Reading my way through Retirement

Books lined up and ready to read...I LOVE Retirement

My last day of work in health care was a little over a week ago. I've quit health care three times now, and this is the last time. I am grateful to my parents for insisting that I learn a trade, but each time I've had to go back to health care from full time art feels like a horrible failure. 28 years of Arts and 20 years of health care later...with arts Always going on in the background, I've saved enough to live a simple life, the rest of my life as an artist...and thanks to health care I have a very nice, low-maintenance roof over my head and food in the cupboards...and I've met and heard stories from some wonderful, wonderful people along the way...and learned a lot about hands and more than I wanted to about Medicare...which could work as a model for Health Care for All, if we could just get rid of the Corporations...politics can't help creeping in here around the edges, even though I try not to be strident about it.

Kim's portrait 1

So I am enjoying a Banquet of Books...from the public library...following up on other books by authors I enjoy, reading the book about the hospital in New Orleans during the big flood, lots of graphic novels, books about writing, memoirs, photograph books, a book on international graffiti--Interesting how the styles change from country to country--and lately books that include recipes and food: THE LANGUAGE OF BAKLAVA by Diana Abu-Jaber, especially since my sister-in-law is Palestinian, and I had the opportunity to spend a month in Arab culture in Israel in the Eighties, and HALLELUJAH! THE WELCOME TABLE, by Maya Angelou. Friend and Family food is relatively simple to make, with onions and garlic showing up a lot.

Kim's Portrait, stage 2

  

My last and Lifetime career is as an artist...and I'm really enjoying working on projects that interest me, bringing what has always been in the background into the foreground again as my life's work. I enjoyed traveling and teaching around this country and Canada and doing craft fairs all over the Northeast...and I've never stopped teaching online once I figured that out...so now I actually have time to make the art I enjoy doing to live...without having to make a living from doing it. And, wonderfully, sometimes I even get paid for this art, too.

Finished portrait of Kim...her second appearance in my Hot Flash Women Series

Making Art, Reading, Cooking, Being out in the Yard, Friends...A HAPPY RETIREMENT!