You Still Have Time
A podcast with the goal to motivate and encourage those who share our belief that getting older isn't a time to give up living.
You Still Have Time
Stay Engaged Part 2
This is part two of our discussion on the benefits of staying engaged to make this the best time of our lives. In part one we discussed volunteering. In part two we discuss several travel options along with clubs and hobbies.
Links to Resources
https://roadscholar.org
https://eldertreks.com
https://discovercorps.com
http://aboardtheworld.com
http://villavieresidences.com
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Hello and welcome to You Still Have Time. I'm Hope. And I'm Harold. And we are so happy that you decided to join us today. If you're listening for the very first time, welcome, welcome, welcome. And thank you for giving us a try. And if you're a returning listener, thank you too for coming back. That's what we like to hear. We hope that you're finding valuable information in what we have to offer.
SPEAKER_00:In part one of our discussion about ways to stay engaged, we talked about the benefits to our physical, mental, and emotional health of continuing to be active and involved. We discussed a number of different ways. We talked about volunteering. We talked about maybe starting your own business. Staying on your job. We talked about staying on your job. For those of you who like what you do, there's no harm in doing that. The key word is stay. For those of you who like what you do. I say love what you do. Love what you do. We also talked about the benefits of maybe creating your own business. If that's something you always wanted to do, you always wanted to start a business, but you just never had that opportunity. Maybe this is the time. So in this context, episode and this continuation of episode one or the previous episode, we're going to talk about some additional ways to stay engaged. And one of those ways
SPEAKER_01:is a fun way, vacationing. Vacationing offers, well, everybody loves taking a vacation, I think. It offers you time to just relax and enjoy and explore new things. new sites, places you've never been before. And of course, vacationing at this time is extra special because if you're no longer working, you don't have the same time constraints that you had when you were working. You don't have, you know, three weeks vacation a year and you have to parse out your vacation time that way. And one of the best things is you can Take that vacation at any time you want. So you can take advantage of discounts that may happen at certain times of the year. You can take advantage of off-season travel times when it might be less expensive to travel. It just really opens up the world of vacationing once you have the time to do it. One of the ways of vacationing that gets you super engaged is by traveling with a group. And when we were doing our research, we came across a few groups that are just interesting, very interesting to me anyway. One is called Road Scholar, not to be confused with the Road Scholarship for people who are... in college. But Road Scholar is... R-O-A-D Road. Yes. Not R-H-O-D,
SPEAKER_00:right?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. And it's for people who are lifelong learners who like learning new things and new cultures. And they put together trips that are both domestic and international with special emphasis on on travelers who are 50 plus, who are older. And they even offer scholarships, believe it or not. I read that they offer about 300 scholarships a year. Now, I don't know how much those scholarships are worth, but they certainly... enable people who might not have you know all the resources to engage in travel where they are learning new things and exploring new cultures and also staying engaged with other people so it's a perfect opportunity especially I think for solo travelers single travelers you know you may want to travel but you don't have anybody to go with these kind of travel groups are Perfect opportunities for that because they offer the safety and security of having a group around you and you get to know new people. One of the other travel groups that we discovered was a group called Elder Treks. And these are for... people, older people, 50 plus, who are more adventurous. They want to do more adventurous things. These are groups that travel both domestically and internationally again. And some of them are ship-based. They're not cruise ships. They call them expedition ships. But they have both... Ship-based and land-based adventures, and they're on a scale because, you know, of course, as we get older, our activity and our mobility and our ability to do things isn't always the same as when we were younger. So they rate their trips from one to five, one being the easiest and five being the most challenging. So you... there's something there for everyone so if adventure travel is something that you might be interested in maybe you want to go to Machu Picchu and do a little hiking but you don't want it to be too strenuous and you want to be with a group again all of these travel groups are great for single travelers because they allow you the opportunity to have the security of a group around you and give you the opportunity to meet and make friends A category
SPEAKER_00:of travel that I just recently found out about, when I say recently, I mean just today, as we were doing research for this topic, travel volunteerism. That's an entire grouping of types of travel where you can combine travel with volunteering. And it enables you to have a more in-depth travel experience. So you're not just going there and walking around and looking at the sites. You're actually getting in with the people, learning about the culture, and working with the people. So it gives you that opportunity to volunteer. Their tagline is Unforgettable Vacations with Purpose. Doing good while visiting new places. So they averaged small groups. This is a group called Discover. Right. Oh, I didn't say that. Thank you. Thank you. I didn't even say that. Discover Corps. Right. They have small groups averaging between 8 and 15 people. And you actually are volunteering and working with the people. And they travel. I think they offer opportunities both domestically and internationally. So this is a unique type of experience. And I think that it will... probably be different from any type of vacation. Well, it differs from the types of vacation when we think of vacation. This is not laying on the beach. This is really getting deep and involved with folks.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it's an opportunity. It makes you feel good. You know, when we talked about volunteerism, we talked about all of the benefits of volunteering both to your community and to yourself. With this travel volunteerism, you get the opportunity. If you have special skills, you can share them. You might be a nurse, and you might have the opportunity to help out a community in Asia or Africa or in the United States. Who knows?
SPEAKER_00:And you might not think you have any skills, but you might be able just to teach English.
SPEAKER_01:Which so many people around the world are looking for the opportunity to do. Understanding and learning the culture of a place and doing good, you know, traveling with a purpose. This might be something you want to explore.
SPEAKER_00:And don't worry, you don't have to remember all of this because we're going to put links to all of this information in our show notes so that you can do your own research and see if these opportunities are for you. Moving on,
SPEAKER_01:another... aspect that we never knew about or thought about is something called residential cruises. And these, and I'm putting this in quotes now, floating apartments. This is where, it's like condo living. This is where people actually purchase rooms or suites on on an ocean liner to live in. And we saw a story on, I don't know, one of the morning shows. One of the morning shows, right. there for the rest of their lives. It's an opportunity to travel the world. That ship, I think, took three years to circumnavigate the globe and making stops every couple of days so that you get to see places all over the world. But you have a community. It's just like living in a senior community. You have a community on board ship where you've made new friends and you're having your meals given to you. I mean, you don't have to cook right
SPEAKER_00:um you don't have to clean you don't have to worry about the house the roof on the house or all those types of things that
SPEAKER_01:right mowing the lawn right you don't have any of those um issues to deal with so i mean but it's not for everyone certainly i don't know i mean i love cruising but i don't know if i could be on a ship every day for you know Three years. But some of them I saw also allow you to sort of view, if you want to go back home, I'm putting that in quotes, you can rent out your space on the ship for a month or so. So it's like subletting on a ship. And I thought that was a real interesting way to get to know people and to experience something you've never I can't even imagine what it would be like. One of the other things as we're doing our research, I saw just yesterday, I saw something came across on Facebook as things pop up. And it was about this gentleman who lives in Miami, but who just bought a home in Italy. And he plans to live there six months of the year. And I said, wow, you know, there's so many stories, and I'm sure you've all seen them, of people who have decided at this time of their life that they want to live somewhere else. Sometimes it's for economic reasons, because, you know, wherever they're living, it might be very expensive. And, you know, they went to Mexico, and they really loved Mexico, and they decided it's less expensive to live there, and they can live a good life there. But it's another way of staying engaged, of enjoying your life, living your best life. Again, it's not for everyone. Not everyone wants to leave where they live and have grown up and have established roots. But It's certainly exciting in a way to take this time to explore new horizons and to live within a different culture, most likely. Maybe it's going back to the land of your ancestors, traveling back to Italy or Ireland or Ghana. It's certainly, this is the time of our lives to really take advantage of the time that we have and the lack of constraints that we have on that time.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's the key to this whole episode. It's about really making the best use of our time. Why limit yourself? If we don't have those types of constraints that we did when we were raising a family, try to think outside the box. I also want to talk about, and this is not, believe me, this is not an exhaustive list. We could probably think of hundreds of, maybe not hundreds, but several other types of ways to stay engaged. But last on our list, hobbies and clubs. Over my life, I have been involved with, I've usually melded the clubs and the hobbies into certain activities. I belonged to a biking club where I got to meet A number of people who shared my interest in cycling. I was in a master's running club where runners over the age of, I think it was over the age of 50, we would meet once a week, we would train, and then we ran in a race at the end of a session. You did that, what
SPEAKER_01:do you call it, sprint marathon?
SPEAKER_00:Well, that was part of a triathlon club. Again, we came, we trained for swimming, we trained the cycling, and we trained the running. Harold is a serial hobbyist. He goes from one hobby to the next hobby to the next hobby. He's
SPEAKER_01:a very interesting person. It makes you very interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but it keeps you involved. It keeps you engaged one of the things about the the triathlete club triathlon club was most of the people a lot younger than i was so it was a little challenging because they were talking about the homework that they had in school and i'm thinking like goodness gracious okay no i don't i don't even remember homework but um but yeah but it enables you to combine a Being involved with other people and keeping you active. Now, you don't have to do, you know, cycling or triathlons or running. No, you
SPEAKER_01:can do like me. I'm a knitter. And, you know, I always did solitary knitting. I didn't really know other knitters and get together with other knitters. And I don't even know how I discovered this knitting club. But a few years back, I got involved with a knitting club. I don't know if they still meet. I certainly don't go to the meetings anymore, but it was fun. It was fun. We would go and meet in the park, and we would knit. I learned a lot because they taught me how to knit socks. I had always said, oh, I'm not going to knit socks, and then I fell in love with sock knitting. It's a wonderful way to improve your skills if you have a hobby, and it means it's a skill-based hobby. to improve your skills. I don't know. It could be woodworking. It could be, you know, redoing old cars. Harold watches that on TV all the time. But there are so many opportunities. And one of the ways, if you don't know how to get in touch with people who, you know, have like interests to yours, is meetup.com. And I don't know how many of you are familiar with that, but certainly I'm sure you can find... Harold has used it extensively.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right. You can go on meetup.com, the links will be in the show notes, and put your area where you live and your interests, and they will identify people or either clubs that... are engaged in the types of activities that you're interested in. And you can also, if you don't find anything, which is possible that they may not have a meetup club in your area, you can start your own. So, I mean, I think that meetup.com is a great opportunity for you to meet others in your area who do, who share your interest in a particular hobby.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and we all know book clubs are– I don't know how many book clubs. You got Oprah's Book Club and Reese Witherspoon has a book club and some of– in our area, local TV shows have book clubs. But if there's no book club where you are, you can always– You can always establish one. Don't be hesitant about that. You can find a neutral place. I know places like Panera offers groups opportunities to meet there. So you can meet there. You can have a fun club like a wine club. You can go explore
SPEAKER_00:wines. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Uh-oh. And Harold and I belong to a movie club that's been going strong for 22 years.
UNKNOWN:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's been strong at points, but we're going strong again, 22 years later. It's a lot of fun, and it's an opportunity to meet new people. It started out with a group of friends, but then some people invited their friends, and then those people dropped out, and the new friends stayed. It's just amazing. Again, staying engaged, staying involved, not sitting at home, you know, feeling isolated, which whenever you read anything about aging, they talked about feelings of isolation or loneliness. And there are ways to combat that. And
SPEAKER_00:that's what this is all about. That's what our whole podcast is about, about ways to combat isolation. the feeling of isolation, and really to make the best use of this time that we have.
SPEAKER_01:I think we said early in the earlier podcast that this is the time of your life to have the time of your life. There are so many opportunities for you, and we're going to talk about it in future podcasts, but the stereotype of older adults is not a very positive one. And it's one, as we live longer, one that we need to change because as people look at us in a certain light as elderly and frail and unable to make decisions for ourselves. You know, that's not the case for the majority of people in their older years. And so we're just providing information, as much information as we can find, to start the discussion and give you, give us information Because certainly, as I said, we have learned a whole lot. Ideas about how to live life to the fullest at this time of our lives. Well, I think that about
SPEAKER_00:wraps up. He wants me to stop talking. No, no, no, no. I think this about wraps up this episode. If you like what you've heard, we'd like you to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts, either on Spotify or Apple Music. You can email us if you have any information. If you have questions or you have suggestions for future episodes, you can email us at YouStillHaveTimePodcast at gmail.com. That's YouStillHaveTimePodcast at gmail.com. Also, in our show notes, we've included a link to SpeakPipe. SpeakPipe will allow you to leave messages a voicemail message up to 90 seconds long. So you can go down in our show notes, click on that button, and it'll take you to a site and you just leave a voicemail message.
SPEAKER_01:And if you've liked what you've heard and think it might be valuable to others, share. Share our information. Tell other people about this podcast. We would love to hear from all of you. And certainly, you know, as I said to Harold yesterday, I said, we're doing all of this research. It'd be nice if people really do get to benefit from it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so I think
SPEAKER_01:that's about it. I think so. Thank you for joining us today. Hope you'll come back and continue to be part of the You Still Have Time family. And remember,
SPEAKER_00:you still have
SPEAKER_01:time. Absolutely. See you next time.
