How many app subscriptions do you have currently active and paying for.  No clue? That's the problem.

This wonderful new world of freedom of choice can get mighty expensive if you don't manage your apps and services. This means starting an inventory and keeping track of costs and those pesky free trial end dates. 

Those free trials suck you and before you know it, you forgot about a subscription here and another one there and the costs keep going up.

These apps are like little vampires sucking the money out of your bank account.  Start a spreadsheet and manage it monthly, quarterly, something to save yourself some money.

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Sooo, the holidays are over and you're feeling sort of, well, bulky.  And worse, you live in a cold weather climate and have 3 solid months, at least, of dark, cold weather in front of you.  Surely, more pound will find their way to your waistline.

Is winter weight gain a real thing? Yup.  What can be done about it?  Let's discuss...

Welcome to the new year!  But, womp, womp, the holidays are over and you're not feeling so great about getting back into your normal routine.

I get it.  

Post holiday blues or post holiday depression is a real thing and you're not alone.  Lots of folks go thru it every year and I'm one of them.

In this episode I'll discuss what it is what might cause it.  The good news is that usually its temporary and will pass in a few days or weeks but still, it's sucks.

Ahhh the visions of sun baked beaches, tans, golf, outdoor fun....... in January.  This is what a lot of folks in the northern half of the US dream of when winter sets in.

Being able to scramble away for a lengthy period of time (think months) has been reserved for retirees ... until recently.

Nowadays being a snowbird and escaping the cold weather in winter can be done well ahead of retirement.  Remote workers can consider the option of being a snowbird and still working the whole while. All you need is an internet connection.

So if you can swing it with your job, make a mental shift and consider escaping cold and lousy weather well ahead of retirement age.  You might not have thought of that before!

Who wants to hear Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville on a Monday morning?  That's a Friday song.

That's what I thought for the last 30 years but I was pleasantly surprised when I let it play all the way through on a cold Monday morning in December.  I always skipped it because I thought hearing it on a Monday would depress me because, well, it's Monday.

But it appears to have worked some weird reverse psychology on me because it actually fired me up for the week.

Need a change in your perspective to start you work weeks?  Try playing some of your Friday songs on a Monday morning.  You might be pleasantly surprised too!

Very excited for the upcoming file, Spiderman No Way Home but... I have some concerns. The film's plot seems to involve multiple universes and thus multiple instances of the same characters.  I'm going to be lost.

Can we stick with a solo-verse, a duo-verse.  I don't even know if those are words.  But the multiverse thing makes me nervous. 

There are certain types of movies where I just want to be entertained and not have to think.  Marvel films fall into this category.  

Extremism is front and center on the political landscape in 2021.  Bottom line is this...being all the way on the right... or the left... is non-productive and dangerous as we've seen with various clashes between groups over the last couple years.

But politics is not the only area where extremism is dangerous.  Religion is another area where we've seen violence in the name of faith.  

Even in sports fandom there have been incidents of serious injury from violent acts by fans against other fans.  Take the Bryan Stow story for one.  He is the Giants fan that had his life forever changed in the parking lot of Dodger stadium all in the name of what?  Baseball? 

We all need to chill the heck out.

We wrap up, for now, our introductory miniseries on meditation basics by discussing the biggest challenge to making meditation a regular part of your healthy lifestyle after 50.

Your busy mind is in direct opposition of your mediation goal which is a relaxed, clear mind. Understand this truth: no matter now long you meditate, how good you get at it, busy thoughts will never go away.

Acceptance rather than fighting these thoughts is the way to deal with them.  Acceptance in general is a tenet of meditation.  I share some tips I use to help manage my busy mind during my practice.  Hope it helps you!

Building off my Meditation Basics episode, I'll discuss using both guided and unguided sessions to help build your habit.  

A beginners guided series is the way to get started as it will introduce you to foundational concepts and techniques to help you begin a healthy and enjoyable practice. 

I use the Calm app, calm.com , as my primary meditation tool.  There are plenty of other options from web sites to You Tube channels and other apps both paid and unpaid that you can try out.

Mental health awareness and maintenance is key to a healthy lifestyle especially when things don't go as planned. The combination of physical and mental workouts leads to better sleep, better mood, improved concentration and focus and better emotional health.

In our 50's life is just as challenging as in the previous decades but in different ways. Managing your mental health is a critical component to maintaining happiness.  Its super easy to get started.