The First Two Years of My Retirement Journey

It is hard to believe that it is now two years since I retired.  I have not read the book whose cover is featured above, but I do believe in its premise that retirement is a journey.  For me, the journey usually comes in one-day adventures.  Sometimes the daily adventure is planned while it also can be an impulsive activity.  Some activities are repetitive when others are one-time events.  When I retired, a very heavy burden was taken off my shoulders.  I no longer have to work at a position that I didn't enjoy during my last years.  There are no more bosses who like to assert their managerial muscles by dominating their subordinates. Commuting delays are a thing of the past.  I have received the precious gift of time to do what I want.

• Reading - I have read tons of books over the past two years.  In the summer months, I sit in parks and read while in the winter I often bring my reading material to the local public library where I don't have to worry about bean counters and scatterbrains.  I also have visited research libraries look up books on baseball and pop music.
• Traveling - over the past two years I have visited:
• Pittsburgh
• Tulsa, Oklahoma
• Phoenix
• Seattle
• Museums - my favorite museums (in no particular order)
• Whitney
• Museum of Modern Art
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Paley Center for Media
• Brooklyn Museum
• Jewish Museum
• Guggenheim Museum
• Movies - I regularly go to the local multiplex which usually screens mass appeal films.  I have often traveled to Manhattan to see independent films aimed at a niche audience.
• Bob Dylan- I organized a group that has met once so far at NYU.  Hopefully, this group can be sustained.  I attended the research symposium at Tulsa, Oklahoma.  There were concerts at the Beacon Theater in November 2018 and 2019.
• Music - I have more time to listen to umpteen internet radio stations and to SiriusXM.  I have probably bought more CDs than I really need.  You got to keep me away from Amazon.com 
• Baseball - I had time to attend more Met and Yankee games.  I am also active in the Society for Baseball Research (SABR) by coordinating fact-checking for the Games Project and indexing articles from the Biography Project.
• Hiking - I have spent a couple of hours a day walking through parks in Queens.  These walks are almost therapeutic.

My most pleasant surprise in retirement concerns finances.  I am actually saving money and not having to worry about taking on another job to make ends meet.  My savings through TIAA and my bank IRAs really worked out.  My best advice to younger readers is to plan ahead for retirement.

Tomorrow is another day and another adventure.

Tomorr