Are you only as old as the people you hang out with?

This was my travel group a couple years ago when hiking in Columbia, South America. (Yes, I am in the picture if you look hard enough.)

This (looks like) the group I exercise with at the YMCA in the mornings:

With both groups, I sort of kept asking the question, "What in the hell am I doing here?" In neither group have I felt I was playing with people my own age. 

One of the nice things about working was that I was always interacting with people from a wide age range. Other than a little teasing now and again, I rarely thought much about my age in relationship to my colleagues. When I first started teaching, I was only a few years older than the students in my high school classes. But suddenly it seemed I was working with co-teachers my children's age; and then principals my children's age; and finally a superintendent and school board chair my children's age. How did that happen! How did I become the oldest person at a conference? The geezer on the board? The fellow invited to senior breakfasts and ordering from the 55+ menu at Dennys?

So as I explore my retirement activity options, am I better off looking for things that involve younger people, hoping their youth and vigor and Millennial perspectives might rub off on me? Or should I be content to take the classes designed for people with bad knees, attend the lectures scheduled during work times, and become a Road Scholar rather than winding up again as the oldest, slowest, and last person on the backpacking trip through the jungle?

I suppose it is a both/and - I can enjoy or endure either type of activity. Or I can simply be a little less concerned about age period. I do my level best not to judge others on weight, race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, etc. Why should I be jumping to age-based conclusions? And hope in return, I am not judged by my white whiskers by others...

OK, back to reading my AARP newsletter.

BFTP: Design and creativity - what's the relationship?

One space between sentences.
Robin Williams, 1990.

The first and only book on typography I've read is Robin Williams's The Mac is Not a Typewriter, Peachpit, 1990*. This 72-page book, that took maybe 30 minutes to read and digest, changed the entire way I looked at communicating through writing. 

If one wished to look professional, I realized, one needed to pay attention to not just writing style, but visual style as well.

Two spaces after a period. Underlining when one should italicize. Leaving widows and orphans on the page. Using a san serif font in the body of a text. All these and 16 other signs of typographical ignorance were inexcusable for those of us with the control over our layouts that to the WISIWYG interface of the Mac (and later Windows) now gave us.

So it was a little shocking when a Slate article from 2011 "Space Invaders: why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period" started making the rounds again last week. We'd only had 24 years to put Williams's advice into practice - and to start making our documents look professional. What's the rush?

Williams's book The Non-Designer's Design Book that came out in 2003, did for my Powerpoint slides what The Mac is Not a Typewriter did for my written work. It made my stuff look professionally designed after I internalized her four basic rules of CRAP (Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity). I love finding ways to look smarter than I actually am.

So here is a question that's been rattling in my brain lately: Does following good design principles make one more or less creative - or does it have any impact at all?

In my creativity workshops, I've argued that one can place parameters on a student's project. It's OK to say:

• Exactly eight slides in your Powerpoint.
• At least three supporting details.
• Accurate labling on the graph.
• Limericks must rhyme.

If Shakespeare could be creative following the imposing strictures of the Elizabethan sonnet, can a person be creative when required to follow some design principles?

I was gladdened to read this in Jonah Leher's book Imagine: How Creativity Works: 

And this is why poetic forms are so important. When a poet needs a rhyming word with exactly three syllables or an an adjective that fits the iambic scheme, he ends up uncovering all sorts of unexpected connections; the difficulty of the task accelerates the insight process. ... You break out of the box by stepping into shackles.

Does good "out of the box thinking" require us to place limits on what we can propose? Seems almost paradoxical.

Your experience in expecting creativity from students?


* I still have - and cherish - my copy.

Original post 2/4/14

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Rules for retirement

Going from a structured work day - set hours, set tasks, scheduled meetings, preplanned days off, etc. - to an unstructured life makes me a little a lot nervous. Imposed routines must now become self-created habits.

I've decided to do my best to live by these rules of retirement...

1. Get up everyday no later than 7am. Keep regular sleeping hours.
2. Make the bed everyday.
3. Shower, shave, and put on clean, presentable clothes everyday.
4. Exercise between 60 and 90 minutes everyday. Try as many classes at the Y as possible.
5. Read the newspaper everyday.
6. Leave the house everyday.
7. Work the Jumbles and Isaac Asimov's SuperQuiz everyday.
8. Write for at least two hours everyday. 
9. Eat moderately and healthfully everyday. (Lose weight.)
10. Communicate everyday with at least one other person - in person, by phone, or e-mail.
11. Keep the house picked up and clutter-free everyday.
12. Do a task for one of my volunteer organizations everyday.
13. Read for pleasure everyday.
14. Plan or research some small part of a future trip or event everyday.
15. Never watch more than two hours of television or movies everyday.
16. Nap everyday.
17. Keep the bird feeders filled everyday.
18. Drink some wine and eat some ice cream everyday.
19. Keep up with email everyday.
20. Reflect each day if I made any sort of contribution to the world or just consumed oxygen better used by others.

*Every day I am not travelling or have a daylong activity scheduled.

Most of these "rules" will not be difficult to follow since they are really habits I have had for 40, 50 or even 60 years. It would be hard NOT to read for pleasure everyday. For the most part, these are positive tasks. And should I start breaking my self imposed rules, I will suspect dementia more than laziness or a personality flaw may be the culprit. 

Over the next weeks and months, I expect I will gain confidence in my ability to self-manage my days. And I also hope that I will grow more comfortable spending time relaxing, shedding the guilt that stems from what I perceive as a lack of productivity. I have a good cycling trip to the Netherlands scheduled for early May. It will give some time to reflect and acclimatize to a more self-guided life.

Any retirees out there who have their own set of rules for retirement?