing, act. She is owed a posthumous apology for the shameful way she was pushed out of the limelight.
Very soon, you’ll be celebrating your sixtieth birthday and that means you’ll be looking at your retirement, too. It’s natural to feel jittery about it as one question keeps popping into your mind: Now what?
It’s not that everyone over sixty goes through the same dilemma of finding new pastures. Some people keep working because they either need money or they just don’t want to get out of what they have become conditioned to. Well, in any case, if sixty is just not a number for you, it’s time to rev up your passion and pursue your hobbies like never before.
Before you enter your twilight years, you have every reason and opportunity to make your life rocking more than ever. By this age, you have lived most of your life, worked hard for your family and achieved success in ways that you know more than others do. Isn’t now the time you do something for yourself?
Here are the top things to do in retirement that can make your life more engaging and exciting:
This is going to be a new chapter of your life, so just sit back and ponder what has been missing in your life so far. What have you always been curious about?
Defining your purpose here means thinking about how you are going to spend your time in fruitful pursuits. It is the time to reassess your life and revisit your personal purposes that you couldn’t accomplish before. Now is the time to revisit the things that you always felt very strongly about.
Thinking young at this time simply means being energetic and enjoying the time you now have in your hands. Fun and enjoyment is a lifelong process and getting past sixty doesn’t mean that your attitude should be old and obsolete.
It’s time to have fun with your family and friends by talking and meeting with them more often. You can organize small parties and invite your friends to have sweet discussions and little toasts. This is the perfect time to give your friends an exotic bottle of wine or get them their favorite box of cigar. It is also the time to create sweet memories with your grandchildren.
Following one’s hobbies is the biggest stress buster at any stage in life. So, continue what your favorite pastimes were even before your retirement. Be it gardening, traveling, reading, singing, dancing or playing golf. You always need to follow your hobbies to keep you fit and enthusiastic.
But, more importantly, your main focus should be doing the things that you enjoy the most. Pursuing your hobbies with heart and soul can give a completely new meaning to your life. So, get ready to make that push.
It’s time to use your expertise for a philanthropic cause in our society. Maybe your local library, school or pantry need your skills? Perhaps your local hospital and nursing home need an extra hand?
This might not sound like one of the most interesting things to do in retirement but volunteering your expertise will enable you to give back to the society what you learned as a professional.
See Also: Retirement Activities that are Financially Viable
There must be something itching inside you. These could be the activities that you were never able to do before or any untapped talent you have. Getting to know people with diverse interests will help you in that. Consider your retirement as a golden opportunity for you to try something new. It can be learning a new language or traveling to a place where you have never been but always craved to go to.
See Also: 10 Amazing Business Ideas For Stay-At-Home Retirees
The age of sixty is not the end of your days. It is, in fact, a new beginning where you can do the things that you were never able to do due to obvious obligations. It’s a new freedom and new purpose that will shape your life for the better.
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CHILOMETRO 06 is a hip Bed and Breakfast located in Trani, a seaport of Apulia in southern Italy, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It was designed by Vincenzo Bafunno Architetto, who is based out of nearby Andria. The interior is stylish and comfortable, with a sleek yet cozy design that is perfect for welcoming guests. The floors are done in pine wood, with walls and furniture in a..
You’re reading Off The Grid: What Living Without Internet For 3 Years Taught Me about Living Fully and Connecting With People, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Imagine coming home after a grueling day at work. You’re tired, hungry, and all you want to do is pop a frozen meal in the microwave and watch an episode of Narcos.
Except you can’t. Six months earlier you decided that you weren’t going to pay for Internet so that in situations like these you wouldn’t be boring.
This is exactly what I did for three years while living in Spain, and it turned out to be one of the most game changing decisions ever. My life took a 180.
And the best part? You don’t have to get rid of your Internet to learn what I did.
Whenever I used to be out or at an event, I would either whip out my phone and pretend like I’m busy or make a beeline for the food as an excuse not to talk anyone. It didn’t take long before I started noticing this tendency to avoid conversation and decided to do something about it.
But where to start? What I found was that service people – baristas, servers and waiters, bartenders, etc., were both unintimidating to talk to and helped give me the momentum and confidence to start conversations with other people.
Because the stakes were low (it’s totally normal to talk with service people, you can even ask them funny questions or experiment with different conversation topics), I would regularly talk to service people and got more comfortable talking to strangers. This was the biggest “hack” that improved my conversations with people and made me a more outgoing person.
Also, I became friends with a bunch of people who worked in my neighborhood and it was hard to go anywhere without having a conversation on the street or someone shouting “Hey Ian!” at me through their shop.
In my case, I tried a bunch of new hobbies. It was like throwing darts at a dartboard. I joined sports teams, tried salsa dancing, did yoga, worked out in the park, played chess against old people in public squares, and went to meditation retreats.
The interesting thing was that I only stuck with one or two of these hobbies, but the friends that I made by going to salsa a few times and playing chess are still my friends to this day. It was like a flywheel; the more time that I spent out my apartment doing things, the more people I would meet, the more friends I would make, and the more I would get invited out again.
We’ve all known someone who wants to hangout on Tuesday, doesn’t seem to have anything going on Thursday, and also is interested in what you’re up to on Saturday.
Don’t be that person.
When you have no Internet, though, it’s tempting to want to hang out with someone everyday. What else are you going to do?
It’s often tempting to want to hit everyone up all the time and hang out. There are two awesome ways to handle not coming off as needy.
The first is to diversify friends. Maybe you hang out with your friends from yoga after yoga class, and then with that girl or guy you met at the coffee shop the next night. Maybe you hang out with people from work once or twice a week. Be careful, though, if you find yourself initiating all of the conversations and asking people what they are up to, you might need to take a good look in the mirror.
The second is to not interview other people. Often when we meet people for the first time, it’s easy to ask a ton of questions. Instead, try asking deeper questions about what the other person is interested in and why (always “why” or “how come” – this is key for connecting with people), but balance it out. Share your own opinion and experience so that the conversation isn’t lopsided.
Whether it’s a romantic interest or just wanting to make friends, it’s easy to use drinking as an outlet to meet people. What I found, though, is that if I was both a) doing interesting things during the day and b) making friendships and relationships doing those things, then I didn’t have to go out meeting girls at bars or making friends at parties.
In fact, I was able to connect with people in a much deeper way and make lasting relationships. Don’t get me wrong, parties are great and drinking is fun in moderation, but with my entire social life turned inside out, I wasn’t desperate to meet new people in the same old places.
Instead, it seemed to happen so naturally just by doing awesome things.
Action Steps
Ian can be reached at iansilverness@gmail.com . He responds to every email 🙂
You’ve read Off The Grid: What Living Without Internet For 3 Years Taught Me about Living Fully and Connecting With People, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
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Detached Home is a residential project completed by the architectural firm MIDE architects, based in Stra, in the Veneto, Italy. The home itself is located in Fiesso d’Artico, in the same province, a little village along the bankside area of the Brenta River. It covers a total ground area of nearly 1,000 square feet, and was completed in 2017. The project consists of a detached family home distributed across two..
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Fascinating animals, muskoxen look like survivors of the Ice Age. Whiles other arctic animals spend their winter in hibernation, muskoxen live in open, unsheltered tundra enduring the unforgiving elements that come their way. One secret to muskoxen survival is their two layers of fur – a very long outer layer of fur that looks like hair and a short fuzzy underlayer of qiviut. You can find muskoxen on several public lands in Alaska, including Cape Krusenstern National Monument. Photo by Doug Demarest, National Park Service.
Sig Nordal 