... already 8 weeks into 2022 and time flies!

Hard to believe that the last time I posted here was in April of last year when my mom's death was still fresh and my broken leg hadn't really healed yet. Seems like my "blogging" was reduced exclusively to posting on Instagram (where I am active as "best age rebel"). Since then it seems that my life has become more and more quiet.

But first things first:

After months of cleaning out my mom's house and driving seemingly hundreds of donation boxes to charities I also had to clean out my desk at the office.

​35 years at DCTP in Duesseldorf came to a close and I had my last day at the end of July and my pensioned life officially started September 1st.

​In spite of the lockdown restrictions my colleagues were able to create a fine goodbye for me:

Starting retirement & Odaka teacher training

The first couple of months of the retirement were okay, I was kept busy by yet another yoga teacher training, this time ODAKA style, a flowing practice, based on yoga & martial arts which guides the practitioner towards centred movements, emphasizing transitions between poses.
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​It was a small group of trainees but we sure had a lot of fun and learnt loads from the highly competent teacher trainer Petra of www.meirink.nl. 

So not only did I follow the training at this lovely yoga center in the countryside, just outside of Almere - I have also been teaching Kundalini yoga there regularly on Wednesday evenings!

Teaching at GAIA

I am also teaching at a second Yoga center in Almere on Thursday mornings. Here some pics from a fun photoshoot we had there with the photographer Marijke Boeve​.

Low feelings

But I must admit to a few months of rather low feelings once the lockdowns started again. Right before Christmas time I was able to pick myself up with a task I much enjoyed:
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My late mom's almost totally emptied out house needed to be made comfortable -  temporarily again - for the holidays and so I set my home-staging and styling talents to work, as the following after/before images might prove:

The big dip of retirement

But after the holiday cheer and the wonderful family gatering, life came to a grinding halt with yet another lockdown in Holland. No more teaching yoga and my days seemedawfully long and quite a bit senseless.

After having had so many cool ideas of what I would do as a pensioner, all that free time ended up having the reverse effect: the more time I had, the less I felt like doing anything at all. There were mornings when I didn't quite know why I should get up in the first place ... not a real depression but surely a great sense of being "lost in space" ...

... but it's getting better, finally!

Fortunately since a few weeks ago things have been picking up. My mood is better, my motivation is slowly coming back. What did I do?

I buckled down to some serious journalling took a couple online courses which will hopefully help me clear my future path ...

​I am not there yet, but I finally have a new little "window of possibilities". I will keep you posted on new developments, and until then I will spend much time at the desk in my new lovely room: