I have a morning routine, as most people probably do. One of the nice things about being retired is that my mornings are rarely at all rushed. It's unusual for me to have anything scheduled before 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. I remember the rush-rush workday mornings vividly though. Rush to get up and shower, get dressed, dry hair, fix and eat breakfast, multitasking all the while. Now I go at a more measured pace, and it's lovely. No more multi-tasking.
A few of my first things, after getting up and finding my robe and slippers are fixing a large mug of coffee with soy milk, wandering out to the sun porch to peer through the glass and see if the paper has been delivered, and sitting down at my computer (on the dining room table) to check "stuff." I sit looking out on trees and a park, so there is a very pretty view. I love how it changes with the weather and seasons. Currently there is a lot of lush, green spring leafiness, reminding me that I really need to do a major pruning of the hedge. Oh well... yawn... too early for that.
I check my calendar, then my e-mail. One rather new early-morning ritual I have gotten fond of is the daily email from A.Word.A.Day, a free service from Wordsmith.com. If you like words and reading, or just learning new words, this is for you. Personally, I've grown to love words, and it's fun opening up the A.Word.A.Day e-mail each morning and learning, or renewing acquaintance with, another unusual word. Each day's e-mail includes information, sometimes speculation, about the word's origins, and a sentence illustrating its use. A bonus is a new quotation at the end of the post, and their quotes are great. Each week has a theme - this week's is words that sound rude, but aren't. Last week's featured some unusual words of foreign origin, such as "boondocks" from Tagalog.
Actually, much of our English language, it turns out, came from other languages. It was instructive and fascinating to read about the origins of modern English, in order to help explain the language to my adult English-learner students. The large quantity of borrowed vocabulary explains our hodge-podge of spelling, grammar, and phonetic rules, none of which actually work well as rules and make pronunciation and spelling a nightmare for English learners. It constantly amazes me how well they do.
So... next in my morning routine comes Facebook and the news. I want to hate Facebook, but then there are the photos of grandkids and the occasional interesting post from others. I've learned to scroll quickly through all the ads. And I just found and joined a large Facebook group that actually is actually a great use of Facebook. It's a large (4,000+ members) open group about my beach city hometown, with strong emphasis on the past. Almost every day someone has posted an old photo or question or reminiscence about days gone by at the beach... it's a nice bit of nostalgia that I've quickly come to look forward to.
I still get a local print newspaper delivered to my door. In these days of waning readership I think local newspapers provide an important community service and that it's important to support them. Unless you live in a large city, local web news is likely to be neither complete nor comprehensive. But I do like to perform a morning scan of a few news websites, including the New York Times, The Daily Beast and Huffington Post. If you don't like my choices, don't worry - next week my list will be different. I'm very fickle about my news sources. I hardly ever look at The Drudge Report these days, for example, but I will surely be back.
Frankly, I think it is extremely important for us citizens to scan a wide variety of news sources. I don't trust any one of them, but by reading and listening to sources from the far right all the way to the far left, I think I get a clearer picture of what is really going on. I've noticed that this has made me a lot more tolerant of those who hold views different from my own. I think a lot of the polarization (red state, blue state stuff for example) is a result of many people only hearing or paying attention to one side of the arguments.
So by this time, I've usually also fed the dog and had a second mug of coffee. The sun is up and it's time to shut off the computer and really start my day. I've found in retirement that it's far too easy to just drift through the hours without much structure. Establishing new, more leisurely rituals like this has helped me, I believe, to add some relaxed structure to my days, although I'm still having trouble with a sense of not getting enough done. But that's another post.
A few of my first things, after getting up and finding my robe and slippers are fixing a large mug of coffee with soy milk, wandering out to the sun porch to peer through the glass and see if the paper has been delivered, and sitting down at my computer (on the dining room table) to check "stuff." I sit looking out on trees and a park, so there is a very pretty view. I love how it changes with the weather and seasons. Currently there is a lot of lush, green spring leafiness, reminding me that I really need to do a major pruning of the hedge. Oh well... yawn... too early for that.
I check my calendar, then my e-mail. One rather new early-morning ritual I have gotten fond of is the daily email from A.Word.A.Day, a free service from Wordsmith.com. If you like words and reading, or just learning new words, this is for you. Personally, I've grown to love words, and it's fun opening up the A.Word.A.Day e-mail each morning and learning, or renewing acquaintance with, another unusual word. Each day's e-mail includes information, sometimes speculation, about the word's origins, and a sentence illustrating its use. A bonus is a new quotation at the end of the post, and their quotes are great. Each week has a theme - this week's is words that sound rude, but aren't. Last week's featured some unusual words of foreign origin, such as "boondocks" from Tagalog.
Actually, much of our English language, it turns out, came from other languages. It was instructive and fascinating to read about the origins of modern English, in order to help explain the language to my adult English-learner students. The large quantity of borrowed vocabulary explains our hodge-podge of spelling, grammar, and phonetic rules, none of which actually work well as rules and make pronunciation and spelling a nightmare for English learners. It constantly amazes me how well they do.
So... next in my morning routine comes Facebook and the news. I want to hate Facebook, but then there are the photos of grandkids and the occasional interesting post from others. I've learned to scroll quickly through all the ads. And I just found and joined a large Facebook group that actually is actually a great use of Facebook. It's a large (4,000+ members) open group about my beach city hometown, with strong emphasis on the past. Almost every day someone has posted an old photo or question or reminiscence about days gone by at the beach... it's a nice bit of nostalgia that I've quickly come to look forward to.
I still get a local print newspaper delivered to my door. In these days of waning readership I think local newspapers provide an important community service and that it's important to support them. Unless you live in a large city, local web news is likely to be neither complete nor comprehensive. But I do like to perform a morning scan of a few news websites, including the New York Times, The Daily Beast and Huffington Post. If you don't like my choices, don't worry - next week my list will be different. I'm very fickle about my news sources. I hardly ever look at The Drudge Report these days, for example, but I will surely be back.
Frankly, I think it is extremely important for us citizens to scan a wide variety of news sources. I don't trust any one of them, but by reading and listening to sources from the far right all the way to the far left, I think I get a clearer picture of what is really going on. I've noticed that this has made me a lot more tolerant of those who hold views different from my own. I think a lot of the polarization (red state, blue state stuff for example) is a result of many people only hearing or paying attention to one side of the arguments.
So by this time, I've usually also fed the dog and had a second mug of coffee. The sun is up and it's time to shut off the computer and really start my day. I've found in retirement that it's far too easy to just drift through the hours without much structure. Establishing new, more leisurely rituals like this has helped me, I believe, to add some relaxed structure to my days, although I'm still having trouble with a sense of not getting enough done. But that's another post.
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