Filling My Free Time

I still don't feel like I'm retired. I haven't had to go to or worry about work for over a month but I have still been pretty busy. I guess I just had a lot of things I wanted to do and now have time to do them. The last week of December and the first few days of January were pretty cold with most days not even getting above freezing. Because of that I had the posse come out where I live and do a hike instead of a ride over the Christmas break.

Luckily we had a warm up this week and I got out a couple of times. The one good thing about retirement is I can now ride whenever I want so can plan my riding around the weather as oppose to hoping the weather is good on the weekends or my days off.  

Part of what I did over the last few weeks is put together list of things I want to do with my free time. One of the things on the list is to go get a few pictures of the seals at Sandy Hook. As the water has gotten clean over the last couple of decades more wildlife has come back to some places along the shore. For the past 10 years there have been seals at Sandy Hook in the winter. So if you go there near low tide on a sunny day without a lot of wind you have a chance to see them.

They gather on the rocks and sandbars to relax for a few hours. We tried to see them last year but couldn't find them. This time they were easy to see. 

 

They usually gather at the top of Sandy Hook by the church and old barracks. There are some sandbars and rock outcropping that they like lay on that are only about 100 feet from the shore. We parked in a parking lot behind the barracks and walked out to see them. 

 

There were probably 35-40 of them laying on the rocks and swimming around. I had my good camera with the telephoto lens so go a few good close up shots even though I was shooting into the coming sunset. 

 

We watched them for about a half hour as they laid there and moved around and played with each other. After that we headed out to a place on the water for dinner. It was a nice relaxing way to spend an afternoon. I have a lot of other things like this that I want to do so it is nice to now have the free time to do them, 

This is My Year

 

Welcome to 2026!!! 

I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and wish you all have a good new year. I know people who take this moment to set some goals for the year or create a vision board to guide them to greatness or some other silly stuff. I have never done any of that as most of these goals people set for themselves at the beginning of the year fall away as soon as life starts back up again. 

I'm not saying I don't have some things I could improve upon or that there aren't some adventures I want to go on but I'm more a continuous improvement person than doing a yearly review. However this year is a little different.

For the first time since college I no longer have a full time job. I'm medically and financially healthy so there are no real limits to what I can do with all my free time. This past month I have started adjusting to not working. I have mostly been busy with making calls to get all my benefits setup and taking care of all those small project that I didn't have time for because I was working. 

It is still going to take some time to adjust to my retirement and get into a new routine. Now that the new year has started and things have stabilized I'm going to look for new things to occupy my time. My wife already volunteers at a farm so I will probably help her more with that. I want to do some teaching or mentoring to help keep my technical skills fresh. I'm also going to look for some ways to give back to the community. I have always done some volunteer work that has helped me keep a good perspective on life so I want do continue and do more of that.  

Of course I will have more time for biking and my other hobbies so I look forward to not having a job that will interfere with any of that. I'm excited by the possibilities so am looking forward to the new year. It should be a good year. I know that it is 2026( or 5786 on the Hebrew calendar or the year of the horse on the Chinese calendar). However I'm unofficially naming it "The year of Tom" as this is my year to do as I please and I plan to enjoy it to the fullest.