A few weeks ago, I started “FlashForwardFridays (FFF)” to discuss future projects. I was also looking for some alliteration to talk about my current projects, but I wasn’t quite sure what to call them or even what day of the week to post. I was thinking likely Tuesday or Thursday, so I tapped into my son’s creative mind, and voila, Tadpole Tuesdays were born.
I mentioned one of my projects the other day, some relatively straightforward updates to my websites (PolyWogg.ca and ThePolyBlog.ca). I naively mentioned that I wanted to move some posts from PolyWogg.ca that were more about goals and projects than actual writing, and I thought it was a small handful to choose from at best. Ummm, no, there are actually 131 to review. Admittedly, most of them WON’T move, although some of them will challenge me to decide if I want regular blogging posts on the PolyWogg site or not. Any that could qualify as fitting in my future guides are okay to stay — like “Understanding a partially-assessed pool”. However, another post about “Breaking a long astronomy hiatus” is not content for my guide. Just blogging stuff about astronomy goals. I need to decide if that type of content stays on the site as it could, eventually, sit beside my astronomy guide(s), or just as easily fit on my ThePolyBlog site with goals.
Anyway, I’ve moved two very recent posts that triggered the project; I have 129 more to think about. If I do move stuff, I will also add a redirect to send it to this site (ThePolyBlog.ca). But it has started.
2 posts / 131
The steps are relatively straightforward though, easy peasy lemon squeezy.
I also want to add a new section to the PolyWogg site for my astronomy guide. That will take about five major steps, and I ‘haven’t made any progress on it yet. Just planned out the steps.
0 steps / 5
Now that I have solved my quote layouts (an earlier post FFF: Quote layouts), I can redo the posts so that I have a pretty picture, that shares well to social media, and that is still searchable by text/prose. I have 2 done so far with 94 to go.
2 quotes / 96
Moving forward a step into my humour pages, I want to do the same with them that I did with my quotes. I tried that once before, and the prose was challenging or the content was too silly. I haven’t started yet, but there are 82 of them on the site to redo.
0 jokes / 82
Now, here’s where my small mind starts to wobble…if consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, my brain starts to wonder if other short posts that are good for sharing should ALSO be turned into images like the quotes or humour. I want to tell my hobgoblin that no, I do NOT want to do that for book reviews. There are over 200 of them, that’s way too much work to take on, and I’m not sure it works as well. By contrast, movie / music / TV / Podcast reviews COULD all fit that mold, keep it small. For music, for example, if I was doing an album review of a single artist, it would be easy to work that into a shareable image layout. I just don’t know that there’s any real value to it.
I do see the benefit if I do it for recipes … if I could redo the layout as a 5×7″ or 4×6″ recipe card that is downloadable and printable, that could work pretty well. Easy to share, and there aren’t that many on the site (only 12). It’s been on my list before, I just felt the text was better as searchable. I didn’t have an easy way to combine the two. Now that I do, maybe it’s worth it.
0 recipes / 12
So, that’s my first Tadpole Tuesday, and the status of my project to tweak the website. I have other stuff I want to do, too, including populating more photos, but that’s a totally separate project.
Regular followers know that I’m big on goals, and January is like the kick-off to my season. Not so much this year. The trip to the DR, being sick, stuff at work, juggling stress, all of it was just too much to add much else to it. Now that April is here, I’m trying to focus my attention back to my projects already in progress. I was almost tempted to call this post the “Island of Unfinished Projects”, but none of them were permanently relegated; I’ve just paused some of them for a bit. Time to blow the dust off.
Writing is at the top of the list
I have way more planned titles than I have time at present to do, and that could either be a source of stress or a source of motivation. Some aspects are demoralizing, as I won’t get to many titles until I retire. There are not enough extra hours in the day to devote to just writing, as I have other aspects of my life that I want to continue pursuing, too.
Yet an interesting thing happened after last week. Last weekend, I planned out the update to my HR Guide called Be the Duck and even started working on the rewrite of chapter 1. I was not expecting to get very far on it, as I have three different versions from previous updates that I’m trying to consolidate into a new version. In the end? I killed much of the past content and refocused the chapter on answering two questions for people: how did I get into government (aka how I learned what I know), and what have I done since getting into government? The chapter flowed nicely as I went, and although it wasn’t “quick”, I managed to finish it over two sessions, and now it’s “resting” until I go back to it in 2 weeks to see if there’s anything I want to change.
So I’m ready this coming week to tackle writing Chapter 2. For the book overall, I’ve got a new structure that breaks things down nicely and I’ve even started researching some of the other chapters where it will be primarily new content.
Some tweaks to the website
I need to tweak both PolyWogg.ca and ThePolyBlog.ca for a bit of content, but neither are huge projects. Simple updates for now. In the past, it was easy to get sucked into major rewrites, but that’s not my goal. I have a small manageable set of tweaks to do, and then I can focus on slowly populating additional elements.
For PolyWogg.ca, it is setting up the chapter list for the Astronomy guide. I have it working for Be the Duck, but I want to start working on the Astro piece. And I need a good structure to do that, so it goes “up” easily.
For ThePolyBlog.ca, I want to update layouts for humour and quotes, and adjust my structure for FlashForwardFriday and a new one called TadpoleTuesdays. I think for FFF, I need to move it from PolyWogg to ThePolyBlog. It doesn’t fit right over there, so a simple move will be fine.
Back rehab and other health stuff
Something super odd happened with my back. Last Winter, I killed it. F***ed it up something awful. Humongous pain, medical tests, everything. And I was left with four things to help with the symptoms:
Chiro (I started with an osteopath but the chiro was doing a better job of release)
Topical pain meds (BioFreeze and MedSticks)
Robaxet-style pain meds
A back brace that I bought off Amazon
On and off, on and off, my back bothered me all the way to December. In October, I had posted about my plans for back rehab (RetirePrep: My back rehabilitation begins). I came up with a complete regimen to get started on. Then life intervened and I did sweet f*** all.
Group 1
General Exercise 1 — Knee raises to chest (either alternating or together)
Lower Back 1 — Hip rocker A (side to side)
Group 2
General Exercise 2 — Knee rocking (laying flat on back, knees bent to 90 degrees, rocking side to side)
Lower Back 2 — Hip rocker B (forward and back)
Group 3
General Exercise 3A — Modified cat / cow exercise (smaller range of up / down motion to avoid pain)
Lower Back 3 — Mackenzie side wall (elbow at 90 degrees, healthy side only toward wall)
Piriformis 1 — Ankle pull (Knee to chest, close hand on knee other on ankle, pull towards opposite shoulder, 3 reps, 10s hold)
I did some more chiro through to December, but I was still having twinging. Then we did the trip to the Dominican. Part of the benefit of such a trip was that I was entirely out of my regular routine that can mess up my back at home — I wasn’t sitting in my work chair all day, I was actually moving around more; I wasn’t sitting on a couch watching TV for too long at night, my position varied more at the resort; and I was not in my regular bed which while supportive is also repetitive. Whatever “piece” helped, or all of it did, by about the 3rd day, I had stopped wearing my belt, intentionally so. I wasn’t doing anything that should aggravate my back, so I was seeing how I could function without it. It turned out that the answer was just fine. In fact, by the time I came home, I was barely wearing it all anymore. And my back has been relatively fine ever since. Yes, I still have twinges and a lot of tightness in my hips and thighs, but not anywhere near the level of discomfort. It isn’t “fixed” by a long shot. Yet I do need more mobility if I’m going to do the things I hope to do in retirement, so I need to restart that soon.
On top of that, I’m doing a buyback for my pension that requires a medical exam to be completed, so I have that scheduled for May. Plus I need to schedule a hearing test and a dental visit for fun and giggles (not!). Oh, and I switched to some new multivitamins. Which seem to be giving me energy I didn’t have before. I didn’t change much else then, so I’m crediting it. Huh.
Retirement is a dish best served cold
I am seriously confused about retirement. My current plans have me retiring in August 2027. It’s a good date, has symbolic meaning, and plants me squarely in the middle between 30 and 35 years for work. Great.
And, if you read prior posts, you’d know that I wanted to do a deep dive into my planning of what I want to do in retirement and if I had the foundations in place before I get there. Health, finances, documents, etc. I even did a very deep dive into travel plans for the first year of retirement. I planned out a trip in a camper / trailer to go all the way from Ottawa to the Territories, over to Alaska, down through BC into the US all the way to San Diego with a slight consideration not mentioned of Baja, then over to New Orleans, and back up to Western Ontario, onward to Ottawa. An almost 4-month trip. Followed by a separate trip through Quebec to Labrador, through the Maritimes into Maine, and back home. Plus a third trip all the way down to Florida, and then back up, for all the states in between the East Coast and the Mississippi River. It’s a spectacular plan.
Except I don’t think I’m ever going to do it. The last year with my back and some other issues has pretty much convinced me that I can’t do that kind of trip on my own, and the only ones I would consider doing it with are Andrea or Jacob. It would be just too close quarters for anyone else, really. I’m old, I’m crotchety. Unless they were in a separate vehicle, maybe.
Equally, I’m a little uncertain about some aspects of our finances. I feel okay about issues related to our mortgage, but other things may encroach on our planning when I hoped to face an emptier nest. Plus, we do not have as much saved for J’s education as I thought we did. It’s easily fixed, but still. An extra wrinkle.
Which makes me wonder in both directions. If I’m not going to take that vast trip, and Andrea won’t retire for another 5-8 years after me, what’s the hurry to retire?
Alternatively, once I finish my buyback options, I could retire in August of THIS year. I was reading an article in the Globe and Mail today where a woman was talking about treating her first year of retirement as a “gap year”, which sounded interesting, but the part that resonated with me was that she had retired two years earlier than planned. She had gone to a meeting, came out feeling frustrated, and said, “There’s got to be more to life than this crud”. And six weeks later, she was done.
Once I can submit my papers, will I be willing to keep putting up with stupid stuff? Not stupid stuff unique to my job or anything, just the stupid stuff you see in any job, really. We’ll see.
But I’ve put a pause on doing any additional large-scale retirement planning. I had another 8 or 9 topics I wanted to write about for my retirement plans, but none of them have to be done before I am actually close to retirement. It can all wait. I really got obsessed about the trip, and a side benefit was a personal commitment to go to a writing conference at least, which I’m doing this year. But when the reality hit that I likely won’t be able to do that huge trip, it was a giant letdown. I was literally disappointed almost 3 years before I’m even set to retire. Not great.
I might, however, look into the kayak option this coming year if my back is strong enough by June.
Learning: Psych and beyond
I blogged previously about doing a psych course through The Great Courses, and the last two months put a kibosh on progress. But it’s time to dust off the app, engage with the lessons, and start watching again. I have other classes planned too.
I also have plans to work on my learning with GIMP and using AI. I’ve done some preliminary stuff, but I want to dive deeper.
But right now? My most significant investment of time is small but interesting…I switched from French to Spanish on Duolingo. I’ve done all I will ever do on French for work, and it was no longer enjoyable; I was just grinding. In Spanish? Everything is new; I learn something small every day. I was tickled to simply learn the word manzanas for apples the first time out. But the interesting part is that it is practical learning, with no theoretical base. I didn’t learn to conjugate “to be” or “to have” with all the different pronouns. It’s just teaching me sentences in simple situations. Is my suitcase here? Si, mi maleta esta aqui. Is my spelling proper? Not sure, don’t care yet. It’s fun again.
Trying new restaurants and recipes
I wanted to try at least one new restaurant per month, but well, that hasn’t happened of late. We’re eating out just as often as before, but J rarely has the energy for anything new. So we default to the same list each time.
But for some “alternate” rehab that he’s doing, he’s going to do some baking. I don’t know if the first outing went as he expected, as he was doing it all himself, which is not always fun the “first time” you start something new like that, but he made the brownies. Maybe he’s willing to do them together next time.
I had a ton of cooking and restaurant options on my 60×60 plan, and they tend to have fallen off my planning grid. I need to kickstart them again, if only in curating recipes.
Renew my time investment in astronomy
I haven’t had a scope out for regular viewing in a while. I’ve done binoculars a few times, plus some naked eye observing, but I want to get going again with astronomy.
That includes both the potential for better viewing from the backyard, writing my guide, and just attending RASC events in person. I have some ideas for a project, but at a minimum, I need to get the scope out of the garage and view.
Fix my setup at home
My basement is still a disaster, and I need to clean it up. Move boxes, remove a table, put some stuff under a desk, just so I can get around better. And get to the exercise equipment, desk for doing projects, etc. Upstairs, we need to clear a bunch of crap off our “gaming” table so we can do stuff on it, which is usually puzzles or Lego. We have two projects ready to go for Lego, we just need the space cleared so we can do them.
And find a space for my new 3D printer so I can get that going while I work on repairing the first one. Without driving myself into frustration-ville. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
That’s my new list. And so what? It’s April, not January. I’ve updated my list 17 days ahead of what I call PolySpring, the date by which all the snow on my lawn is (almost) guaranteed to be gone (April 22nd). Maybe the first signs of Spring and progress will show up at the same time.
It would be nice to start this post with a clear statement of the problem. A diagnosis of a pinched nerve, sciatica, a lower lumbar misalignment, something clinical. Definitive.
I don’t have that.
What I have instead is a collection of symptoms.
Traditionally, I have had upper back issues, often tied to ribs being out. A good adjustment by the chiro, some massage release of tension, and I’m good to go. I had some back exercises to do, and when I did them, my upper back stayed okay. Then I would feel better, stop doing them, slump and slouch more, and bam, back to massage and/or chiro to get me going again.
In the spring of this year, something else happened. I didn’t tear anything, I didn’t move anything and feel intense pain, I didn’t fall, I wasn’t in a car accident. I just woke up one morning and the lower left part of my back was spasming a bit. I thought maybe I just slept on it wrong. In the past, I’d had pain there before but it was usually a “walking” discomfort…I would be walking along, and suddenly I’d get a tightness there. If I leaned into it, or stretched my thigh muscles and IT bands, it would lessen, and I could keep going. Weirdly, if I had my shirt tucked it and it was pulling somehow, the pain would get worse. However, this morning, I had no “cause”. It just hurt.
As the day went on, it got worse. Until early afternoon, I was trying to go to the washroom, stood up, and my whole lower back felt like it was in a vise. It was brutal, fast, unrelenting. I literally screamed. I couldn’t get it to stop spasming. I eventually had to have Andrea come down and help me. In the interest of full disclosure, and embarrassing myself to ensure I never repeat these issues, I needed her to help me wipe my own butt cuz I could not bend or reach. I got my pants and underwear on with help, and then I sat down in the basement on a bench. It seemed okay. Until I got up and tried to go up the stairs. It was brutal again.
I booked a registered massage therapist who refused to treat me until I saw my regular doctor and got some X-rays. The regular GP said it seemed fine, which was easy to say as it subsided to dull pain for the next two weeks. No need for an x-ray unless it didn’t respond to massage and osteopathy. Fast-forward another week, and I had another complete breakdown. It spasmed and I couldn’t stop it. It was excruciating, the worst pain I have ever felt. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t breathe when it spasmed. We attempted an ambulance but when they came, they just had me walk out to the van rather than trying to put me in a gurney, and the ride to the hospital was more like a bus ride…I practically held on to a strap the whole way to steady myself, feeling every bump along the way. I know the next time to just take a taxi; it would have been way faster and more comfortable, damn the pain. I spent the night in the ER, about 8 hours for someone to actually look at me and get x-rays, etc. Nothing structurally wrong, got some meds, and generally got told I completely wasted their time. The only thing that really helped is that I had ordered a back brace from Amazon, and it was giving me enough support to function.
Over the last six months, osteo was helping for a while, and then it really stopped helping. Certain movements were more clunky and painful, so I’m mostly relying on release through Chiro right now, more about my upper back than anything. Hence the need for back rehab. The only thing that is going to work is a systemic series of exercises designed to stretch certain muscles and to strengthen others.
I have a long regimen to work through, divided into three main stages. Back rehab, let’s go.
To start with, I’m supposed to do two sets of ten reps daily (or hold for 15-20s) within a pain-free range and only do what I can tolerate. There is an initial list of eight exercises but I’ll start with Group 1, then add Group 2, then Group 3:
Group 1
General Exercise 1 — Knee raises to chest (either alternating or together)
Lower Back 1 — Hip rocker A (side to side)
Group 2
General Exercise 2 — Knee rocking (laying flat on back, knees bent to 90 degrees, rocking side to side)
Lower Back 2 — Hip rocker B (forward and back)
Group 3
General Exercise 3A — Modified cat / cow exercise (smaller range of up / down motion to avoid pain)
Lower Back 3 — Mackenzie side wall (elbow at 90 degrees, healthy side only toward wall)
Piriformis 1 — Ankle pull (Knee to chest, close hand on knee other on ankle, pull towards opposite shoulder, 3 reps, 10s hold)
That will likely keep me going until at least January.
Stage 2, ramping up (February, March, April)
February is where I start to do a bit of growth, not just getting it back to where it should be already. I should be able to drop a few of the initial exercises though as I start to add in the new ones.
Group 1
General Exercise 2 — Knee rocking (laying flat on back, knees bent to 90 degrees, rocking side to side)
General Exercise 3A — Modified cat / cow exercise (smaller range of up / down motion to avoid pain)
Lower Back 1 — Hip rocker A (side to side)
Lower Back 2 — Hip rocker B (forward and back)
Piriformis 1 — Ankle pull (Knee to chest, close hand on knee other on ankle, pull towards opposite shoulder, 3 reps, 10s hold)
Glutes 1 — Standing Glute Pulses – backwards
Upper back 1 — Doorway pushups
Hamstring 1 — Straight leg raise (strap around ball of foot, pull up with leg straight until feel stretch)
Group 2
Quadricep 1 — Straight leg raises (45 degrees, slow and controlled)
Group 3
Glutes 2 — Standing Glute Pulses – side out (abductor)
Upper back 2 — Upright row (not until all lower back pain is gone)
Quadricep 2 — Toes on board, toe raises
Stage 3, strengthening legs and knees (May, June)
By the time I get to Stage 3, I should have most of the regular exercises down, and then I’ll have to decide if I’m going towards mostly Bowflex exercises (which I feel are really good for the upper body, but a little more complicated for the lower body), or repeating stage 2 with some additions from the list below of lower body work.
Quadriceps:
Abduction raises, bottom bent 90 degrees, foot horizontal
Adduction raises, bottom straight and raised inward pass back leg that is raised for stability
Heels on board, vertical squat, knees over toes (not out or in) — 10 reps … can use chairs to push back up
Band resistance squats (pushing the bands outwards with thighs)
Power band side steps/walks … Band around ankles, help hip stabilisers
Power band leg extension backwards … behind thigh, start knee bent, extend leg to push back
Hip abduction, adduction — sideways away from you (narrow, wide), towards you (wide, narrow)
Box steps — step backwards., to side
Box assisted squats — sit, stand (use lower box later)
Onward!
I have some cardio and upper body stuff to add to the plan with the Bowflex, but most of what I need to do is the exercises above to fix my back. When I get that under control, I can expand outward. But I can’t keep dealing with ongoing spasming and pain. It’s just too limiting. And, reluctantly, I have to stop using my back brace as a metaphorical crutch. It helps, but it is not a cure, just a temporary, well, crutch to lean on. It gets me through bad days, just as taking the anti-inflammatories does. And I need to stay on top of the meds while I’m doing the exercises.
Onward, as I said. Except I know this is not a simple “do it” type item for my to-do list. A simple checkbox or schedule won’t cut it. I need some extra help / enhancements and in fact, I’m going to combine seven to help me stay on track.
I will use the checkbox, scheduling, quantity (min 1 set per day), chain tracking, public announcement, formal accountability (reporting every two weeks to my chiro), and a simple yet large reward…my reward will be that if I can get my back sufficiently rehabbed in time for my birthday in June, I’ll reward myself with starting the process to choose a kayak (trying different types, renting different places, etc.).
In month 1 of my preparations for retirement in three years, I covered financial, legal, and end-of-life issues, and then I covered all my travel plans last month. I had intended to do health stuff, a natural progression from the EOL stuff in month 1, but I was slowly getting drawn into all the info on campers and RVs. And I went with the passion.
As I mentioned in previous posts, pre-planning for retirement is about seeing if I’m making the right “investments” in the various “areas” of my life, just as you would for financial planning. The biggest one that most people talk about, even if they don’t use those words, is health: “Are you making the proper investments in your health to smooth your transition into a healthy, active retirement?”.
Now that I’ve blasted through all that fun stuff, this month’s focus on health is likely to totally suck mentally and emotionally. Part of that is my historically dysfunctional emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical relationship with health, nutrition and fitness. Part of that is optimism tempered by a reality check that will hinder my efforts. Part of that is the fear that those big travel plans I mentioned in month 2 are only possible in their current form IF I can make changes before I retire; if I don’t make them, many of my retirement plans fall away. I will have failed to invest adequately to do what I want and need to do.
But the biggest challenge is that my health planning differs from almost all the other “areas” I’ll blog about within this first year. On most of them, the goal is “pre-preparation”…for example, on travel, I didn’t have to decide yet whether I would travel in an RV, campervan or towed trailer, I only had to decide what the big options would be for later. The detailed implementation planning can happen in the first year after I retire to “start” the trip about 11-12 months later. I don’t have to DO the planning work now, I just have to come up with a viable framework. If, however, I’d discovered in there that I needed to do some advanced driving course before I even get there, sure, I’d have more work to do in the coming months or years before retirement. Instead, for the most part, most of the planning stuff is to monitor developments in the industry and options for the future, handle a bit of savings to ensure I have the money if/when I need it in retirement, and then hit it hard after retirement.
By contrast? The health stuff starts now. I’m not just building a framework for the future, I’m building the framework and full-on implementation plan now. I’m jumping out of the airplane and sewing my parachute together on the way down. I don’t have time to wait, I need to start now. And if I’m totally honest with myself, I’ve tried some of this before, and failed miserably. I can’t afford to fail this time. In many ways, it feels like my last chance.
My starting point
So how’s my health? Well, generally, it sucks. If you compared it to financial planning, I would hit retirement with very little health assets to support me in my aging years. That’s a bit overdramatic, but well, not completely.
At the moment, my back is in rough shape. I did something to it about six months ago, and it has been terrorizing me ever since. I’ll bop along for a couple of weeks, seems to be going well, and then one morning I’ll wake up, roll out of bed, and it starts twinging like an SOB. When it “killed” me the first time, I had never experienced that kind of pain from the spasms. I literally was crying and occasionally screaming. Six months later, I know how to control the pain, keep it down to a dull roar, and I have a back brace to use when I need it. Massage helped, and I thought osteo was helping too for a while, but then it stopped helping at all.
Right now, I need to focus on three things:
Taking my over-the-counter meds to reduce inflammation…I confess I really don’t like taking pain meds of any kind, they can make me kind of foggy or loopy at times, but I need to get over my reluctance and take them regularly to reduce the flare-ups;
Actively do my back stretches and strengthening exercises, increasing into the more advanced ones; and,
Continue my chiro treatments.
I’ll also consider some myofascial release (after Christmas) or increased regular therapeutic massage.
After that, there’s my weight. It’s stable, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. I have plans, and most of those right now are around getting a solid workout routine going. Even if it doesn’t reduce the weight for now, it will give me more strength, energy and flexiblity for the future.
And then I need to get moving again. I’d love to start kayaking next summer, but my back needs to be “fixed” first.
What comes next?
I don’t know exactly all the “pieces” yet for my plans.
I want to look at the roll-over elements from my End-of-Life work;
I’ll be doing a full physical this fall, including A1C numbers, BP, colon, prostate;
I want to get hearing aids or at least have my hearing fully checked and evaluated;
I need to get some dental work done;
My feet have the same issues most diabetics have, so I’ll get that looked at, see if there’s anything to worry about;
I need to work through a full assessment regimen for regular evaluation of my fitness level;
I’ll start looking at flexibility, strength, movement, etc; and,
I’ll need to do a bunch of work on cognitive functions as well as mental health.
I confess that I’m not fully ready for the work I need to do this month. And, as I said, it’s not just the framework; it’s the full implementation plan or at least the pieces I need to do now to support my back rehab and be ready to move into the strength and energy levels work in about three to six months.
But the hardest part will not be that part of the equation. The most challenging part will be figuring out how to harness all the rituals and enhancements I came up so that I’ll stick to the plan and make it work. As I said, it feels like a last chance to get this right before I retire.
If I succeed, I will have the health foundations to do what I want to do; if I fail, well, that is a much more sedentary and disappointing retirement than I want to contemplate yet.
At the beginning of the month, I had a long list of ideas to write about. As I started to write, however, things moved around and morphed. In the end, here’s what the framework looked like:
A total of 10 posts about my vacation and travel plans in retirement. I admit I was pretty excited at the start. Some of the content was based on old versions of my bucket list; others were ideas generated by conversations with Andrea over the last 20+ years; others came up based on Jacob’s input and interests. It’s exciting…literally, the potential for thousands of kilometres and hundreds of days, even just for the walkabout options. While I am a bit nervous that most of the walkabout trips would be by myself, Andrea is interested in some of them, too.
Yet what really threw me for a loop is that I got almost zero comments on any of the posts from anyone. I mean, it’s not like I’m some viral blogger, but the travel ideas didn’t provoke any reaction? As I said, it surprised me. On the other hand, it reinforced one of the central tenets of retirement — I’m retiring, not Andrea or Jacob or the various friends and family reading the posts. And while I thought people would find the posts to be some of the more interesting things I have posted, they fell pretty flat. Which is an important lesson learned, too…if I want to engage people on things like camping trailer options, maybe I should try and join groups that are focused on camping trailers and talk to them. 🙂
In the end, what I did was figure out the types of trips that I wanted to consider later and the viability of the logistics. Many of them wouldn’t creep into the planning matrix until 2027 or 2028, of course, so I’ll set many of the “to-do” list items quite far out. But I drilled deep enough to narrow some of the options. And I added some enhancements, where warranted. While the “list” side is just tickboxes and scheduling, I also added the “buddy” side for Andrea and Jacob for many of the destinations, my brother Mike for some stuff on the trailer side, and my sister Carolee and niece Liz for some bundled trips. I also added Liz as I may want her suggestions for solo cruise options / repositioning options without single supplements, etc. I’ll also engage some online communities for both the trailer and kayaking options in the distant future. I’m good for now.
