A New Chapter?

Today, after a very brief weekend snowstorm and cold weather, the sun is shining (as it was yesterday, and the day before-the best part of Colorado), and the weather will be between fifty five and sixty and sunny for the rest of the week.

As I was sitting and relaxing (and feeling much better) by my dog nose-smeared window, it occurs to me that it is a little over five years since I moved into this living situation-and a little over five and a half since I did some drastic moves in my retirement lifestyle.

For newer readers, after living in Europe for many years with my husband, I returned to the Dallas suburbs after his death to live near his family for almost six years, through 2013, I owned a 2600 foot single story ranch. Eventually I figured that the area was not for me-for a variety of reasons!. And as a gal on a fixed income with some severe disabilities when it comes to motion, said house was too much for me, physically, financially and yes, even in terms of time spent. It was time to make some changes. In early 2013, I sold said house, loaded up a 26 foot U-haul and with my adult son drove north to Colorado-where the surviving members of my family, my siblings, lived.

Originally intending to rent a two bedroom apartment and a condo, six months later I moved into a large to level home (1600 feet each level) with my single sister who was looking to move to a place with a larger yard. In a moment of serendipity, a few things came together. I was not ready (and may never be) to actually buy, said sister wanted to move up from her small mid century modern to a large yard, and my brother and sister in law were looking to purchase a home for investment. Five years later, I'm still in this rental, happy as can be. I'm sure there's some irony there since I left a large home because of the effort and the yard. But in this case, the home repairs are done by my landlord and my sister the plant whisperer deals with the yard. I just enjoy it.

It is also eight years since I started blogging in earnest. I blogged in 2008 and 2009, but just dribs and drabs. In 2010 I made a more than half hearted attempt to blog and things have gone from there.

For the most, it has been a lovely time. I've met online friends, including other bloggers. I've enjoyed sharing where I've been and what I've been doing as well as where I hope to go. Early blog posts were more about frugality and how I got to be where I am, since then blog posts have been all over the map-mainly about my retirement lifestyle, with what I hope is an underpinning of how I do that on a limited budget.  For the past year at least,  the "all over the map" part has gotten out of control.  I tend to waver between the "this is what I do and how I do it" type of blog posts that are often overly lengthy and the "this is my day" blog post-which can be equally lengthy. With some weird political stuff and other things thrown in here and there. I've been trying to figure out how to reconcile the difficulty of coming up with topics to my desire to continue blogging..........and have decided some small changes are in order.

I generally I have two kinds of readers. Those folks who have been retired as long as I am and are not interested in "retirement articles" as such as much as topics on things from travel to cooking. While I love sharing that stuff, at heart a diary of my life kind of blogger-even for a couple times a week. I have some good blogging friends,some of whom are on my sidebar, who do that really well.  The second group of people are those early in retirement or looking to retirement and are thirsty for articles and blog posts that instead of talking about financial planning talk about how to deal with what you have where you get there. Something I know just a teeny little bit about!!

Which leads to my goal of going old (or maybe new again). In the next couple of months, I'll  be moving towards  writing mainly slightly  shorter posts with an occasional really long one thrown in. More importantly, they will be much more "this is what I made to day and how and why I did it" kind of things, as well as "this is how or why" kind of posts. How I compound butters and herbal salts for the chefs in my family. How I made this frugal slow cooker recipe and how it came out. How I'm saving and planning for my Mississippi River cruise (or whatever trip I decide on) with specifics, including financial stuff. Maybe even an article on my thoughts on Olli senior college versus regular college versus free online courses versus The Great Courses. Who knows?

There will also still be occasional social justice and political blog posts, I won't lie. But I would urge you to either comment politely, or simply ignore that day's post and come back another day. Because I don't mind hearing polite opposing view points as opposed to vicious ones (you know who you are), because I'll be back to the fun retirement stuff the next day!

And last but never least, at the urging and emails of more than one reader, I will be much more active both on Facebook and Instagram. There's no doubt where I stand on Pinterest as you can see from my side bar and honestly, Twitter simply is NOT my thing. I'll also be streamlining the look of this blog, at least a tad.

Folks, this will be a work in progress, especially for me.  Hopefully you'll like the new me, and at least the new stuff the old me writes.

Meanwhile, I have more holiday, health, and thoughts on my five and a half year downsizing journey with specifics and links...........soon to come.