Get a ticket on the retirement ride

So you’re retired and bored or avoiding retirement because it sounds boring?

Here’s a ticket to Six Flags Over Boredom Park.

The rides there have names like Learn Something, Play Something and Do Something for Someone Else.

There are three myths of retirement – that you will want and be able to play golf every day, that you will have the money to buy an RV (and gas) to see the USA and that no one needs you anymore.

The Learn Something ride will catapult you into one of the thousands of classes taught  at your local community college or university or through your local library. 

Learning something new doesn’t appeal to you? Shame on you. You will stink even if you are only watching and playing along with Family Feud or “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” but at least get on the Play Something ride.

 A friend began piano lessons at age 65. He won’t be in the Van Cliburn competition but he entertains himself quite well – and those family members patient enough to listen to his halting play. But hey, he plays the piano and they don’t!

I recently took an acrylic painting class and my impatience gene, with its  complete disregard for detail and inability to stay within the lines drawn were all obvious in the finished product.

I therefore apologize to Woods Chapel Baptist Church for making its historic chapel my painting subject.

Having said that, I am framing the primitive piece because it is my only attempt to perch on this branch of the fine arts tree. My nest is on the writing branch and I have clung briefly to the theater and music branches.

But the point is, I branched out.  I learned something – mainly that I have no talent  for paining --and  now have a painting to prove it.

 The Do Something for Someone Else ride is the real thrill ride. It will persuade you that you are needed.  

So many non-profit agencies, churches and schools need help.  

I give a few hours a week to Helping Restore Ability, the nonprofit that helps persons with disabilities remain self sufficient. It has been a learning experience and an opportunity to continue to use my God-given talents.   And I leave their offices always feeling good and appreciated.

So get out of that Laz-e-Boy, put down the remote and pick up the phone or get on the computer and buy an admission ticket to Six Flags Over Boredom Park.

After all, you’re retiring (or already have) from the workplace not the human race.

You Can Teach a New Blog Old Tricks

I  established this blog more than a year ago (notice I didn't say "over" a year ago because "over" is a spatial term and therefore incorrect, and I only point this out now because this blog will often include my "concerns" about writing).

One "concern" is the annoying use of quote marks around a word or phrase for emphasis, irony or because the writer assumes the reader is too dumb to know the he/she  is being facetious (i.e. the "cat" was actually a dog with an attitude), a technique often overdone. And yes, I know I have put quote marks around six words so far.

What I won't rant about are long sentences as my opening sentence is 43 words.
I will also take liberties with punctuation and grammar because I  have a degree in English, which is really just a lifetime license to point out the punctuation, grammar, general writing and vocabulary errors of others.

I like to write and not "self-edit," a term an employee once used when explaining to me why her writing contained so many errors. She said she "didn't have time to self-edit" which of course meant she didn't want to proofread her work. She is a "former" employee.

I started this blog while working as the public relations and marketing director for one of the biggest colleges in Texas and that was bad timing and the reason my second post (I deleted the first one) is a year late.

But now that I am really retired  (I am told I have retired more times that Brett Favre) I plan to post at least weekly.

I will also write often about my dogs that are my children and post inane photos of them (I orginally wrote "who" rather than "that" but my husband, a retired publisher and editor, read this over my shoulder and reminded me that no matter how much I love them, the dogs are "thats."
So now he has forced me to use those darned quote marks twice more!

For nearly 30 years I wrote a humor column for newspapers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and won state, regional and even a third place national award for it; so I miss writing this sort of thing and hope to make my readers laugh.

Let me get the ball rolling.

Ha, ha!