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A few posts ago I tried to convince you to do a roadtrip instead of getting on an airplane. I will soon be going on a roadtrip that is sixty years in the making, so I decided to refresh my knowledge on this subject. To me, preparation is the road to success. This post will give us some of the “how-to’s” of having a successful … Continue reading Roadtripping, The How-To’s
“My wife’s death five months ago yesterday caused me to do some pretty serious soul-searching. It made me realize that I was just going-with-the-flow in too many areas of my life. I was aimlessly moving from one day to another without much purpose. When I found out how quickly things can change, I become more determined than ever to live the rest of my life … Continue reading Resetting my Life Goals
RJsCorner is in its 14th year now, so I have covered countless categories in the 5,000 posts you will find here. As the years have gone by my primary focus here has changed several times. The latest change will be “officially” announced on this Thursday’s post. This change, which was started a few weeks ago, is perhaps the most difficult one for me as it … Continue reading RJsCorner – It’s Time For A Change
RJsCorner is not known to shy away from controversial subjects, so with the post, I am “having my say” about the Critical Race Theory (CRT). Maybe we should call Critical Race Theory a cultural overhaul, since CRT seems to be so threatening to many of us. It kinda makes sense to do that anyway. Let’s look at just what “Critical theory” in general really means. … Continue reading A Cultural Overhaul
A Children’s Art Contest gallery was recently displayed at my retirement community. The talent shown by these young artists is amazing. I was particularly drawn to the one above. 10 years-old and already painting such beautiful pictures. It is very Van Gogh like in it simplicity. I don’t want to leave you with just this one picture, so here is a gallery of a few … Continue reading Kid’s Nature Discovery Art Contest
Welcome to the new Wednesday series entitled The Pursuit of Happiness. This series, we will be studying what happiness has meant throughout the ages, and trying to discover within ourselves what it means to each of us. As usual, I don’t have a step-by-step agenda for this new series yet. It will depend on what we discover on our path to happiness. A primary reason … Continue reading The Pursuit of Happiness #1 – Changing My View
I think I am finally at the point in my life that I am ready to put the concept of “Simplify” more fully into my daily life. All these years of collecting things with that word in them is finally culminating into action. Keep things simple That is where happiness comes from. Until recently, I have always looked to the future to try to discover … Continue reading Simplicity/Happiness Link…
Passions in my life seem to come and go, but a few stick around almost forever. Twenty years ago, I was passionate about learning more about the origins and history of Christianity. That passion subsided about ten years later, with a major disappointment in how most of the churches today have veered away from the teachings of Jesus. As soon as I graduated from college … Continue reading My Passions Come And Go…
It takes a certain type of person to appreciate goats. Let’s face it, for some of us, all they do is eat, poop, and are generally nasty. But some others just love them despite, or maybe because of these characteristics. I think the same thing kinda applies to Aspies too. We, on the Autism spectrum, are blunt with our words and sometimes incorrigible. We don’t … Continue reading Goats & Aspies…
I expect this post is going to surprise you. I know you have probably already finish the phrase in the title with a myriad of responses. But for me, it is I am the loneliest when I am in a large group of people. All my life, I have never been able to figure our why I have so much trouble fitting into groups. One … Continue reading I Am The Loneliest…
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 … Continue reading RetComLife # 13 – It’s Not About Where
Just a quick note for today I know, I need another category of posts here at RJsCorner like a need a hole in my head! 🤓 But, that is just what I am going to do with his post. I have lived a long time on this earth, and every once in a while I manage to discover some “words of wisdom” that I want … Continue reading Words Of Wisdom
This post is introducing yet another special series entitled “Do Something“. As the title and logo implies, it is about getting off your butt and doing something about making your life fuller and more fruitful. It is simply useless to just sit back and wait for life to come to you. All you are doing is running out the clock, and that’s a boring way … Continue reading Do Something # 1 – Learn Something New
As plainly speaking as possible, we need to figure out nation building before we get into our next inevitable war. I know our purpose for going into Afghanistan was a noble cause, we wanted to bring a stable government to a very unstable country and region of the world. But, like all the other times, we utterly failed to accomplish that, but spent trillions stubbornly … Continue reading We Need To Figure Out Nation Building…
The quote above is kinda good advice for life in general, but right now, I am applying it to memories of my recently departed wife. We were almost opposites in many ways, so there are memories of times we disagreed, sometimes strenuously. But that is not what our 36 years together were about. We had a lot of good times to overshadow the bad. I … Continue reading It’s Time To Cherish The Good & Throw Away The Bad…
I can’t leave you with the idea that my RetComLife (retirement community life) is all positive for me. One of the areas that disappoints me is the dining room, including the menus and food preparation. That is what this post is all about. I get a monthly $350 credit to the dining room as part of the rent of my apartment. Whatever I don’t use … Continue reading RetComLife #10 – Dining 🙁…
I’m sure most people think of hospice as that short period that ends the suffering of terminal patients. This post will try to explain that this description is simplified at best, and actually somewhat misguided. As my wife continued her final eight days in hospice at our new home at the best senior community in our region, she was without pain because of the regular … Continue reading End of Life Trauma #9 – The Final Week.
I don’t know why some of the simplest images are the ones that fascinate me? Maybe I am “dumber than a box of marbles” but I love this picture from the Praire Museum in Colby, Kansas. Continue reading A Box Of Marbles…
I continue to try to find my way through this new life I have chosen for myself. As usual, I want it to happen NOW, but realize that it is more of a journey than a short stop. Some of the things I am struggling with now are about privacy and trade-offs. That’s what this post is about. After twenty-one years of living in a … Continue reading RetComLife #9 – Privacy & Trade-offs
The idea for the title above came from a recent post by Philip Gulley. He basically says that We are morally at risk when we see only the light of [fill in the blank] and never its shadow. I agree, but I want to also look at it from another viewpoint. We can’t ignore the light because of its shadows. That is what this post … Continue reading Without Looking At The Shadows.
These next two post in the series will probably be the most difficult to write. But they were also the time I came across the most empathic person I have ever known. I finished off the last post on this End-Of-Life Trauma series by telling you that my wife was being kicked out of the Hospice House because she was not dying fast enough. Of … Continue reading End of Life Trauma Part 8 – Hospice (continued)
It seems that I am now in some new stage of grief from my wife’s recent death. It has been two months today that she drew her last breath. I think up till now I have just been consumed with all the many things that have to happen after a spouse passes to really have time to mourn. Lately, I seem to be getting very … Continue reading Stages of Grief…
There have been hundreds of utopian communities spring up across America during its history. Some lasted only a few years, some longer, but none of them survived. I am a dreamer and when I read the words “heaven on earth” in the Lord’s Prayer, I think utopia. To me, that is what Jesus’ core message to us was. Love each other and everything else will … Continue reading Utopia… On Earth As It Is In Heaven?
I know I have posted a few pictures, including this one, of the Haan House Sculpture Garden near Lafayette, Indiana, but I want to go “whole hog” on this post to give you the full gallery. I took this short trip in May to get away from the end-of-life trauma of my dearly beloved wife. While I was at this garden, I did manage to … Continue reading Sculpture Garden
This is a picture of Dexter in 2011. He was the last pet I had. We rescued him from the shelter, and now he has a home with our neighbor across the road. You see, Dexter is an indoor/outdoor cat. He would not survive in my current apartment style living, but I miss him terribly. I have had pets for most of my life, particularly … Continue reading I Miss It…
I really do intend to give you more of the time I first entered RetComLife, but mini epiphanies keep getting in the way. Since all this is new to me, I am trying to discover the best way to get acclimated to this new world, and new thoughts keep popping up. Here is one of them: To tell you the whole story of this post, … Continue reading RetComLife #5 – Simplify…
If I were a bird, I would be a very rare sighting indeed! I am not “one among many” in most regards. Let’s look at this a little further. I am deaf. That makes me a rather rare character. According to the statistics, less than 1% of the population is without ANY hearing. I went deaf at about 40 years of age. When that happened, … Continue reading If I Were A Bird…
I haven’t brought up one of my favorite all-time pictures here at RJsCorner for some time. To me, it evokes pure creativity. So, with this Saturday Pictures post, I once again, give you just a box of eggs. Continue reading Just a Box of Eggs
I got a lot of things spinning around in my mind this morning, so I am just going to spew them all out at once. 😎 I don’t know what it is about popular opinion that makes me immediately look at the alternative? It just seems like most popular opinion is just the easy way to look at something. It takes thought and effort to … Continue reading Incoherent Ramblings…
Here it is approaching Labor Day again. This summer has just been a blur to me. I missed the daises blooming in my wife’s flower beds. That was her favorite flower. So, for this Picture Saturday, I give you a photo I took about ten years ago when we were visiting Canada. Continue reading Everything Is Coming Up Daises
I know many people are threatened by the term “White Privilege”. To some, it means that all those minorities are going to take over. That frightens them, the same way the Apartheid did to whites in South Africa. Being afraid of something is not the same as denying it. Anyone who has any sense of history knows that America has been a country of white … Continue reading White Privilege Does Not Mean…
Today’s post is about doctors and my interactions with them during the first two weeks of my wife’s two and a half months’ ordeal with end-of-life issues. I will start off by telling you that it was an extremely confusing process. On the second day at the hospital, I met with the first doctor. He didn’t give me his name or why he was her … Continue reading End Of Life Trauma – Part 3 Doctors, Doctors, Everywhere
It’s time to brush off my picture directory and post something here at RJsCorner. I plan, going forward, to make Saturdays dedicated to that purpose. I don’t know if advertisements on the side of buildings qualify as wall art, but to me, they definitely do. Now I admit I am usually turned to the ones that have almost faded from view, but this one from … Continue reading Wall Art
Sadly, there are many Vietnam vets who are stuck inside their war experiences throughout their life. I’m not one of those, as I flunked my draft physical due to hearing loss and therefore avoided that tragic consequence. Where I am stuck in that time is the music I loved. When the 1980’s came around I was losing my hearing at a pretty rapid pace and … Continue reading I’m Stuck In the 1960’s and 70’s
Let’s face it, nothing much comes from the mainstream except task forces, meeting, and other such mundane things. Innovation almost always happens on the margins. Innovation by its very definition is not mainstream. The only way paradigm type change comes is through out-of-the-box thinking. Far too many of us just go with the flow and don’t make waves. We draw our salary and do as … Continue reading Innovation Is A Margin Thing…
Perhaps the thing that has turned me off the most to today’s version of organized religion is that each version is absolutely convinced that their truths are the only real ones. No matter how small or large the group is, they believe that the pieces of the Bible that they gleaned from the rest are the “true” messages from God. As John Spong said above, … Continue reading Pretending To Have All The Answers
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