I have been in my RetCom home for 14 months now, and am slowly making some friends here. Being deaf and having Aspie traits has made that process difficult as it has for most everything in my last 35 years. Finding my place here has been a struggle. I tried to start up an activity pointed towards hearing loss issues, but that just didn’t pan out. As I have read from many sources, older people just want to ignore their hearing loss as much as possible. Learning from my lifetime experiences with hearing loss about how to better cope just didn’t appeal to many here.

I am slowly becoming part of the old fart’s group commonly called “Men’s Coffee & Conversation”. It meets twice a month to just talk about whatever comes up. While I enjoy the dozen or so guys that attend, it just seems like there are so many more men here who seldom leave their apartments. Being one to always be looking for a challenge, I am taking it on to possibly getting the men here involved in an activity focused on “men” stuff.

I have been thinking about this for a couple of months. What are men primarily interested in? I know sports interests most men, but with sports, all you can mostly do is to talk about how your team did last week, and maybe dream out loud about how they might get to the Super Bowl or whatever the final contest is in the category you prefer. I am looking for something a more hands-on.

So, besides sports, what do men have in common? For me personally, it has always been to build stuff. I have always loved learning how stuff works and trying my hand out in a number of different areas. Early on it was model building. I was never a specialist in any particular genre. I built model cars, planes, ships and other such things. I even tried model railroading for a time.

Another area was woodworking. It fascinated me to be able to take a piece of wood and turn it into something useful or at least pleasant to look at. That lifelong hobby turned into a seven-year occupation after I left the corporate world.

I spent seven years making my µRV. It started out as a “work truck”as shown in the photo here. It mostly sat unused for a half dozen years after I shut down my business. I got great pleasure working on that. But then my wife died, and I sold our 21-year homestead including my 24 x 48 ft pole barn/man cave. I now use the front coat closet in my RetCom apartment as a replacement, but somehow that just doesn’t quite do it. 🥴

What I have discovered is building stuff is a common factor for most of us guys. So, I am on the lookout to start up a new activity in my RetCom that will appeal to many of the men here, and building stuff seems to have the most promise. Now I just gotta figure out exactly what that activity might entail. I got some ideas about that, and I will tell you about that tomorrow. But, any suggestions would be appreciated. 🙃