Now We Begin

 I retired in June 2019 at the age of 53 and have been reading various retirement blogs on a daily basis. My daughter suggested I jump in and try it myself, so here I go. I retired early from my federal law enforcement job and 33 years of federal service. My diligent savings and good federal pension allowed me to retire earlier than most. I hope to address the pathway to early retirement here in this blog, but mostly we will talk about the daily activities in retirement and hope to start many a conversation regarding retirement and retirement activities. I chose the title of the blog to be Retirement Coffee Shop with a goal of having a conversation with readers through the blog and comments, so we can all contribute and gain something that may improve our retirement or soon to be retirement. For comments on this blog, I would love to hear of any topics you would like to see discussed. Maybe you read blogs like me and have a few ideas or topics that you haven't seen but wished were discussed. 

As I write this today of course, we are still in the middle of the pandemic and the middle of winter. Here in Oklahoma we are forecast for a record snowfall early next week in the 10-15 inch range. That is a lot of snow! The dreary winter and the pandemic are depressing to most of us right now, but sunny days are ahead. I'm already dreaming of future travel and activities. One of my New Year's goals this year was try 101 new things. I will share some of those new things within this blog and take suggestions from you on new things to try. So far I've done 8 new things including dining, recipes and activities. I covered two last week on a guy's night out with my son and son-in-law. I had Thai food for the first time and really enjoyed Chicken Pad Thai. We followed that up with axe throwing. We had the best time throwing axes, ninja stars and playing cards. It was a blast! It is fun just trying anything new things no matter if it is big or small. It may be a challenge to get 101 in.