Retirement Update (Tuesday, January 26th, 2016)

It has now been six months since Steve's retirement, and although we LOVE it, there are still some things that we need to think about changing. I'm sure that retirement is a series of unending modifications to accommodate the changes that life brings us, just like the rest of our life has been, so why not start now.

We just returned from a western Caribbean cruise with our youngest daughter, which was a ton of fun.  The only problem is that we came home with a nasty bug.  We've been home 10 days, and we're still trying to shake it.  We've had to turn-down or cancel plans with three different sets of friends, just because we didn't feel well enough, and to me, that's unacceptable. 

We're finding that all of these short trips, one after another, with a hectic schedule waiting for us when we come home, is taking a toll on us.  And being in so many public places like airports, planes, buses, and cruise ships is probably exposing us to more than we even want to think about.  We've enjoyed all of it, and we're certainly not ready to stop traveling, but we are realizing that a slightly slower pace might be a better option for us in the longer run.  

One of the things we've realized is that we need to make Colorado more enjoyable while we're here in the winter.  We really don't enjoy being outside in the cold, so we're trying to come up with fun ways to stay busy when we're home, even if it's cold outside.  We also seem to save up all of our "icky jobs" for when we're home in Colorado, instead of freeing up our time at home for family and friends.   Which is making Colorado less appealing than it really needs to be.

Steve has felt rather unsettled since he retired, and part of it is that he doesn't have a place to call his own.  He has always had an organized office where he can take care of business, and I have my home office, so that is leaving him feeling like a duck out of water. So before we left on the cruise, we set up an "office" for him, or maybe it's more of a music room, hard to say.  But either way, he now has his own space where he can work on his music, do computer work, work on his GoPro videos, and do his home office work.  I can see that he is really enjoying his new space, so I often grab my computer from my office and join him in the music room so we can spend time together while we get our stuff done.

We also think that when we leave Colorado, we need to be gone for more than two weeks at a time.  It gets expensive in terms of both time and dollars, and it's just not that fun traveling back and forth that much.  We're thinking we should try for three weeks minimum from now on.  We're trying to make my work more portable, so it will be less of an issue as well.

And speaking of slowing down, here is the beautiful Colorado sunset from our back deck tonight.  Too cold to sit outside and enjoy, not too cold for a quick snapshot that we can sit and enjoy inside.