I’m taking a break

I’m retired, so why do I need a break? Because part of the fun about being retired, is that you don’t have to do the same things, all the time.

When I first retired, 8 years ago now, I was looking after my Mum, I was enjoying my first attempts at making jewellery, my husband and I were enjoying travelling without too many restrictions. We took each day as it came, we made few plans, and ‘went with the flow’. I wrote about it recently in Amazing Retirement. Between many weddings, literally across the globe, a few funerals, quite a few births of grandchildren for our friends, more retirements of friends, new jobs for the next generation, the wheel of life moves on regularly.

Sometimes Life Gets in the Way

In Edinburgh summer has been a bit cool and damp, I have been enjoying time away from the PC. I have taken to reading more books, both physical and on my Kindle. I have been doing some crocheting, and as ever I have a rather large piece of copper work on the workbench. I want to take a version of this over to NZ with me, so this is a bit of a prototype. (It is 1m deep by 80cm wide. )

The thought of spending half a day, or longer perfecting a blog post just hasn’t appealed. I know it will again, but at the minute, I would rather read a book. So, I’m going with the flow.

We met up with a friend who has lost a wife and then a son in less than 6 months. He is doing OK, but yet again it made me ask myself, was I making the best of every minute?

I don’t make any money from this blog, by choice. Partly because I don’t want to have to blog every week, just to keep my marketing stats up. I want it to stay a fun activity. I also don’t want to blog within a narrow niche. While retirement is the main rationale behind my blog, I like to blog about other things, be it travel, money, metal work or just life in general.

There’s just so much going on

While my husband and I continue to enjoy good health, a family member has been quite ill, and has been in hospital for 2 months. As they live at the other end of the country, we have had several trips down to see them. Fotunately, they are now at home, but sadly not able to join us on our trip this year.

We have had a really sociable few weeks. My son arrived from New Zealand with his wife, my other son came up from London and we had a great family party, and just enjoyed hanging around together. I didn’t even switch on my PC for nearly a week. A rarity for me, although I did scan my emails using my phone.

Just to make you smile, on  the Wednesday we took my son and wife back to the airport to catch their flight back to NZ, we encountered the most amazing thunderstorm on our way. I have never driven through so much standing water in my life. The main entrance into the airport got flooded, so we had to go via a different route, drive through lots of water and sit in traffic jams. However, we made it, I have never seen the check-in area so deserted. The Edinburgh airport area was the wettest part of Scotland, with 38mm of rain through the day, 17mm of which fell between 5pm and 6pm, just when I was travelling to the airport. The journey took 1 hour 10min, not the usual 10min. Look at what the water levels were like at the Drop Off Zone. If you look carefully, you will see a small red car in water up to its headlights!

 

My cousin and his wife arrived for a few days.. We went to see a few things in the Edinburgh festival, so blogging wasn’t on my schedule.

Then we have now started our trip to Athens – 7 weeks…. And we have just booked a month in New Zealand over the turn of the year. I might put up one or two posts, but no more than that.

Getting my priorities right

If I had to do a score on the door, for the things that I want to spend my time on, I am afraid blogging is just 1 of the ‘other things’

Top priority is rightly looking after ourselves and our immediate family.

Next come the things that we enjoy doing together, family events, travel, entertainment

Then comes things I enjoy doing for myself. Blogging, Metal Work, cooking, socialising with my friends, learning Spanish.

However, blogging by its very nature is a sedentary activity, and while I am very comfortable sitting at my desk on a damp day, when the sun is shining, I would much rather be in the garage bashing metal or in the garden.

The Decision is Made

• I did have a long and hard think about whether I would keep the blog going, however I decided I enjoyed it enough to keep it, so the blog is staying, I’ve signed up for another 3 years. (My blog is 3 years old in September, it’s moving from toddler to pre-school!)
• I’ll do a couple of posts about Athens and NZ but no more. Just about life on one of our Slow Travel experiences.
• While I started this blog with the intention of making it quite financially focused,  I won’t be doing any more of  Frugal February style posts. I will still do some financial posts like Think about your Retirement Income or Housing Costs which are very much based on my own personal experience.
• You’ll still get plenty about life in Retirement, such as Amazing Retirement, but also some in which I try to challenge a bit of deeper thought such as Confirmation Bias.

So you haven’t got rid of me yet!

We have already arrived in Athens, as you can see from the picture below. Taken in ireas yesterday afternoon. What is not to like. Sun and a temperature of  30c versus rain and 15c back in Edinburgh.. So you can see why I don’t want to sit in a chair writing just now.

I hope you enjoyed the post. If you want to pin it, just click the image below