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Have Laptop; Can Travel [and Earn Income]

I have a laptop. I got the laptop so that I can take it anywhere with me and work from anywhere. That is a lifestyle that is kind of fun. As long as I can get an Internet connection, I can do what I do which is right create courses and sell things. All I need is a connection and that is easier to get in most places these days.
Today’s post is about having a lifestyle that allows one to work from anywhere. I am more or less develop that lifestyle a long time ago and even in the days before laptops. Even now with the laptop because I like where I live I often take it up onto one upper deck and sit out in the sun or take it to a coffee shop or take it to a different room in my house depending on where I feel like sitting.

I also have an iPhone and an iPad. In total the three of them would basically allowed me to go anywhere that I have a connection and continued to work. Continue to earn money. Continue to have fun.
Today’s post was supposed to be imagining where I would like to beat to have this kind of lifestyle and it was suggested that Portugal was a nice place. I’ve never been there and it’s on my list of places to get to. But instead of me picking the place to go my ideal in terms of traveling and working is to have someone else pay for it. That’s why am working on the aging project. In my mind, I will be the go-to person in terms of speaking and teaching about the aging process from the point of view of someone who is actually there. Then I will be able to be invited to universities, talks, symposia, etc. And the interesting places in the world. Then someone else will pay me to travel put me up in a nice hotel and offer me an honorarium or a speaking fee.
I actually spent a lot of my earlier life doing this kind of thing and I would like to do it again. I worked on government contracts and projects. I taught and was invited to be the keynote speaker for different organizations, and I presented research at professioanl meetings around the country. It was nice to be able to do all of that traveling basically for free. I did reach a point where I got tired of always getting on an airplane but I think I’m ready to do that again.
Comments? Thoughts? Thank you!!
This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 9

09/18/2016
Rainy Day Fun

I don’t really mind the rain. Well, to be honest, I don’t mind a rainy day once in a while – or a day that has rain with lots of sun breaks. What I don’t like or days where it rains all day every day – days on end. Although – given that I moved to the pacific northwest it’s hard to avoid the rain.
Except for a few winters and springs since I have been here, the rain has not bothered me. Probably because I have a dog and dogs love to get walked no matter what the weather is. So I walk no matter what the weather is and I’ve done that my entire life. It doesn’t matter where I have lived, or how old I was, dogs need to be walked.
I had already been thinking this week that I needed to do more fun type things like get my bike back out and ride it or push my kayak in the river and go for a kayak trip – and interestingly the blog challenge for today was to do something fun and post about it. It’s almost as if my mind was being read. Except that it is not only raining fairly heavily at times, it’s clouded over, it’s dreary, and it’s what most people would just call a lazy day.

And the photo shows my dog and my kayak on a sunnier day. Now the kayak is pulled up on the ramp so it does not fill with rain.

When the rain let up a little bit I took the dog for a nice leisurely walk. It will possibly be our only walk of the day so I gave her a chance to sniff every plant, every blade of grass, every pebble, every whatever not – so it took us a while to do our walk. She enjoyed it.
Rest of my day has been pretty lazy. I decided since it was too wet to do the bike or the kayak I would just have a lazy day reading which is something that I love to do and have not done all that much of in the past couple of weeks. I can tell I’ve slowed down in my reading because the book is due back at the library soon and I have not quite finished it. Usually I read a book a week, but when I get on a writing/project roll, I slow down the fun reading.
What do you do for fun on rainy days?
Thoughts? Comments? Thank you!
This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 8

09/17/2016
Are You Part of My Tribe?

What’s my tribe? That’s a good question. I’m not sure anymore who or what is part of my tribe or cohort group or whatever because I belong to sell many. I have so many different types of friends, acquaintances, and people I just come in contact with. I’ve always had different groups that I “hang with” and do things with. This seems to be true even online where I hang out in groups with very different kinds of people.

So who is my tribe? Who’s in my tribe? I guess anyone who feels that their part of the puzzle of life and the puzzle’s solution[s]. People who help each other figure out what’s going on in life people who help provide solutions to life’s puzzles. You – my tribe – inspire me because you are elderly active engaged with the world and still making changes in your life add in the world around you. But because of the lives we lead we rarely meet and we almost do not ever talk to each other unless I know you personally. We just aren’t found in large groups anywhere anymore.
In fact, more than half of us are not using social media. So I am not about to find a group of tribe members online who are quite my age. On the other hand, I have a lot of online friends who are younger and that’s fine because we are all doing the same thing and age does not matter.
But for my long-term project of wanting to look at healthy aging, I am going to have to find people around my age who may or may not be online. But I hope that those of the younger cohorts who are online will be able to put me in touch with people my age so I can interview them for my aging project.
Who knows?
Maybe I can get them to be active online and then we can have a real tribe of us elders.
Comments? Thoughts? Thank you!!

This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 6

09/15/2016
Finding That Perfect Brain Time

Hmmmm Is there a perfect brain time?
As part of the ongoing blog challenge, and honestly part of my almost every day personal/business challenge, is making a specific time to work only on a specific goal – usually part of a long-range goal. I do that during the day but I don’t have a specific time, it is more random from day to day and therefore on many days I let other things get in the way and then all of a sudden it’s time to go to bed and it’s the next day and I haven’t done the one or two things I know I need to do to keep working towards a specific goal. Another part of my problem is that my goal[s] tends to vary from day today – that’s me and that something I’m working on.
But, and this is good for me, as part of the challenge today I am to figure out a 15 to 20 minute part of the day where I will work on my goals. Only 20 minutes or 15 minutes? I think I can figure out what times of the day that can happen and happen daily.

I’ve done something like this before and I know it works. But me, being me, stops using tactics like this after I finish one major project and I get into other stuff and then get off track again. So what I am going to do is go back to what I know worked before. That is to start my day with my coffee and my first 20 or 25 of focused activity. Given that I have a dog and I eat and I drink more coffee I will take a break after that 25 minutes and have breakfast. I will also have more coffee and then take the dog for her morning stroll. Then I shall come back and do another 20 minutes or 25 minutes. I know I work better with breaks so that will be session number two and I will take a break after that and do fun type stuff. Then I will come back and do another 20 or 25 minutes of work.
I know my best work hours are between 9 AM and 1 PM so I shall do these 20 or 25 minutes segments in that period of time and not try to push myself past that 1 PM timeframe. I may do yoga in between some of the 25-minute work sessions because I also think yoga helps me get my mind back on track. It certainly keeps my body feeling better.
What I will do that is a bit different than what I have done in the past is to spend the first part of the first 20 minutes session prioritizing what it is I am going to be doing that day. When I tried making myself a priority list the night before I forget about it – it’s written down and my brain considers it done. So I have to get back to prioritizing my day after I am awake and while I’m having my coffee.
As it is now mid afternoon and I’m still on a roll I may get some of my focused work done today even though it’s past my usual work hour. Part of what I’m also working on is the ability to refocus at different times of the day or night.
Thoughts? Ideas? Comments? Thank you!!
This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 5

09/14/2016
My Superpowers Are……..

As part of the ongoing 10 day blog challenge, today I am supposed to think about and tell you about at least 2 of my superpowers.
The first superpower that I have that comes to mind has to do with writing it’s kind of a combined superpower. I write fast. I write well. [But I hate typing so the fact that computers now do dictating is enabling my superpower to be more super and more powerful.] I have taken to writing approximately 1000 words a day and if I really get on a roll I can dictate those thousand words in less than 10 minutes. I don’t know if that has to do with being a New Yorker and speaking fast or what but anyway I really could write a lot. My problem and that wasn’t part of this is doing something with all those words that I write so quickly and well. They sit on my computer – so I need a superpower called editing.
My second superpower is that I connect dots very quickly and in ways that other people do not connect them. I have been really good at helping other people see what is going on in their lives and that’s why I was a good therapist. I like helping people I don’t know if that’s a third super power or part of my connecting the dots superpower. Again this next part was not included in today’s challenge but this superpower is one that gets in my way very often because I see so many of the dots and have a connect to other docs and have those dots connect to yet other dots and it is all so fascinating to my agile brain that I tend to forget what it is that I was actually working on to begin with. That though what is the subject of the book I just finished which is titled: I’mNott Confused; I’m Nonlinear. I actually got it finished! It was tough but it’s done.
[see image below]

Thoughts? Comments? Thank you!!
This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 4

Your content here…

09/13/2016
My Vision For Me – and Maybe You?

This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 3

I am already living in a place that I had a vision about many years ago. That’s why I moved here. I love living near water and now I live ON the water. I actually float in a house on a large river so I have water on all sides. But my vision that got me here also had an important caveat and that was a promise to myself that I would live in the area of a fairly large city for the rest of my life. Having tried living in the country a couple of times in my life I have found that I am a genetic city person and thus I will stay in a city. Luckily for both versions the water and the house or totally within the boundary of a pretty large city. So I can have the quietness of a river. I can sit and look at the water or go kayaking, but if I want, I can hop on a train, bus, or car and be downtown in a very short time. I have found my perfect place to live.
So for this challenge, I have a different sort of vision because I no longer need to find the perfect place to live. What I need to do now is make the place into ideas that I have for it. And me.
When I get up in the morning the first thing I envision doing – and do – is let the dog and cat out. There’s no getting around that. Doesn’t matter if it’s what I want to do or not it’s with the cat and dog want to do. Then I make coffee and while the water is boiling I have a glass of warm water with lemon in it. I have the coffee and I also do a lot of intensive stretching because I’ve discovered that all the exercise I do tightens calf and foot muscles and as I’ve gotten older I need to do more stretching to keep flexible. I do about 20 minutes of yoga and then have breakfast. Sometimes a simple smoothie, sometimes a more complicated meal.
Morning is the above because that won’t change but I envision my house being very different. I see the space having all the the internal walls removed and having it be one light filled open space with a butcher block counter. By the way, my house is very small. I downsized when I moved out west. And a way to have more space is to remove the few internal walls that now exist and have that island that I can eat at and use for parties, etc. Then I can get rid of the table that now serves as both desk and eating space.
Also in my vision is a brand new Subaru Impreza. I’m old enough now that the car will last me the rest of either my life or my driving life.

Another part of my vision includes new skis, boots, and poles and my vision often includes a cabin up in the mountains so that I don’t have to get up so early to go skiing.
How will I reach this vision? I intend to become the go-to expert on healthy aging. And that’s where you, the readers come in, please let me know what questions you might have about your aging. I’ve written about aging before and I will continue doing so – but I’m envisioning doing the research that I have put off and procrastinated about and when it is done hopefully we will all know how to live healthier, longer, more prosperous, and happier lives – filled with the visions that we want for ourselves. I will be continuing on this line of thought for a while and you will hear about it.
Comments? Thoughts? Thank you!!

09/12/2016