The Best of the Boomer Blogs – June Edition

June 5, 2016June 6, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 9 Comments

The wildflowers are just taking off in this part of southern Colorado. Springtime here is truly glorious! Check out the yellow flowers on my header, taken last June near our home. We think this beats the hell out of mowing a lawn!

And speaking of spring, here comes a few great blog posts from my boomer friends. Meryl Baer says: Baby boomers grew up during the turbulent 1960s, not so long ago in the minds of those of us who lived through the era. Yet the 60s decade came and went over 50 years ago. This week Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting faced the harsh fact that the 60s not only occurred over 50 years ago, but are ancient history to younger generations. Read about her revelation in I am History.

Doing a little bowl-sitting…

It feels like the dog days of summer early in her part of the country, so Carol Cassara at Heart-Mind-Soul presents us with some dog posts. Here are her tips for traveling with your dog this summer or any time. And because everyone loves cute dog photos, which of these gorgeous pups are your favorites?

On The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, writes about two pieces of news for consumers. A federal agency is proposing a rule to end payday loan debt traps. And, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is issuing voluntary guidelines in an effort to work with food companies and restaurants to gradually adjust sodium levels in food. While the payday loan rule has the potential to save consumers nationwide billions of dollars in unfair fees and interest, the salt guidelines are voluntary and only will be helpful if companies decide to follow them.

This week Tom Sightings takes on the issue of men and women. In Part I — What Happened to the Men? he discusses recent trends in employment and education, and concludes with one hope for his children.

With the best of intentions, change can still be hell! Trust me, I know…

May 25, 2016October 13, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 16 Comments

“Even in seemingly dormant times, we are in transition. Losses and gains are in constant play. We are the change-agent, and we are changed. Even without toil, we transform. So, wisdom advises us to open our hearts to transition; to honor fully what is passing, to learn from all that unfolds, and to welcome what arrives at our door each day with courage and curiosity.”

As all who have been reading this blog for the past year or so know, I have had many doubts about this big, dramatic move Mike and I started on two years ago. Especially when we first moved to Walsenburg, and I basically hated it.

But then if you took anyone from a beautiful, suburban home in Fort Collins, and moved them into a tiny, dirty 100-year-old house in a sad, rundown town an hour away from any decent sized city, the shock would be total, and it was!

The challenges we have faced in the past two years have been daunting for both of us. For me the biggest challenge was simply adjusting to such a different world than I was used to. For Mike it was the many extra expenses, frustrations, and delays in building a passive solar home in a rural environment.

I am now quite happy that we made this choice, while Mike says he wouldn’t have done it if he had known how unhappy I would be in the process of adjusting to something so different.

In retrospect I wish I had not worried so much about everything and trusted more in Mike’s vision for us, because this place is heaven. I fully appreciate how much courage and vision it took for Mike to push this whole project through to completion.

Now we live in a beautiful home that is supremely quiet, with fantastic views in every direction, and our direct-gain passive solar is working great! Plus I now feel like I’m making a few friends and slowly starting to feel like I belong here.

In summary: This place is perfect, but change can still be hell!

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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…

What’s not to love about this lifestyle?

May 17, 2016October 11, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 5 Comments

The fog just engulfed our hilltop. I’m listening to The Poozies, another incredible group of musicians introduced to me by our first friend here, Bob the landlord. If you love Irish and Scottish music, you will love them! I’m baking banana bread while I write this.

Cloudy with occasional glimpses of the mountains!

So what’s not to love about this lifestyle?

The past few days have been wonderful for me. At our writing group on Saturday I met a new member who made my day! She’s been a major player in the Aspen arts scene for the past forty years, but burned out on that and is ready for something completely different. She warned me about telling too many about this beautiful place, so keep this under wraps, OK?

I have also found an exercise class I like for “older women.” It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for, so I bought a membership at Two Peaks Fitness. After winter and my post-construction slump, I need to get moving NOW! I hike up the hill behind us a few times a week and explore my new neighborhood. At 7,000 feet hiking is quite different than our old neighborhood in Fort Collins. Slowly but surely….

I am finding so many friendly people lately, especially in La Veta, and I’m finally feeling some sense of belonging here. Such a nice feeling!

And then there is my home life. This photo is a good summary.

Everyone’s happy and getting along here!

I am filled with gratitude that I can now live like this forever. Please go learn more about our move from Fort Collins to here in my new memoir!

“Our deepest human longing is for BE-longing; for belonging to our true selves, for belonging to all others…belonging to the whole universe…and belonging to that unfathomable mystery …” GRATITUDE with BROTHER DAVID STEINDL-RAST

Reinvention – Lessons Learned

May 8, 2016March 7, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

September 22, 2013

An oldie but goodie from three years ago, before all of my major changes really got started! Before we moved down south and built this home…

I am now pushing 60. Looking back, I have found midlife to be the ideal time for self-discovery and personal reinvention.

Most of us have followed the path set out for us by others. What else can we do when we are young and inexperienced? And by age 40 or 50, we know where that leads.

By my mid-40s, I felt professionally secure, but stuck and frustrated, having been a good girl and followed all the rules. These feelings allowed me to finally find the confidence and courage to re-structure my life and create something new and different. My goal: complete authenticity!

Perhaps, like me, you have experienced some traumatic midlife challenges like divorce, job loss, empty nest, natural disasters or illness, as you watch your parents struggle with their own aging issues. All of these circumstances combined to cause me to question many of the choices I had made so far.

Did I want to spend the rest of my life this way?

In retrospect I see my various crises as golden opportunities to push me towards more appropriate personal choices. In the midst of my own midlife crisis, I spent months reading, looking inside, journaling, and being painfully honest with my feelings. Gradually I realized the future I saw ahead did not suit me. It was time to re-frame and do everything in a different way, MY WAY!

I used my own inner wisdom/intuition as my primary guide. Aware of the limitations of whatever time I had left on this earth, I worked ceaselessly to find a better path for myself.

Stop censoring yourself. Stop telling yourself you can never have what you truly want. Find out what that is for you, and then focus like a laser on your deepest desires.

There are indeed do-overs before it is all over!

In the midst of my only run in with unemployment at age 49, I decided that I was determined to have a marvelous, unconditional love relationship with another before I died. Then I did EVERYTHING within my power to make that happen, and it did!

Many have called me ‘lucky.’ I call me courageous, determined and stubborn. I began reinventing my life by first finding true love.

Next my new lover, who believed in me even more than I did, helped me change careers. I had always dreamed of becoming a writer, but ignored that desire because it seemed too crazy and impractical.

This time I was determined to get exactly what I wanted. And I am here to tell you, you can too!

“The person who says it cannot be done, should not interrupt the person doing it.” – Chinese proverb

I’m a newcomer to rural southern Colorado. After two years I decided to compile a short journal about the ups and downs of moving from a good-sized city to rural America to build a passive solar retirement home: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado Please share this information with your friends if they are considering similar life changes. 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)

Best of Boomer Blogs – May Day Edition

May 1, 2016May 1, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

I love to remember May Day when I was a kid. We lived in a small town in Iowa where kids made simple paper May baskets, filled them with flowers, and then hung them on our neighbor’s front doors. What FUN! Then at school we would do the Maypole dance. Such great spring singing programs! Remember “Spring is busting out all over!?”

Unfortunately the weather is NOT cooperating here today. We are stuck in our second four day snowstorm in TWO WEEKS in southern Colorado. The good news? Over 4 inches of moisture in April! That’s my rain gauge out there…

Luckily we have a few great blog posts from some great boomer bloggers to entertain us today! First up is Carol Cassara:

Visibility seems to be EVERYTHING in today’s intrusive social media environment–and some of the most awful influences on kids and grandkids are way too visible. Carol’s asking what you think parents (and grandparents) can do to combat the influence of negative role models in social media? At the same time, she’s lucky enough to have a nephew who appreciates the wisdom of age.

Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting says the pharmaceutical industry is dear to the hearts of most Americans. We buy lots of drugs, but the industry wants us to buy more. Advertisements ply us with information about all kinds of maladies and the pills that will cure them. Meryl spends too much time listening to ads, as she explains in her post: On Becoming a Hypochondriac.

Tom Sightings says, they’ve been talking about it for a few years now, ever since the last of their children left home. It’s a crossroads most of us must face as we retire. So navigate over to “Guess What We’re Doing?” to find out what he’s talking about — and what they’re doing.

Over at The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, writes about a new study that found working longer can extend your life. Researchers found that healthy adults who retired one year past age 65 had an 11 percent lower risk of death from all causes, even when taking into account demographic, lifestyle, and health issues.

Too bad so many us do have health issues which prevent us from working longer, or chronic unemployment. It’s also very sad thousands of midlife Americans are committing suicide at an alarming rate.

How Prince Made My Life Better

April 27, 2016April 28, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 12 Comments

I don’t remember how I first heard about Prince. In the early 80s I had recently returned to Boulder Colorado, lost in severe depression. Imagine sitting in Taipei, Taiwan, certain that I needed to leave or lose my mind. But where to go next?

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After a disillusioning and devastating seven months studying Chinese at the Stanford Center in Taipei, I felt like I knew how miserable some missionaries to China in the late 1800s had felt. There was nothing I liked about my life, and I had previously come to the conclusion that my future included a PhD in Chinese history.

What next, as I turned 30?

I returned to Boulder because it was the closest I had ever felt to home. Luckily I had friends there who put me up for a year or so. I wasn’t even sure if I had enough mental health left to work, but I got a half-time job in the Personnel Office at CU-Boulder Library. There I met a few welcoming positive and supportive women, most notably Cathie. (Thank you for your special kind of love and understanding Cathie!)

After a while, I got a perfectly mindless job in the Cataloging Department. Does anyone out there know about working as a “Retro Jet”? The job is simply editing OCLC records online as quickly as possible to match the book we have in our collection.

So we sat on the computer editing OCLC records for hours on end. Luckily we were allowed to listen to our walkmans while we did it! Somewhere in the great camaraderie of retro jets, I was introduced to Prince, the perfect music to listen to for this particularly boring job! Yes, the people I met through my retro jet job, and the music I was introduced to made me feel great for the first time in years!

There is something about Prince’s music that took me out of my busy, worried mind and freed my soul for some sort of positive future. At the time I had no idea what that might be, I just knew I needed to find my bright side again SOON!

I’ve always been one of those Boomers who was searching for where I belonged in society. I went on to complete an M.A. in Third World History, and then turned to my first love, psychology around age 35. But as it turns out, my real love is NOT LIVING IN CITIES.

My life has taken such a circuitous path, partially because I had certain goals stuck in my head early, that I would eventually need to let go of. My most recent discovery about myself came from moving away from all cities and building solar.

Come to find out, I don’t “belong in society” at all! Who knew?

I belong where I feel free...