Hardware Societe – Melbourne

I use the weekend coffee share post as my period of reflection. The opportunity to think back over my week. What better to do than over a coffee?

This week I have written more than a thousand words on my PhD Thesis proposal. It’s also been a week where I have found an opportunity to pursue an idea I have been musing over, about converting my own experiences in transitioning to retirement into something that might be useful for others facing the same daunting challenge.

It’s also been a week where I rediscovered the music of The Moody Blues, a band that had been a regular listen during my high school years. This might seem unimportant but as I’ve wrestled with my thesis proposal I’ve been frustrated about what music to listen too!

While making a serious start on my thesis proposal is important, it’s been the concept of converting my own experiences into something that others might find useful, as they plan their own transitions that has captured my imagination.

I realized that through my blog and other notes I had written that I have captured my thoughts and emotions across what is perhaps the most significant change in my life. It was interesting to revisit my early thoughts that expressed a series of fears and then my early thoughts of what might be next through to now just over a year into that transition.

It was interesting to see that while most of the public focus about transition to retirement is on will I have enough money to retire,  my thoughts have been on many other things.

My posts and notes have been about how “What’s Next” might or could open so many new possibilities.  In particular the desire to write was prominent. I now have more than 150 posts on my blog and many more drafts. I have written a number of articles that have been published in The Adelaide Review. Perhaps most significantly I completed a 20,000 word thesis that provided me the opportunity to commence my PhD. As I reflected I realised that all of this seems to have stemmed from a goal of writing a thousand words a month back in 2012.

Who would have thought that such a seemingly insignificant goal would be central to my transition?