Hope to see you there!

Once you have a nice list of possibilities and start exploring them, you will be on a roll with that for quite a while. Eventually though, you’ll stall for any number of reasons. The most likely scenario is that something that really excites you, doesn’t come as easily or as quickly as you’d like and you get frustrated. There is of course a learning curve to anything, whether that be what appears to be a simple manual skill or something more complex.

Let’s say you’ve decided to learn to play the piano. You’ve been at it for some months and still you haven’t been able to find your way to playing the simplest tune you like with any degree of pleasure. It’s work, and it doesn’t sound all that great. The drills to learn various technical skills are boring you. Your interest starts to wander. You think maybe this isn’t such a good idea, after all you are what 50 something? 60 something? you’re never going to be a concert pianist.

This is where you need to nurture the quality of persistence. Persistence is the ability to stay with it, through the less than optimum parts of the learning curve to get to where you’re going. You are learning skills that you know will give you pleasure once you’ve got past rank beginner. You know that it will take persistence to get there.

So why are we so ready to give up on ourselves when we don’t achieve instant mastery of a new skill?

As older adults we are used to having that mastery in a wide range of things, so learning something new means becoming a beginner and not many of us tend to be comfortable there. We feel foolish, awkward or stupid.

When we watch a grandchild learn a new skill are we that hard on them, do we tell them by word or glance that we think it is stupid that they don’t already know how to walk, talk or feed themselves? No, that would be cruel and we’d never do that to them.  Yet we will do that to ourselves? What’s with that?

I wonder if it isn’t a bit hard on how we see ourselves (as competent, accomplished adults) to have to face the discomfort we sometimes find in learning a new skill? Our dignity might take a hit, and while logically we know that’s minor, the equivalent of a blackfly bite in terms of pain, we somehow manage to see and experience it as much bigger. We’re no longer able apparently to be as kind to ourselves as is appropriate under the circumstances.

And what about patience? Where’s that got to? To cultivate persistence we also need to remember patience.

So, how will you treat yourself as you learn a new skill? Do you think you can remember to be patient and kind? At least as patient and kind as you are to your grandkids? Why not try it? And let me know how it goes.

To bring together multiple factors, people, and ideas so that a project can be accomplished; to organize a complex project and many people to work together in relative harmony for a common goal. To pay attention to your wardrobe choices and not wear red and green at the same time.

Possibly we like the rush that pushing the limits can give. Sure, and the un-rush of recovery time, what about that?

But who likes to think about limits, never mind the limits that come with ageing? Who me? Of course I can, I’m not that old. Sorry but being thirty in your head doesn’t count when you are pushing your body beyond limits it can currently manage.  You know, like taking a 5km hike when the most you’ve done in the last how-so-many-ever years is walk from the sofa to the fridge. Yes, you could do it, you aren’t technically incapable, but whoa are you out of practice or what.

Some things we stop doing as we age we stop simply because we’re out of practice and haven’t yet accepted that it will require patience and practice to work back up to being able to do the activity with pleasure. But there’s a problem with that, a serious problem. Lack of appropriate physical activity is not only bad for your health but also impacts your longevity goals.

You do have longevity goals, right? Like living well and healthy into your 90′s perhaps? Breathing on your own, without having to drag along an oxygen tank? A sharp mind?

Good, so take a walk and eventually take that hike. You’ll be really glad you did!

The most interesting aspect of the this current life transition (to older) as I see it , is that we’ve run out of life script, story or even path for our lives. Or perhaps we don’t want to live out the script we believe we are offered (as dotty senior?), as it just doesn’t feel right, feels in fact more like a life sentence than a life.

Does it make sense to you that 60 is what 40 was to our parents’ generation? What does that really mean?

If there was truth in this proposition, that 60 is the new 40, then the ‘old’ jokes we tell would have to go–we know forty isn’t old. Yet why are we so ready in casual conversation to ascribe anything we forget or temporarily misplace, to age? Could it be that we are simply busy, too busy even, distracted, and that things get away from us on occasion? Why would that be ‘a senior moment’?

Self-talk, we should know by now, matters.  It is possible we use ‘old’ jokes to help cope with our fears around ageing, especially fears of Alzheimer’s and dementia.

I’d like to see our self talk and our conversations with others do a better job of reflecting the vitality and wisdom we live, and be a lot less self deprecating.  Are we perhaps somehow apologizing for not feeling as ‘old’ as we ‘should’ by this age?

To rebuke, criticize or speak with passion about a situation or condition you know to be unfair or wrong; never underestimate the power of righteous anger to move mountains or other persons. Or for that matter to kick your own butt.

While the fact of a poor cash flow may well exist, it also functions as a very handy excuse for not following your curiosity or exploring anything at all. Because in order to do something, we need money, right? And if I get all curious and excited and there’s no money to proceed, why that’s a sure way to misery.

There’s something wrong with this picture, very wrong.

Let me illustrate with a story.  I once met a man who assured me that he wanted to ‘do woodworking’, but until he had 100K, he couldn’t do it. What do you want to make? I asked. He didn’t know and he needed that 100K before he’d allow himself to consider what products he’d make or be able to test the market.

Did he have wood working tools now? Yes, but there was no point to doing anything until the 100K arrived and he could build his mega shop.

Do you see what’s going on here? He used his impossible money goal to prevent himself from even looking at what he might enjoy doing. Maybe he’d be happy making kids’ toys with very basic equipment, or whittling duck call whistles. But until he won the lottery (his idea) he was not going to allow himself anywhere near his curiosity.

The money, or the lack of it, was an excuse that very nicely kept him from doing anything whatsoever.

All of us do some version of this when we get those first nudges from our curiosity. This is because fear shows up almost at once, and we can use the handy, no money thing to keep us from facing fear and taking any steps toward our joy.

Right.

So, what’s the less money solution?

1. There are many of free ways to begin any exploration.
   1. start at the public library
   2. network, find others with similar interests (ask at the library!)
   3. do some on-line searching
   4. start a group around your interest
2. Start a tiny (even very tiny) savings account, it will add up over time
3. Volunteer in some capacity that lets you learn new skills
4. Start simply–you don’t need the Rolls Royce version of any equipment to test out new ideas or skills
5. Borrow or rent equipment, or consider starting a cooperative to share expensive resources
6. Do something, however small an effort, every day to feed your curiosity

Just don’t get caught up in the defeatist thinking that whatever it is can’t be done because there’s not enough money. You never know in advance, where your curiosity will take you, or what resources you may find along the way.

Let me know how this works for you, share your stories and ideas in the comments.

Image: http://steynian.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/steynian-313/

Antique spinning wheel

In my late fifties I kept getting a nudge in the direction of working with fibre again. I spent much of my adult life (young adult? to forty something) trying to make a living as a fibre artist. Since I had no market, and less marketing expertise, I didn’t succeed in the living part, but did very well indeed in making a life.

Trying to make a living took most of the fun out of the work, and aspects of this endeavour had to be abandoned when I saw that there was absolutely no way to make money doing that. As opposed to faint hope in some other aspects.

What was abandoned in the seventies was my interest in spinning. I loved it, but couldn’t justify spending the time on it when I was meant to be weaving (I know, I know!) for craft shows instead. So I sold my wheel and promised myself that ‘someday’, ‘when I have time’, I’d get back to that.

Then in my late fifties those sweet nudges began. I now live in a different part of the country and there are many more fibre artists, and sheep farmers here. Resources are literally everywhere.

One evening, while feeling that something was missing from my life, that the work I was doing wasn’t truly engaging me, although it paid the bills much better than my artsy fartsy work in the 70′s did, I decided to go exploring the internet to see whether there were any local sources for spinning wheels and what brands they carried.

I launched into weeks of looking at wheels on line, visiting dozens upon dozens of websites searching for the perfect wheel. This time there was no sense that I would need to make a living, I’m not prepared to spin wool or other luscious fibres for any reason other than the sheer delight of watching it turn into yarn. If I make more than I can use, I may consider selling some, but I’m not counting on spinning to finance my older age.

Once I had a short list of wheels I contacted local sellers to see if there were any in stock I could try. What luck! Not only were my top two choices in stock, at a shop an hour’s drive from my home, but in my own community there was a woman who had these two wheels, all I had to do was call her and she would let me try them out.

What followed was several years of meeting with a lovely group of spinners and fibre artists for weekly spinning gatherings. I purchased one wheel for traveling to spinning events and another more substantial one for stay at home spinning. I experimented with all sorts of different types of sheep’s wool (who knew there were so many?) and soon had enough to knit up into projects of all sorts. I bought fleece, oh my, did I buy fleece. And no, I do not own up to how many fleeces I have in my stash. The fun of meeting sheep farmers, artists of every sort, a growing group of other spinners (aka enablers) meant that my life has been enriched in ways I am only beginning to see.

All that from following a bit of curiosity on a day when I was feeling rather blah.

You never know where your curiosity will take you. Maybe, like I did, you will find a tribe to be part of. Certainly, if you give it a chance, your curiosity will lead you in the direction of a major passion. And passion, engagement, and joy are what it’s all about.

What nudge from your curiosity are you following right now?

What does this have to do with being a healthy and happy elder? Absolutely everything!

We go through a number of life stages as we age, and depending on who you read and what theories you subscribe to they are simply stated as infancy, childhood young adult, middle age, and old age (early writers, when old age was about 50); and now perhaps infancy, childhood, young adult (to 35?), early middle age (to 50?); middle age (to 70?); old age to 85; and old old age, to 100.

However you view these life stages and wherever you think one ends and another begins is less important than the fact that the stages tend to coincide with various aspects of our emotional, physical, and spiritual development.

Concerns we have in young adulthood resurface, I was surprised to find, in middle age, when once again we examine our values, our priorities and even our identities.  Who knew there was such a thing as ‘middlesence’?

In fact, a case can be made that we re-invent ourselves in each life stage to accommodate new realities, not just in older age. Career building, marriage and family as a young adult are major motivators for personal re-invention and priority changes. So too are the realities in one’s fifties and beyond as work winds down or shifts radically. Being a grandparent is yet another opportunity to re-invent oneself, as are the new realities of a retirement life.

So where does planned happenstance feature in all this?

Re-invention of one’s self is not a clear cut program, with 7 steps to success.  No process of change is that simple. But you can help things along and enjoy yourself immensely if you remember that your first task is curiosity and exploration. Want to know more about building a wooden boat because you might want to do that in retirement? Want to learn to quilt to make gifts for all your friends and grandchildren? Want to learn more about voluntary service in a special interest area?  Great!

Start now, today. Follow your curiosity when it begins to throw you sweet little ‘what if’ challenges. Explore. Read. Talk to people. Search the internet. Try it.  Don’t whatever you do wait until you are bored out of your gourd three months into retirement, for you’ll just be annoyed at yourself for wasting so much precious time.

What project or idea have you been holding on to, telling yourself you’ll wait until retirement to try it out? Go ahead, indulge in some curiosity today. You won’t believe how good it will feel.

Let me know in the comments your where curiosity takes you.

Butterfly Wing Alphabet

Appreciate

I appreciate that there are readers of my blog posts and ideas. You’re there, aren’t you?

I appreciate that summer temperatures must come with humidity, but I don’t have to like it.

I appreciate that if I spend more time actually writing, life flows much more smoothly. [Note to self, write more.]

I appreciate the idea of serenity and hope it will show up one day soon.

Disclaimer: Boomer Alphabet is meant to be eccentric, provocative, sarcastic, silly or all of the above.