Senior Car Wash

Retired, Living, Learning?  I really don't know under which title this post should be.  I do believe once we turn sixty-six, a dormant senior gene awakens, kicks in, and from now on governs many of the things we do.  Case in point.

Due to the persistent water shortage in South Florida and the expensive water bills, the condominium board of directors voted to abolish the car washing stations located through out the development.  Also, when it rains in South Florida, some of the rains can be very heavy.  Can you see where I am going?

Two days ago we had one of these very heavy downpours that lasted about fifteen minutes.  After the rain had ended, I looked at my car, the poor thing was drenched.  I grabbed a few rags and promptly went outside to wipe and dry the car.  My neighbor came out of his apartment, smiling.   "I see you are doing a senior car wash."  I was a bit surprised by this statement and asked him to explain it in more detail.

Simply put, he had lived for many years in St. Peterburg, Florida, a city well known for its senior population.  When ever the local weather station told its listener that rain was forecast for the day, the elderly people, en mass, would drive their cars out of the garage for the rain to wash the vehicle which afterwards the seniors would dry and polish.  The reason behind this behavior, saving on the water bill.

Needless to say,  smiling and shaking my head, I retorted, "I am a senior."   And I proceeded to finish drying and polishing the car. 

Critique and how to be graceful

I guess one of the hardest thing to accept is a critique.  Having belonged to a writing group, the first item a new writer wanting to join is told, "you must learn to accept critique,"  and trust me, we have had many talented writers come and then disappear.  They took the everything personal and could not separate the writing from themselves.  We writers look at our material as children.  We slave, polish, refine and sweat over what we put in the story, forgetting that the listener or reader does not have the same emotional attachment to the story as the writer.  So when a story is critiqued, we are only questioning the writing and not the person.  My first writing teacher informed his student at the beginning of the class, "bring a towel to wipe the blood of the floor."  And he was so right.

One of the benefits of learning to accept critiques it makes you a better writer and person because learning to distinguish between a personal attack and a valid statement makes you grow.

I was accepted to the Guardian ad litem program and one of the questions during the interview was, "How do you feel about being critiqued?"  I smiled and told them, "I welcome critique because it teaches me to do my job better."   

A final word, this is not something that one learns in three easy lessons, it's messy, painful and a b*&%#&, but the end results are really worth it.

What writing has taught me

I have written on what writing has taught me.  Now I am going to put a link that will take to to all the ebooks and smashwords.com.  I've posted many of my writing on this site.  Explore and let me know.  You can read the about twenty percent of the book.  This will give you an idea.  www.smashwords.com  follow the link and type in my name under search.  Enjoy

Day Two

With the blog, things are a bit rough.  I tried to sign in, and true to form, could not.  Had to contact the powers to be to be able to sign in.

Murphy's law was in full force.  

Continued Learning

I did learn an important item, you must save your blog before hitting 'Publish' otherwise what you typed, will be gone.  Oh the learning curve.

Now to what brings me joy, writing.

I started writing years ago, when computers, word processors and electric type writers were non existent and writing was done in long hand on paper.  After this, you would type your stories on a manual typewriter.  Mistakes in typing and writing were corrected with whiteout.  What a mess this was.  My fellow writers and I got very adept at cutting sentences and paragraphs and using scotch tape to piece pages together.  Those were the days.  Not Really!  Some of my pages would only be a paragraph, while others could be as long as 17 inches.  Then came the electric typewriter and corrective tape.  Whoa, what used to take ten hours could now be done in half the time and would look nice and neat. 

The next improvement were word processors.  I actually could save my work on floppy disks, 5'1/2 inches no less.  Then came computers.  Hallelujah.  Now it was getting interesting because I needed to learn DOS and I could serve on the Internet, providing I could figure out the commands to access the net. 

Word Perfect brought sanity to all the frustrated writers that could not deal with DOS.  Yeah.  Then Bill Gates unleashed Window 3 on the world, and peace reigned for writers who now had the challenge to learn computers. 

This brief excursion in history revealed that writing required me to learn computers.  I am very happy for this as in my career and school my computer skills were extremely beneficial.  So the next time, you insert pictures, graphs, headers, footers, move or delete words and run spell check and grammar think of all the writers that wrote in long hand on the back side of obsolete correspondence to save paper.

Day Three of Learning

The sign in to the blog worked.  Yeah.  There is hope after all and I will not need to label the days anymore.

Yesterday I was interviewed by the Guardian Ad Litem program director.  The interview was detailed and surprisingly long.  I answered many questions about myself and responded to scenarios.  Driving home I understood why the program is always looking volunteers.  The vetting process is more detailed than we use on our politicians and rightfully so because  as a volunteer you deal with children that are in precarious family situation.

And now to what is my joy, writing.  If you google my name you will find the many books I have written.  Through the years writing has taught me a great deal and in the ensuing days, I will share what I learned.  I welcome your input. 

First Post and Struggling

The title of the post, "Retired and Learning," pretty much conveys everything.  In the coming weeks or months, the blog will undergo changes as I learn. 

In between the learning curve, I will also post my thoughts and feeling about issues as they pertain to retired life, mine, politics, good grief, and assorted subjects.

For now, I need a break.