Start a Retirement Journal

When we retired my wife decided to start a retirement journal and we’re both very glad she did.  At first, I wondered why she was doing it but it has provided us with many hours of enjoyment as we look back at our memories.  We began our first retirement journey about a month after my last day of work, and she did a great job of recording something almost every day.  On our first trip down south to escape the winter, the weather forecast brought a surprising development.  We planned to get to Florida in stages and scheduled a two day stay in Charleston, South Carolina. The night before we left our son called and said there was a blizzard warning when we were scheduled to arrive.  We had an interesting trip into the city and we basically stayed in our hotel the entire time.  The city was basically closed.  They get snow so rarely, they do not handle it well.  While the local children celebrated the snow day and went down hills on cardboard that substituted for sleds, we stayed inside and watched television.  The hotel did not have a restaurant, and all the surrounding restaurants were closed so we made do with the frozen pizza that they had in the lobby.  To this day we check the selection of frozen pizza when we check into a hotel.  It was rather comical, and my wife described it perfectly in her journal.

It's fun to start a Retirement Journal and capture all the details of a trip.

The rest of the trip went perfectly but the journal came in very handy. We got our southernmost destination of Key West and then started on our way back. We have been back to some of the areas that we stayed that first winter and we were able to check our notes for the restaurants that we liked and some that were not as good.  My wife was very happy that she decided to start a retirement journal, and the notes have come in very handy. We made notes on the layout of each of the timeshares that we stayed and we were able to request specific accommodations the next time.  In one resort the room we had was right by the pool, which was pretty noisy at night, so we were able to write down a room number for an area that was less noisy.  Two years later when we returned to this resort we were able to get a room in a quieter area – not the room number we had requested, but very close.  We also made notes on the various sites and activities in each area that we visited and compiled a wish list for those that we missed the first time through but would schedule for another trip.

We are fortunate to be able to do a lot of traveling and some of the trips just seem to blur together.  If you decide to start a retirement journal, all of those memories can be catalogued and documented.  You’ll never have to ask, “where did we have that really good coffee and bagel?” because it will be in your journal.  If you’re at all like us, you’re always trying to recall great meals and interesting museums and other sights and, sometimes, you’re not entirely sure exactly where you were.  Exhibits in museums can be wonderful but, once in a while, you forget exactly which museum you saw something in.  If you start a retirement journal you can solve that problem.  And, as my wife will tell you, it’s a lot of fun to recall what happened at the end of the day.

I think you’ll be so impressed with the details that you capture, you may even start to record everyday events and not just those that happen on trips.  Life becomes a bit of a blur in retirement because you lose some of the structure that the work week brought into your life.  We do lose track of what day of the week it is on occasion, but we consider that to be one of the big positives of retirement.  We love the freedom that it gives and we like taking our time getting places.  Our winter journeys usually include getting off the interstate and experiencing the smaller towns that you would miss otherwise.  Our trip through Macon, Georgia, for example, was a very pleasant experience.  Neither one of us was sure what to expect.  We were typical northerners from New York who were going through what we thought of as the rural south.  We were there to see the hometown of Jimmy Carter as well as Warm Springs which was the summer White House of Franklin Roosevelt.  We decided to stay in Macon and were very happy with our choice.  The restaurants were great, and the people were amazingly friendly.  And, of course, my wife captured all the details in her journal.  So, why not try it out?  Start a retirement journal today and make it a point to live a life worth reading about.  There are so many places to see and so many things to do.  It’s time to Enjoy Retired Life!

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