Welcome to My Decline

Sometime before my full retirement, I saw a big fat black hardcover blank book in a store. (It may have been a dollar store).

I thought a good retirement project would be to fill up a book like that with detailed written instructions for doing various things that I know how to do.

I would also include various thoughts and observations which may or may not be of interest to anyone but me. Writing such things in a big black book kept on a shelf would allow me to unburden myself of unexpressed thoughts without burdening others with listening.

I would call this book “A Chronicle of My Decline: With Instructions for My Replacement“.

Fast-Forward to the present, approaching the fourth anniversary of my retirement. I’m putting together some introductory articles concerning personal finance, for my kids. It occurred to me that posting these articles to a website would probably be the best way to share them.

Also: I enjoy posting occasional interesting links and observations to our family message chat group, but I don’t like making their phones ping just because I saw an interesting story in the paper. A quiet unassuming big black book of a blog sitting on an e-shelf in a quiet corner of the internet is a better place for that sort of thing, I think.

I am quite attached to the title “Chronicle of My Decline.” I don’t intend for this blog to be dark, but I’m certainly motivated by awareness of my mortality. Almost four years have passed since I fully retired (November 14, 2019) after two years of part-time semi-retirement. Four years is a pretty big chunk of the 20-odd years of retirement that I can reasonably expect. Those 20-odd years will entail progressive reduction in physical (and probably mental) capacity, so that’s my four most productive years already gone without my having gotten organized enough to start any Retirement Projects. Time to get at it.