On Friday, it had been a year since I officially kicked off my latest chapter. Today I share how I’ve been reinventing retirement as I look back on some highlights of the past year.  

Welcome to the 119^th edition of The Sunday Spark, a series with weekly thoughts and highlights, nuggets of learning, and a simple living challenge for the week. Along with reinventing retirement, this week’s edition looks at fog harvesting, the case for bike lanes, and fun facts about jigsaw puzzles.

On my mind this week: Reinventing retirement

On Friday, it had been a year since I left my full-time job behind and officially kicked off my latest chapter. It sounds cliché, but I can honestly say time flies when you’re having fun. It doesn’t seem possible that a whole year has gone by.

Throughout the year, I’ve made a habit of doing a monthly “retirement” reflection. On Friday, I shared four key learnings from my first year of retirement on my retirement coaching blog. That post was a follow up to my learnings from the first six months of retirement.

Although I worked in the retirement business for almost 35 years, it felt strange to say I was retiring—I preferred to call it my reinvention. Our society often associates retirement with aging and the end of a productive life. But for me, reinventing retirement is about living a life of purpose, with the right balance of work, leisure and learning.

Highlights of the first year

With that in mind, let’s look at some highlights of year one:

• Like most people, I took advantage of the newfound freedom to do some travelling. My husband and I travelled to Northern California last summer where we celebrated our 30^th anniversary and my 60^th birthday. In August, I followed that up with a heritage trip to Ireland with my mum and my sister. Then in April, we visited our daughter Laura in British Columbia.
• In October, I officially launched my retirement coaching business. It’s going slowly, and that’s intentional because I don’t want it to turn into a full-time job. I’ve been working on getting the word out through speaking engagements and regular blog posts. (If you’re interested in reinventing retirement on your terms, please subscribe to my retirement blog where I post regular insights and updates on the work I’m doing.)
• In March, I finished the Plain Language Certificate I had been working on for almost five years. I have received official notice from Simon Fraser University of my graduation—I’m just waiting for my documentation to arrive.
• I started a part-time contract job at our local community college. It taught me a lot about the kind of work I want to be doing—and don’t want to be doing.
• I’m loving having more time to read. I’ve read 53 books in the first year as I work toward my lofty goal of reading 1000 books.
• Of course, music will always be a priority for me. In recent weeks, I’ve found a new band to sing and jam with. To accommodate vacation plans, we’re taking a break over the summer and will resume in September.
• And, I continue to work on my writing projects. In addition to this blog and my retirement blog, I’ve been working on a memoir and have a couple of other interesting projects in the works.

My husband tells me I’m not really retired because I’m doing all this stuff, but I love my busy “unretired” life.

And I’m excited for what comes next…

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Three highlights of the week

It’s important to celebrate the simple pleasures in life, along with the big milestones. It has been an amazing week as both of our daughters have been home. Here are some highlights and simple pleasures of the week gone by:

• On Saturday, the girls and I went to see Keith Urban in concert at Budweiser Stage in Toronto. As always, Keith did not disappoint. He put on an amazing show.
• On Sunday, my sister-in-law hosted a pool party to celebrate my daughter Laura’s and our niece Emily’s birthdays. It was extremely hot—a perfect day for swimming.
• Wednesday was my daughter Laura’s 25^th birthday. We went out for a lovely dinner at The Keg.
• On Thursday, the girls made homemade gnocchi for dinner. It was delicious—messy, but delicious.

Things I learned this week

Life is all about learning. Here are three things I learned this week:

Fog harvesting

Fog harvesting is a promising innovation that could improve water security for desert communities. Researchers in Chile are building on ancient Indigenous methods that use natural materials like grass and leaves to capture moisture from the atmosphere. The moisture is then used to provide water in extremely dry environments.

The modern technique suspends specialized mesh nets between poles to capture microscopic water droplets as fog passes through the nets. The droplets are then channeled into storage tanks, creating a pure water source.

(Source: Happy Eco News)

The case for bike lanes

Despite Ontario Premier Ford’s insistence that bike lanes add to traffic congestion, two new studies report they are having a positive impact in reducing the number of cars on the road. One report shows that, on streets with dedicated bike lanes, bikes (including e-bikes and other micro mobility devices) represented over 50% of all vehicular traffic during the afternoon rush hour in Toronto.

And an international study showed that, on average, each new kilometre of bicycle lanes translates to 13,400 additional kilometres of bicycle travel every year.

(Source: Lloyd Alter on Substack)

Fun facts about jigsaw puzzles

My daughter Colleen loves to do jigsaw puzzles. There’s always a puzzle on the go in our house when she’s home. This week, I learned that jigsaw puzzles were originally called dissected maps. And those who love to do puzzles are called dissectologists.

And there are many benefits to dissectology. Doing jigsaw puzzles uses a variety of cognitive abilities and can help protect our brains against the harmful effects of stress.

(Source: Good Times)

This week’s simple living challenge – Work out at home

Simplifying life is a big part of living more intentionally. With that in mind, I kicked off the year with 52 ways to simplify your life this year, including a downloadable checklist of weekly tasks.

This week’s challenge is to ditch your costly gym membership and work out at home. It will save you time and money. For inspiration, check out this post for links to some of my favourite YouTube workout video posts.

I’d love to hear what you think about any of this week’s topics. Drop me a comment below and let me know your thoughts and ideas.