By almost all counts, I have been happy living in my retirement community home for the last three months. It has the things that make my life easier. The staff here is extraordinary. I love my cozy apartment, it fits me like a glove. My favorite part might be the walking path. That 0.66 mile route has resulted in a healthier lifestyle. There is a lot here to make me happy. I just need to finally accept that fact.
Currently, I seem to be fixating on a couple of negatives, or maybe a better word than fixated is procrastinating about them. The major one is food in the dining room. They have now shut down the evening meal for the dining room. All dinner meals, if you even want them, are delivered to your apartment, or picked up. One reason for that is that they simply can’t find adequate waiter staff to offer sit down meals right now. The food itself continues to be troublesome, partly due to the erratic supply chain. The bland food, due to no seasoning, is something ingrained in the current system and can’t really be changed without a significant shift in how meals are prepared and served. I will have more to say about that in some near future posts
For the above reasons, I have decided to basically forget the $350/month I am currently paying for the dining room services. I now just consider it a donation for those who don’t have another option. That decision allows me to cook my own food, I definitely get pleasure out of that, and the food tastes great. Cooking for one is not as enjoyable as for two when my wife was alive, or for 60 when I cooked in the soup kitchen, but I still get much satisfaction out of it. 😎
Retirement Community Living is not all pro’s, but then again, nothing in life is. I am finding that having a satisfying retirement is about balancing out the pluses and the minuses. I also have to recognize that my social interaction problems have nothing to do with where I live. I will have that regardless of where my abode is.
So, I have decided I will quit focusing on the negatives, and make a commitment to making a happy life here in my new community.
This is where I belong, this is where I commit to live.
Now, it is on addressing the challenges that this decision entails. One of the most critical things on that list is how do I fit in? I will be addressing that in a near future post…
RJ's Corner 
I found your blog via Bob’s Satisfying Retirement, and am just catching up on your recent posts. First, I’m so sorry for the loss of your wife and the journey you went on in her last months. The medical community virtually requires someone to throw fits to get action lately in many situations. So sorry that was yours.
Re: your dining experiences where you live. My mom is in an independent living situation with a similar complaint. When Covid hit, they stopped serving meals in the dining room and only drop them off at each person’s door daily if you choose. After her husband died, she was receiving the meals for a while but realized they were mostly bland and heavily carb loaded. Like your situation, it’s included in the monthly rent, so she is paying for something she isn’t using. It’s frustrating, but she feels much better cooking her own meals.
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Thanks, Laurel, for your thoughts and welcome to RJsCorner. Yeah, I get quite a few viewers coming from Bob’s blog, including him on a very regular basis. 😁
I am going to be putting out a post on retirement community dining options soon that are becoming much more available now. I will try to do what I can to maybe make this paradigm shift happen at my community. I’m sure there are many here who feel the same as me and your mom.
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What a wonderful decision you’ve made to recast the way you think about the monthly fee for food when you will now be cooking many or most of your own meals. Letting go of valid concerns in order to better allocate our energies is one of the new and sometimes painful skills we have to learn isn’t it?
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Thanks for the thoughts, Linda. We just got another stumbling block on the food front here. It seems someone complained to the health department that their carry-out food was not at the correct temperature. As a result, that process has changed to make it even more difficult to get any food out of the food services here. It is a real chore now to even get dining room food if you even want it. More on that in a near future post.
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