Retirement: mind-boggling process

Now is the time to prepare for retirement. Save for the future. Invest now to have a lucrative retirement. I tire of hearing these come-ons, these bits of advice. So often they come from those who will benefit from your efforts to have enough in retirement. My personal experience is that there is so much more to be concerned about as one prepares for retirement. Oh yes, you will need money but that isn’t the only concern.

I retired more than 3 years ago. Money has not been a problem for me since my wife has continued to work. The emotional, the mental, the social adjustments have been monumental. When will that part of retirement preparation be talked about? Money doesn’t take care of everything.

For many years I was totally involved in social services, mental health and related causes. That’s right they were “causes.” Things that I believed in and from me they received total commitment for all those years. I gave blood, sweat and tears. Then, upon retirement I lost my cause, my role in society and in the workplace. And since my retirement involved a move for my wife’s new job assignment I lost all familiar surroundings, friends and acquaintances. I no longer knew my barber, the checkout person at the grocery store or my way around town. I was lost, a stranger in a strange land. Oh yes, I also became a senior citizen…..feeling and looking older each day.

Adjustment to this new life has been difficult. For the most part I have overcome the challenges. Moving from feeling like I lived in a vacuum initially to the stage of chaos and then to a new definition of myself was not easy. There were many other stages of development along the way and I continue the struggle today.

Now I think I would like to design a workshop, develop a website, perhaps write a book about the emotional preparation for retirement and dealing with the unexpected. I don’t know whether anyone else has experienced similar phenomenon when they retired but if so I would like to learn from you and also be a resource. I will begin a search for other resources. I read somewhere that retirement is all about the three g’s: Golf, grandchildren and gossip. I love golf, and my grandchildren although I don’t get enough of either. I can do without the gossip. Well maybe a blog like this one is nothing but gossip. And then there is the 6:00 news. If you have thoughts or experiences around the social-emotional issues of retirement please let me know.

Stan the Man

  

Mind-boggling, Important Information

Revisiting the top regrets of the dying as determined by Bronnie Ware brings us to this one: “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.” She states that this one came from every male she nursed. Every one! These days with many more women involved in their own careers I would think that would be true of many women as well. Her website: www.bronnieware.com.

The way I have heard it in the past from another source was, “When on their death bed, no-one ever said, I wish I had spent more time at the office.” I can’t imagine that I would ever say that. I know I spent much more time at the office than I ever wanted but I did it anyway. One of the reasons was the advent of the incredible computers that were supposed to be such time savers. Instead the computer age slowed many processes down. Their implementation, solving on-going problems, dealing with incompatible systems and on and on always took significant more time than the “old fashioned way”. But that’s another story for a future post.

The fact is, many jobs, many professions, do require periods of time when long hours are a necessity. That’s how to get the promotions and increased salaries that we think are needed and wanted. Apparently, however, at the end of our lives’ we don’t think it was worth it. If we could do it all over again, we would spend more time nurturing our relationships with spouses, partners, children, friends and relatives. There are also those work-life balance issues that involve recreation, hobbies etc. Yes, recreation. You know what that is: Golf, fishing, tennis, or whatever you might choose.  

This provides mind-boggling advice for each of us. We now know what dying people name as one of their major regrets. Pay attention to that information and try working a little less. Pay more attention to the important aspects of life. Leave a new kind of legacy for those you care about. Oh, and take better care of yourself at the same time.

Stan the Man

 

Basketball Final Four

Basketball is mind-boggling. I love it. I’m always looking forward to the Big Dance, the NCAA Playoffs, but this year, I must say, I have been disappointed. Not by the quality of play but how little play there is during the broadcast of a game on CBS. Compared to the airtime committed to commercials and the meaningless jawing by commentators like Charles Barkley it is remarkable that they manage to fit any basketball action in at all. Even as much as I love basketball it makes it difficult for me to sit through a game and I haven’t made it several times. Can’t they just show the game? No, obviously not. Programming is not the real reason anything is on TV anymore. Instead programming has become simply a minor consideration that is used as a vehicle for more and more commercials. Remember the Super Bowl? More hype about the commercials than the game.

While I’m on the subject of commercials allow me to blow off some steam about the direction they are moving. It seems that there is hardly a commercial that doesn’t utilize children. What is that about? They are in commercials for AT&T, Honda and many others. Isn’t this exploitation of children? I know what they are probably trying to do is attract children to the product they are selling. They figure if they capture young children they will have them for life. I still think it’s disgusting and qualifies as exploitation of children. It should be outlawed. If they can’t sell it using adults then we shouldn’t buy it. I probably won’t buy it anyway. Another thing: I can’t understand the kids in commercials when they talk anyway.

I will watch the Final Four but I think the mute button will be active. I can probably finish the book I’m reading during the commercials and during the halftime garbage. It’s Stephen King’s 11/22/63, 849 pages.

 Stan the Man

Live Your Own Life

Mind-boggling information, or is it? It does confirm what I have believed for some time. Bronnie Ware, a nurse working with the dying has identified and written a book entitled The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. The number one regret was “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life other’s expected of me”. See the other's www.inspirationandchai.com

Yes, we are dominated by the barrage of expectations both overt and covert first from our parents, then from our school experiences. Oh yes and then there are the expectations of the church, the media our supervisors, bosses and on and on. How can we know what a life true to ourselves would be like? How do we separate out what is us, the real us and what we have had inculcated by other’s expectations?  Do we want to wait until we are dying to come to that realization that we never did live our own life or can we change the way we live much sooner in our life span?

The answer for me is that I want to feel I am at least approximating my true life as early in life as possible. I want to be me. This is not at all easy. In fact it takes a good deal of insight, awareness and yes, COURAGE. The first step is to become aware of the inconsistencies in our life. We realize we feel like a fish out of water, we feel stressed all of the time or just look forward to the end of the workday more than anything. Just maybe we are in the wrong career. Our parents were teachers and expected us to be as well so we are making them happy but what about us? Perhaps we are a leader in our church but in our secret life we aren’t even a Believer. There are many other examples of ways we live someone else’s dreams rather than our own.

These kinds of inconsistencies in our lives carry the potential for disaster. Stress, mental illness, physical illness and of course unhappiness may well follow apparently to our death beds.

The second step is to know and identify how and what you want to change. That is a challenge in itself for some of us. Others know clearly they don’t want to teach they want to be a fishing guide. Or they want to play golf on Sunday mornings. Some of us may have to experiment to find that thing that makes us happy, that resonates with our true being. A good dose of self awareness and thoughtfulness may be in order prior to knowing what changes we want and need.

Then comes the courage part. You may disappoint your parents, your pastor or whoever provided you with their expectations to live by. There may be serious fall-out. You will get pressure to not change. You knew that would happen. That’s why you were living their life. But you want to be happy. You don’t want to lie in your death bed and murmur to someone at your bedside, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life other’s expected of me.”

Stan the Man     

Fraud Drains Health Care - Mind-Boggling

The cost of healthcare in the USA is in itself mindboggling. Do you ever wonder why? There are many reasons but here is one of them: Fraud. Yes, big time fraud by individuals who submit bills to Medicare and Medicaid. I’m referring to services that were never actually provided but bills were submitted for those non-existent services. The fraudulent characters are usually professionals in the healthcare business. Fortunately the federal government (U.S. Department of Justice) has gotten wind of this fiasco and has been focusing on the problem and is recovering large sums. This past year an all time record was set for the second year in a row. Health Care Recoveries from fraudulent activities related to Medicare and Medicaid topped $3 billion for the year. That’s only counting the ones that were caught and resulted in recoveries. Who knows how many more there are?

Back in October, 2012 Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the so-called Medicare Fraud Strike Force charged 91 individuals – including doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals - for their alleged participation in Medicare fraud schemes. These schemes involved approximately $429 million in false billing. Dozens of charged individuals were arrested or surrendered as indictments were unsealed across the country.

Health and Human Services also suspended or took other administrative action against 30 health care providers. Under the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) HHS is able to suspend payments until the resolution of an investigation. The rising tide of health care costs may be stemmed somewhat by these kinds of actions on the part of our government.

It is mind-boggling to me that professional health care professionals would stoop so low. I guess every- body wants more in their own pockets.

Stan the Man

Sources: www.HCCA-info.org      and     www.hfma.org

Love Those Bookstores

It is mind-boggling what I keep hearing about books and bookstores. They will soon be historical artifacts. E-books and e-readers will run them out of business. I know there are some signs of such a change such as Borders closing although I don’t know why that happened since Amazon and Barnes and Noble seem to be doing well selling books in all forms on-line. Then Barnes and Noble announced they are closing a bunch of stores this year. Barnes and Noble is a good fall-back bookstore when you can’t find an independent bookstore. We have two of them within 5 miles of where we live. I doubt whether both will survive.

The real bookstores, the local, independents, are the great finds. Most of them are aged, that is they’ve been around for some time. Each maintains a feel, almost a culture unique to that one store. When I move, one of the first things I do is hunt for these kinds of stores. I’ve been on the hunt in the San Francisco Bay area for several months now with some success. I’m sure I have only scratched the surface of all bookstores but I have found some gems. In the Bay Area there is a huge population of readers to serve which means lots of book stores.

One bookstore I have enjoyed is City Lights www.citylights.com. They are a landmark independent bookstore and publisher. The store specializes in world literature, the arts and progressive politics. Located in a funky old building just outside of China Town in San Francisco, City Lights provides my kind of environment. It was a great place to hang out in the 60s and still is.

Searching the southern end of the Bay I came upon another fun and historical bookstore, Kepler’s www.keplers.com. This store is in Menlo Park, right next to Palo Alto and Stanford University. It has been a literary meeting place since 1953 and in the sixties became a central point of counterculture activity. The Grateful Dead and Joan Baez performed there during that era. The store closed in August of 2005 but in response to community demonstrations to bring it back to life, it re-opened in October of that year.

Further down the Bay in the City of Mountain View there are two bookstores worthy of mention. The first is East West www.eastwest.com. This bookstore is focused on metaphysical books and products. Books range from Zen to meditation and other Far Eastern subject matter. Products include such items as crystals, Tibetan Healing Bowls and much more. It is a very relaxing and welcoming store to browse and enjoy.

Across the street is a mind-boggling bookstore. BookBuyers www.bookbuyers.com is a store with so many shelves of used books that you could get lost in there and never find your way out. I don’t know how many but seems like they must have a million books. All types, all subjects. Where do they get them? They buy them from people like me and you. It’s a store that buys from customers and pays in credits towards more books for the customers. From 20-60% of retail value is given in store credit. They also offer cash for books in high demand. Fun idea and works well for the person who goes through a lot of books and doesn’t move very often.

My bottom line is that if you care about books and their survival then I urge you to go looking and you will find interesting, independent bookstores. Sometimes you have to search but they are out there and I’m betting they will be for a long time. I will be doing my best to support them.

Stan the Man

Unneccesary Deaths: Mind-boggling

 Yes, Unnecessary Deaths

Am I referring to homicides? Am I referring to the slaughtering of young children in Newtown? No, I’m referring to military personnel who take their own lives…..suicides. Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense calls it an epidemic. The pentagon reports 349 deaths by suicide among service men and woman during 2012. Yes, that’s almost one per day. Meanwhile 295 were killed in combat. In 2011 there were 301 suicides. Looking back to 2009 there were 310. This is not a new phenomenon but a growing one. In 2005 there were approximately half as many. What’s going on here?

I can’t forget, after many years as a therapist, the devastation experienced by the families of individuals who commit suicide. There are also the friends, fellow service men and woman who are impacted. The sense of loss and guilt is carried for the rest of their lives and it puts them at higher risk of suicide themselves. The impact of one suicide can be like a life-long tsunami of emotion for the survivors. Let’s not forget them. 

According to a suicide researcher quoted by the CBS News these suicides take place among two primary groups. The first are the war veterans who are suffering from depression, PTSD and with substance abuse issues. Stress, guns and alcohol constitute a dangerous mixture. The second group is made up of those who haven’t gone to war but have troubled lives with unhappy marriages, divorces and other personal problems. Sixty percent of the reported suicides were by firearms, most of them personal firearms not military.

The rate of suicide among military personnel may not be any higher than for the general population but both rates are inexcusably high. Mental health services must be more readily accessible and less stigmatizing. And we could stop senseless wars. There is much more we could be doing to preserve valuable lives.

What do you think?

Stan the Man