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Episode 1000
This is Retirement Talk. I’m Del Lowery
I’ve titled this episode: Episode 1000.
Thirty-nine years ago I retired. It was an early retirement for sure. My wife and I had ventured to Alaska in the summer 1968 and found ourselves nineteen years later able to financially stop our work-a-day life. We wanted to explore life in a more varied manner than one particular job would allow. Our retirement started in the summer of 1987.
And what did we do with our lives once we retired? Did we do what we thought we would? We did want to get involved in our community. This involvement took an expanded turn with the invention of the Internet and podcasting. Perhaps your’s will also. I serve this podcast as a tale of retirement as it may progress.
Twenty years later, 2007, I started these podcasts. I browsed libraries and book stores for information about retirement. I found very little to nothing to help me seriously consider retirement with the exception of financial advice. There were books and magazines with focus on retirement, money, investments but little to nothing else on other concerns related to retirement. After living a retired life for twenty years I knew there were many other areas of concern and interest for the retired.
Podcasts were a new means of exploring. I liked to write and had dabbled a bit in radio in the nineties. I also had a keen interest in thinking about what I was doing with the life I was leading and the life I might lead. Podcasting offered a way to combine the writing and radio with careful consideration of life as it was related to retirement.
I remember my son telling me that very few people knew what a podcast was at that time. I didn’t but I soon found out. Then he told me that no over 50 for sure didn’t know anything about podcasts. Very few if any retired people would be visiting a podcast with that interest or name.
I knew nothing about podcasts or creating a website that would be necessary for the project. By talking to computer people, cruising the web and making a thousand mistakes, I created a very simple website and launched these episodes in the summer of 2007; just one thousand weeks ago. Not exactly 1000 weeks ago but close. I have published almost one a week ever since. I’m sure vacations and medical issues have caused a few exceptions.
My intention was to interview various retirees and their thoughts concerning a carefully considered retirement. I tried this and failed. The interviews took hours and the editing took hours and I did not want to spend all of my time in this pursuit. I had to give this approach up. In the first years few local people recorded a few episodes and then that ended for various reasons. One was death and the other was a difference in points of view.
As podcasts became part of the mainstream sources of information my listener base grew as did my contact with some of the listeners. I received letters from across the country, Europe, Africa, Asia and South America, Canada and Mexico. Most were kind and appreciative.
I have tried to stay true to my mission and consider retirement in all of its with the exception of financial investments and anything to do with money. In today's world there is are wealth of podcasts that have emerged with that particular interest. After some contact with listeners I did drift into how we managed our own personal finances. But I think I held that to perhaps three episodes out of one thousand. That’s not bad.
My topics have emerged from my own mind. I tried to not research each topic. I wanted to see what I knew about each issue in my own mind and not that of the latest fad or best seller. In these last few years I have re-posted many episodes with a slight update if needed. I figure that anyone who listened ten or twenty years ago has probably lost interest or died. I’m sure some loyal listeners may still remember bits and pieces but they may find the episodes still have value. I am certainly grateful for the appreciation of these thousand episodes.
This is a good place to stop the podcast but I think I will keep going until my ability to manipulate the computer and various programs necessary for publishing runs out. That might be tomorrow and then again…
Thanks for listening.
Questions or comments contact: del@retirementtalk.org
A resource from a listener: Best Free Online Degrees for Seniors guide is designed to assist seniors who aspire to enhance their intellect or consider starting a new career path. It features an overview of the top online degrees for seniors, emphasizing their numerous advantages, and a broad range of subjects to choose from. A friend's website: Terra Firma Designs: Fine Furniture, Stained Glass and woodworking workshops. Copyright 2010 RetirementTalk.org |
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