On Saturday 21 November, I am running a workshop at QUB entitled Retirement: One Big Loose End.  I’ve had confirmation this week that there are 14 attendees so far.  What prompted me to run a workshop on retirement?  Well, two things:

• The average age of my students at my Open Learning (mostly IT) workshops is somewhere between 50-70
• Speaking to someone a few months ago about retirement, the word that stood out was “grim”

Naive as I am at 35 about approaching retirement, I took this as a challenge.  How could I design a workshop to help people begin to think differently about this stage of life?  Retirement is the next big thing for those in this age bracket.  And, while some friends of that age are active and happy, many others I see are lonely, depressed, inactive and suffering.

Perhaps I will be booeed off the stage as an inexperienced ‘youngster’.  I hope not.  I have alot to say on topics relevant to all ages, but with a definite twist toward the particular challenges of The Third Age.

It’s gonna be kick-ass, not gentle, so be warned!

Here’s what I intend to tackle:

• Retirement Resilience
• Assertive Behaviour – or “How to deal with pushy, interfering, patronising, aggressive adult kids and others”!
• Loneliness and Depression
• Humans and Structure
• The Myth of Memory Loss & Life Long Learning
• Privileges and Benefits of Retirement

By the way, all attendees are welcome to navigate to the Contact form and tell me what they want to learn on this workshop.  I will incorporate as much as possible of your expectations.

Image credit: Wolfgang Staudt.