2012 – The Year Of Travel January 8, 2012
Posted by myblueheavenknits in Uncategorized.4 comments
Does it seem possible that I ever had time to work in a full-time job plus do all my knitting/crafting business too?
At my retirement, I mused about getting back into teaching and expanding my crafts business. And sure enough, it has turned out that way for me. I think it is all about thinking positive on those things that I want to find opportunities for and ignoring those negative things that drain my energy without giving anything back.
In my working years, many peers who had come up to the retirement decision day either just kept working (until they literally died at their desk!) or retired and came back as a consultant doing the same job, mainly because they didn’t have anything better they wanted to do after they left. Now, I want to tell you it was not always a money factor because of the great pension we had all subscribed to when we began our service; some people just never had a “life” outside of their career. Many Baby Boomers seem to have that problem, running around staring into their Blackberry or I-Phones, waiting for someone to grace them with a task to give them a reason to live. I think many are afraid to lose the esteem and purpose a responsible job gives them – their whole psyche is tied to the status of their position and without a “title”, they can’t define themselves. They don’t want to be a “nobody”, AKA retiree.
Whoa, not me. Yes, I gave it my all for 30 years, but I was happy and proud to walk away, leaving many others, who I had carefully prepared to take the reins. I had started my post-retirement plans (I called it the Linda 2.0 Version) years in advance, and I was now free to go hog wild in the pursuit of my happiness – knitting and fiber arts. My husband and I both saw our government careers as a great way to make a living covering all our financial obligations while planning/saving for a solid future. He is now retired too and pursuing his love of photography, and I am growing into teaching/demonstrating/designing for machine knitting.
I have got so many things going on this year already! I will be a Guest Demonstrator at the Purls of Joy Seminar, 27-28 April 2012, in Minnesota and have been asked to appear at the Pacific Northwest Knitting Machine Seminar in Vancouver, Washington, 10-12 May. Also, I have some personal travel plans putting me on the East Coast in August and Costa Rica in Jan-Feb (yes, in just a couple of days) and again back to Costa Rica later in the year. Newton’s Knits has asked me to go to Stitches West with them in Santa Clara the day I get back from Costa Rica in Feb – I will be jet-lagging it, but I hope to make it there, too. And of course, I have all my Spring and Fall/Holiday craft shows to plan and knit for, AND all my volunteer work/meeting with the Torrance Craftsmen’s Guild and the El Segundo Slipt Stitchers, so my calendar for the year is already FULL!!! Oh, yes, I have some new designs in my head and I need get on the ball to create those patterns.
Like I said, I don’t know how I ever got time to work a job 40-50 hours a week. I always heard that some people are busier AFTER they retire than when they had to juggle a work calendar. I am one of these lucky people!!
Keep knitting until all the yarn is gone!
2011 in review January 1, 2012
Posted by myblueheavenknits in Uncategorized.2 comments
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,800 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 47 trips to carry that many people.
