Wait…What? Yes, I am welcoming myself back to blogging, and, of course, I would like to welcome all new and past readers of this site! Upon beginning to work on the site, I see that, of course, everything has changed in WordPress. I have a lot to learn so hopefully you will be patient with me. I plan to publish this and then work on adding graphics as I practice.

This is an update post covering the various journeys I want to start blogging about and my plans down the road so you all don’t wonder why you subscribed after my initial post on Facebook. I will continue to blog about various travel journeys. We even bought a teardrop camper right before I retired. However, I am planning on adding a few more journeys to the blog.

My most recent major change in life is taking early retirement so there will be a retirement journey tab. It has been over a year so if any of you are contemplating retirement, maybe you can learn a few pointers. The most important advice I received was from a friend who had already retired, and that advice was give yourself a few months to acclimate. Indeed the first few months were weird feeling where my mind was still thinking of great reports I could create and formulas to try back at my old job. My brain needed time to let it all go. There was also this pervasive guilt feeling every time I relaxed. I felt like I should be doing something productive!

Which leads me to my self-help journey because I found that my view on time has altered after the past year. Until you retire, productivity needs to be your focus, carefully balancing all facets of your time between making money, family time, and personal time to get the most bang out of your buck, so to speak, constantly making sure you are not spending your time on penny jobs when you can hire it done and work for a higher rate of pay during that time, for instance, or spend that time with family that will soon be grown. It all happens so fast! Your payoff per hour becomes very important because time is so limited.

Once you retire that flip flops and that has been a major adjustment for me! Now I have the time because there is no job to consume me. Still, I also know I don’t have endless years ahead of me either so enjoyment of my time becomes the focus instead of productivity. Whatever I spend my time on, I either am totally enjoying myself or I know I will enjoy the outcome of my labors.

I was patient with myself, keeping my options open, and now my days are so full. I didn’t have as much room in my budget as I wanted so I knew I needed to make a little extra cash. I knew I had grand daughters on the way I wanted to help with. I knew I wanted to pursue a passion. I knew health needed to be the most important focus.

So that leads to my last journey I am adding now (although there may be others later) and that is my reselling journey which is such a serendipity adventure because I never would have guessed this would interest me. I will go into greater depth on why this is such a surprise at a later date, but suffice it to say, this keeps my brain active by constantly learning, keeps me busy out in the community because I have to leave my house to shop, exercising by walking, buying beautiful things as I especially love glass and ceramics, and making a small bit of money. There is also a great feeling of getting a warm thank you from a customer that loves what I send them. I am on Ebay. I don’t have a store yet, but you can follow me by searching for user jodysgemsdecor and selecting that user and clicking on the follow icon. I also am trying to add a URL below so you can see if that works 🙂

JodysGemsDecor