urban versus rural life

Why I left the “best cities in America” to live in rural southern Colorado

/ Laura Lee Carter / 14 Comments

Denver and Colorado Springs the best cities in America? I can hardly stand to drive up there now! I know those places may be good for businesses and careers, but for actual ‘quality of life’? Forget it!

The air is so dirty up there you can smell it. The traffic and noise is unbelievably bad unless you compare it to other cities like LA. I find it interesting that young people love the high-stress atmosphere of cities like Denver. High anxiety just makes me tired these days.

When I last visited Denver and Colorado Springs, I could feel the stress building in my body immediately. First just getting there is so stressful, because of the intense traffic from Pueblo north on I-25. Then the air starts smelling really bad, and my fellow drivers start crowding in on me, pressuring me to drive faster than I feel is safe. Most city dwellers would disagree with me, but the point is we humans don’t fully realize how much stress we live with daily, until we try living without it.

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The view from our new home!

I moved to Walsenburg Colorado in June 2014 to build a solar home down here. The culture shock was strong and immediate. Each morning when I went outside, I would think, “Where am I?” The pace of life here felt so foreign. Now I call it slow and comfortable, but back then it took me a while to appreciate the lack of constant pressure, noise and traffic. Yes, the trains were noisy in town, but I’m originally from Kansas so I like the sound of trains.

IMGP4362When our new home was finished, a stressful process in and of itself, we moved out to the foothills. Now I spend hours just staring at those incredible mountains, with their ever changing cloud and weather patterns.

The silence and beauty of this area takes my breath away daily, but in a good way…   “Goodbye city life!”

Laura and rasta close upCheck out my new book:  A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado  and share this information with your friends if they are considering a move to rural America. Feel free to contact me directly to discuss any of these challenges, and to order your own signed copies of any of my books!   Cheers, Laura Lee  (email me: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com)

Millennials and Me, Part 2 (at 60!)

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments
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Our sunrise this morning in southern Colorado!

I tell you, the more I learn about millennials, the more I like them! The latest news is that millennial women are waiting much longer to marry than previous generations. Good thinking women!

My theme song for this part of my life? Taking the long way around!

That was always my plan back in the 1970s, when most of the women my age were getting married and pregnant. I had no intention of ending up a single mother with no career. I felt a strong need to support myself in all ways.

I waited until 39 to marry, and even that was a mistake on my part. I hate to tell you, but I wasn’t really ready for marriage until age 50, or at least I couldn’t find a man worthy of me until then…

I was single or unhappily married until age 50, but that is not to say I didn’t enjoy being single or love being married. Now I would say, with the right partner, I much prefer marriage to the single life. I love having my best friend to discuss everything with. I love having his expertise when I get some crazy idea that requires construction or mechanical abilities. Those are definitely not my strong suit. And I so enjoy unconditional love and support when I’m not feeling so sure of myself.

I now believe people were meant to live together and support each other, it just took me forever to find the person to do that for me. To younger people I say, What’s the rush?

Go out and live your life on your own terms! Be strong, see the world, experience life wherever you find it! Experience love wherever you find it, but never settle for someone who does not show you complete love and respect. Be yourself and find out exactly what that is for YOU. Then, when you know who you are, and love that person fiercely. When you have no intention of changing for others, only then choose a partner who loves you just the way you are!  

My primary lesson from my first marriage:  When you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for!

 

Blogging Boomers Have Their Say!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

if-you-obey-all-the-rules-you-miss-all-the-fun Katherine HepburnMy lively group of fellow bloggers have never been known to be shy about having their opinions on, well everything, and I include myself in that lovely, well-opinionated group! I know, opinions are like a**holes, but what’s the point of being alive if you can’t say what you think?

This week Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist over at The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, writes about the movies nominated for Academy Awards this year. Although she feels as though she’s watched hundreds of movies, Robison actually only saw 26 movies and 10 shorts. Here she writes about these movies, because she thinks movie makers put too many violent images on the big screen. 

Traveling and sightseeing can be exhausting activities, as Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting found out after three weeks on the road. She took a break, enjoying life at a slow, enjoyable pace. Read about her day off at Retirees Take a Day Off. 

Tom, at Sightings Over Sixty, brings up Three Silent Issues that the politicians have been avoiding. Go over and take a look, and then you decide — aren’t these the kinds of things we should be talking about?

One of my favorite online educators, Kathy Gottberg, over at SmartLiving365.com shares her personal thoughts about creativity and her amazing mother in her new piece titled: The Courage to Live Your Creativity With Stubborn Delight! Don’t miss it!

tell negative committee to shut upAnd as for myself, I have some very strong feelings about the choices we make everyday between playing it safe and taking big risks. As you can probably tell, I became a big risk-taker after realizing how little I really had at midlife. Now I feel, one of the most important lessons I have ever learned in life is:

Playing it safe does not get you what you want! 

Where is your brain injury?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 8 Comments

Slowly but surely I’ve been fighting back from a serious concussion this past September. Some days are fine, others I just feel like sitting and staring off into space for hours. One thing is for sure, it is quite difficult for me to maintain a good conversation for more than an hour or two. My brain gets tired very quickly.

Today I want to share with you some new information to me. I was searching around the Internet and came upon this very interesting page from the Centre for Neuro Skills on brain function. I guess I did not realize how important it is to specify where your brain has been injured, in identifying what functions are compromised.

For example, my traumatic brain injury back in 2008 damaged my frontal lobe (in the forehead area). According to this documentation this section controls consciousness, how we initiate activity, judgments in daily activities, emotional response, expressive language and assigns meaning to the words we choose, word associations and memory activities.

After being unconscious for hours after my bike accident with a serious bleed inside my brain, I struggled for at least a year with judgment, my emotions, language, word meanings, spelling and memory. I never did remember my accident, just the aftermath, and then only barely.

As luck would have it, I had just decided to become a writer in 2006 so writing became my best brain exercise. I actually published my first book by the end of 2008! I’m nothing if not stubborn!

Yes, I got very slowly better and thought that part of my life was history until this past September when I fell backwards onto concrete and knocked a small hole in my skull and injured my left parietal lobe. This led to even more problems with spelling and vocabulary. I now need to ask my husband words all of the time, and that’s very frustrating to me. In fact everything mentioned on this list rings try to me, especially “the inability to plan a sequence of complex movements to complete a multi-stepped task.”

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I see now that brain injuries on top of previous injuries are the worst in terms of trying to get things done. At first I could only stare outside for hours. Luckily the views are fantastic up here! Believe it or not, I think coloring my mandalas has helped my brain a lot. It’s so hard for me to “be here now,” but I’m working on it every day.

Not to make excuses, but I’m pretty sure this new injury is making it much harder for me to put together my new memoir about moving to this beautiful new part of the country to retire. Luckily I don’t have to go to work, but even my new volunteer position at the local veterans nursing home could be a challenge at times. At least I’ll be among understanding friends.

A New Southern Colorado Adventure & Delight!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 9 Comments

Yesterday, we celebrated Valentine’s Day in one of the most mellow places I can imagine. We drove an hour and a half west of here and arrived at the Sand Dunes Pool for a long, peaceful soak in the hot springs there.

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We started out in the long, lazy river pool at around 100 degrees. This gets deeper the further you go in, and at the end there is a small water fall. The surrounding are surprisingly tropical and the temperature inside is perfect! This is the only pool you can swim around in in the adult section.

When you tire of the long, cool pool you can choose between three other smaller pools from 103 to 110 degrees or take a sauna.

The atmosphere is tropical, with cool plants growing everywhere! We saw a few orchids, some very nice succulents, a large Jade tree, and even a few tomatoes on the vine. This place is wonderful, like a moist, warm oasis in the middle of the dry, cold San Luis Valley. No wonder it is so popular! Alcohol is served in this section, and their hamburgers are great.

Sand Dunes Pool outdoor swimming poolEverything I have described so far is in the adult or age 21+ section of this property. There is also an large, outdoor pool for families with kids. The surrounding mountains are incredible, and they also have places to stay there if you are on a vacation or RV camping. We’re just glad we live close enough to drive over for the day!

I do wish to mention one comment from a fellow swimmer yesterday. She was around age 50 and apparently she had been observing Mike and I for a while, when she came up to us and said,

“I just have to say you two make such a cute couple! My husband and I have been married for over 30 years. I just hope we can be like you two as we grow older together.” 

That pretty much made our day!

How did this happen? How did I end up here, feeling so fortunate?

It’s a long story, one I can now share with you in my new memoir!

Aging and Friendship

/ Laura Lee Carter / 13 Comments

“Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.”  —  Charles Caleb Colton, a popular nineteenth century English cleric

old senile friendsIt is obvious to me, my previous post about moving and making friends past midlife hit some sort of nerve with my readers. I so enjoyed the personal comments made by over 20+ readers! Some have studied this phenomenon throughout their lives and concluded it may have to do with different parts of the country and different sizes of town and cities.

So I decided to do a little research into this subject. I wanted to understand why two of my closest friends for decades dropped me suddenly soon after I turned 50, and why only one friend from my previous life in the Fort Collins area (for 20 years!), still keeps in close contact now.

The most insightful article I found was: “Aging and 3 Kinds of Friendship” by Brent Green. Mr. Green tells us that there are three kinds of friendships we may experience as we proceed through life, convenience, cosmetic and interdependent. A different article defined these loosely as takers, givers, and power sharers.

We all have had convenience friends, ones you hang out with because you share a work place, or kids in the same grades, or the same workout gym. These relationships can be very unequal with one person “helping” the other a lot. They can be draining!

Cosmetic friendships can also be draining because the person who supposedly likes you, wants something for it. Like work friends who think your relationship may help their career, these “friends” can vaporize quite quickly when you have nothing more to give to them.

The best kind of friends are those who are interdependent on each other. They don’t lean heavily, but they are there for you and accept you exactly the way you are. To quote Mr. Green:

“Both parties contribute and receive. Both are available to share the joys of closeness and help shoulder the burdens that come with aging. They give and take. They are committed to mutual growth and positive adaptation along the uncharted journey through life…They include the extraordinary friends we can count on when we become distraught or disillusioned. They are people who lift our spirits and in return welcome our nurturing care during their tough times.”

If you have any friends like these, count yourself very lucky!