2024 — What a Year

This has been a heck of a year. Deaths in the family, surgeries (not mine) and other stuff has really eaten into my fun things. I haven’t gone camping as much as I would have liked and even my home radio activities were curtailed. Fortunately, life is settling down and I can branch out into fun things again. I did manage to get out during field day and went camping this month. It looks like I will squeeze a camping trip in for September and November. In October I hope to get in a few POTA activations.

I have been active with a couple of EmComm groups which is a mainstay of my amateur radio activity. I have been practicing EmComm for over 26 years. I have decided to take on a new challenge — Army MARS. I have danced around it for years, but I have never taken the plunge. I decided to give it a whirl. I spent part of my weekend modifying 4 of my Icom radios to be able to transmit on MARS frequencies. I will be starting my training soon.

This November I will have been retired for 1 year. It has been a year of adjustment. I wasn’t staring into the abyss, more like with all of the things I can/want to do, which ones do I really want to do. Yes, I was running out of time. The regimented approach where I was trying to set X amount of time a day or week per activity fell apart quickly. I decided to try a go with the flow approach by allowing myself to drift where I wanted to go. By allowing myself the freedom to pursue the activities I was most interested in, a pattern developed. So here I am.

I ended up with amateur radio at the top of the list. I also camp, write, and play the guitar. I have my chores around the property and my dogs. My dogs are a special category, as they give me love and peace. We actually started planning for retirement about 5 years in advance. It made the transition easier. Because of our planning, we should be able to stay retired. Retirement can be heaven or hell, plan early, choose wisely. 73 — Scott