Lifestyle

While sorting through my inbox, I came across one email with the subject line “Loving Life with Less.” Given my interest in downsizing, I was very excited to read it. Yes! I thought. That’s exactly the goal…

At 90, I have discovered something rather amusing about getting older: the calendar insists I am old, but most days I don’t feel particularly interested in cooperating with it. I believe one reason is simple: I nearly always have something to look forward to. It may be a book I am working on…

In the two years before I retired, I put “write myself a job description for my retirement” on a list. Retirement, for those keeping score, is the part where you don’t have a job. The list lived on my phone, in a note called Elaine’s Retirement. It had 14 sections, because apparently my retirement required the same scope as my 1994 dissertation. Spiritual, Hobbies, Creativity…

Growing into my wisdom each year, I have noticed the desire for ease and simplicity. It wasn’t always like this. I spent many years wasting my energy and time worrying about things that I couldn’t control and really didn’t matter…

Whether you’re soaring through the skies, cruising on a train, or navigating winding roads, there are a few things that can make a huge difference in your traveling comfort. One trusty travel companion that will keep you cozy and refreshed…

I’m a horror movie fan, so when the new Insidious movie came out this weekend, I decided to do something I hadn’t done in a long time. I went to a movie theater. And I was genuinely excited. Not just interested or casually looking forward to it. I was excited like a little kid. I got my popcorn, found my seat, settled in, and for a moment, I realized just how much this simple experience meant to me…

As a full-time caregiver, it’s not that easy to slip away for a vacation or even slip out of the house for an hour or two but I have found I can take frequent breaks throughout the day to a lovely little inn on the Washington coast. Just a few quiet moments to smell the salty air and hear the seagulls arguing over who got the biggest crumb from a discarded…

How do you create a lifestyle after 60 that is sensual, vibrant, fulfilling, and on your own terms and not someone else’s? What if I said the answer is healing from the traumatic effects of people pleasing? If this is true, where do you begin to identify the effects of people pleasing? And how do you start to genuinely heal from them?

When I think back to being a kid, so much of what we did was simply because it was fun. We spent hours outside, running up and down the road to the big black door at the back of William Patten School. Nobody actually used that entrance, but for us it became a focal point. Other days were spent dancing around the kitchen table, clicking our fingers to “The Jets”…

People sometimes talk about turning 60 as if it is the beginning of slowing down. I see it differently. For me, it has been a time to look at everything I have learned, everything I have survived, and everything I still want to do, and ask, “What can I build now?” I have built twice before, and both times I stepped into something unfamiliar…