Daily Grit by Wes Thorp

I want to add "story-telling" to my baby-boomer bucket list

I never really understood the importance of literature until after I retired in 2005.  I didn't get it.  I felt like fiction was a waste of time.  It was something set aside for the artsy-craftsy side who had an intellectual bent.

Can anybody who has tried to read Faulkner or Hemingway relate?  Learning about the symbolism in these two authors would drive me to distraction.  

That changed after I moved away from my day job and had more time to do some below the surface thinking.

I'm now fascinated by how authors explain a chunk of life through their work.  And I'm even more intrigued by how that's transferred from the pages of a book to a movie.  It takes some real skill.  

For almost a year, I've been trying to write my own story.  There's nothing so unusual about me, but I do have a story just like everybody else.  It's multi-layered and not unlike a lot of other people.  There's pathos, ethos and little bit of eros.  

I'm just a member of the first class of baby-boomers born right after World War II and raised by a single-mom who was the consumate survivor.  When I was barely a toddler my dad vanished pure and simple and never came back.  I found him when I was in my twenties.  There's been a lot of life that I've experienced.  Anything to be learned by others?  I think so.

Can I pull it off and make it readable and useful to others?  I'm trying.

What about the movie of my life?  Who'd play me?  John Belushi?  He's gone.  I'd be happy to have a story that my grandson, granddaughter and grandkids to be can read and learn more about their background.  And I'd be happy if somebody else could pick up some hope from it too.

This seems to be pretty wise observation about life from Beatle John Lennon

As I was searching through Google this morning for information about what other people were doing with their own bucket lists, I found this great quote from Beatle John Lennon.  I need to think about this as I'm sitting in the dentist's chair later today getting a root canal:

Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans. --John Lennon

There seems to be a tub load of wisdom here.  I know that I have to be careful about making too many plans because stuff can happen along the way.  But you still need focus.

I found the quote on this site about what other people are doing with their own bucket lists. Fascinating.  I absolutely have no desire to swim with the dolphins.  I'd love to go back to Grand Canyon though.  

As a member of the first class of baby-boomers born in 1946, I know that the sands are moving through the hour glass pretty quickly and that I need to sort some of this out.

As a baby-boomer, I'm starting to think about long-term care insurance

While driving to meet a friend for lunch, I heard a discussion on the Diane Rehm show about long-term care and about insurance to provide for it.  As a person who turns sixty-six this year, I know I have to think about this even though I don't want to.  Am I too old to buy the insurance without paying a small fortune that I don't have?  Here's the link to the show which I'm going to listen to as long as I don't get distracted.

Here's one big item I've taken off my baby-boomer bucket list

I had almost always been informed about what's going on in politics on almost any level in my home state of Michigan and many other states.  I knew the players.  I knew the sides and I was involved in the process from a young age.

This started when I was pre-teen and started to wind down when I retired.  In between, I spent my whole professional life in and around politics at a variety of levels.  It was a consuming passion that became a career.

I read about it.  I hung around and worked with others who were involved in it.  I talked about it and I firmly believed that I could make a difference.  Hmmm . . .

It's something that started when I was a kid.  Two things drove this interest.  As a only child of a single-mom struggling to survive, I saw how our local city hall treated her differently than those from traditional two-parent families.  For me, it was a justice issue.  I wanted to do something to change it.

Second, as a fatherless child, it was a way for me to relate to my many uncles and to get them to notice me.  I found they were all interested in politics and liked to talk about it and I could always engage their interest and conversation in the topic.  When did this start?  I was very young, like grade school.

I got involved with the local Republican Party, helped form one of the first Teenage Republican clubs in the country.  I served as a page in our State Senate when I was in high school.  I continued in community college as the head of Students for Victory in Vietnam and College Republicans.  

And then I became a newspaper reporter.  I covered politics at all levels.  And then I swung back to the political side as a staffer in our state legislature where I held a variety of positions.  I was a legislative director, a speechwriter and a chief of staff in a small legislative office and pressroom manager at the State Capitol.

When I retired, I went through withdrawal.  It seemed natural that I would be involved in somebody's campaign or in some cause.  It hasn't happened.

Don't take me wrong.  Politics and governing are important.  But, at this point, it's time misspent. Politics today seems to be about holding power without a defined purpose.  The main goal is to get your team to win without standing for anything.

I do want to be a good citizen.  I will stay informed about candidates and I will speak up when necessary.  But, the energies I devoted to the process will be nothing like it was in the past.

Politics, you are off my list.

Are you a baby-boomer still trying to figure-out what to do during your retirement?

It seems like it was just last year when my wife, daughter and son threw a surprise 60th birthday party for me where our house and backyard was filled with people who helped me cross-over into the next important phase of my life.

This year on the last day of August, I'll turn 66.  I'm going on seven full years of retirement and my point is simple.  My life seems to be zooming by.  I hesitate to imagine how quickly my trip to being 70 will go.

I've been dogged by the desire to be sure that I get to my list of things I want to do before I'm either too old or I pass from this life to the next.  And that's where the rub comes in, trying to determine what should be on my list.  I've had to shuck all kinds of things off the platter of choices.  

I know I'll never run a marathon anymore.  A bad left knee says that will never happen.  I'll never sit down and talk to my earthly-father.  I found out he's dead and he's been cremated.  I might be able to sit down with my grandson and pre-born grandaughter over a beer or a coffee and talk about life.  But what else?

With the continued clicking of my personal clock, I feel the urge to get my list settled.  I know the first item on my so-called bucket list.  It involves my relationship with God.  I know that everything in my life starts and ends there.  What does that mean?  How does that look in my day-to-day life?  I think I'm finding some of the answers.  

It helps me to write it down and then to make sure that's where I put my focus.  

How about you other retired baby-boomers?  You got this all figured out or still working on it?

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