Educator, Podcaster, Writer, Photographer

Month: September 2026

Week Note 20260929

Retirement

I’m still adjusting to retirement. I haven’t hit the part where I miss going to work yet. I was told, repeatedly, that once school started back up, I would miss going to work. I don’t yet. I like living the life of “luxury” by sleeping in and doing what I want. I do recognize that I’ll need to start adding a bit more structure into my days. But generally, I’m enjoying doing things at quite the leisurely pace.

Speaking of adding more structure, I’m starting to prioritize my To-Do list. I’ll be adding actually target dates and working through the items.

Random Stuff


A while back, some wacko’s showed up at the Dearborn City Council meeting (no link, cause, wacko’s). I lived and worked in Dearborn, Michigan, USA for many years. I knew and became friends with many great people. Some were Muslim, some Christians, and some Jewish. My kids likewise made many good friends with other kids who happened to practice a religion different than theirs. Like so many other things that the MAGA crowd likes to shout about, the lies are incredible.


I’m still watching the debate about Screen Time. I have a thoughts about this, I’ve started a post about it, but it’s not done yet. I can really boil this down to a couple of things:

  1. It’s not about the time, it’s about the use.
  2. Parenting is hard. (I mean this respectfully and honestly, parenting is incredibly difficult.)
    The world is constantly changing. Keeping up with those changes can be a challenge for all of us.

AI isn’t going away. I also don’t think that it is as powerful as some are claiming. It is a better search engine though.


NetNewsWire is one of my all time favorite programs. Much love to Brent Simmons for his work and support on this program. (NetNewsWire is an RSS reader for Mac and iOS.) I had an issue with NetNewsWire and syncing. Brent answered my forum post with a fix. If you are interested in using an RSS feed reader (and you should be), check out NetNewsWire.


My retirement gift to myself was a Mac Studio. So far, I’m very happy with my gift. (I also picked up two ASUS ProArt 27 inch, 5K displays. I ordered “open box” monitors, unfortunately, one came broken and has been returned and refunded.) I haven’t edited lots of photos yet, but the process has been so much better so far. I’ve also taken this opportunity to avoid using Migration Assistant, which I really do like, to force myself into some culling. So far, so good.


Another program that I really like is Joplin. Since this syncs across devices, it was really easy to add a note on what I’d done, what needed to be done, and what other considerations I needed to, well, consider, on one or the other computers. Pure magic. Plus, there is a plug-in architecture that allows for things like a Journaling Plug in. Since it is fully Markdown compliant, I can just write away and then put the text where I want. (This post is originally written in Joplin and then pasted into WordPress.)


Part of retirement is realizing that I can do things like, oh, cut the grass on a weekday. We had a nor’easter coming on the weekend, so I just willy-nilly cut the grass on Friday. Yes, it’s a little thing, but….


I did a presentation for the First Light Camera Club on putting photographs into a slideshow.


I’ve started reading “The Power Broker” by Robert Caro. Weighing in at 1,336 pages, it is definitely filled with detail. The librarian who checked it out for me, stated that she had the book beside her bed and that maybe she’d pick it back up. I’m not very far into the book, but, yea, Robert Caro does love detail. If there is something to be named, everything is named. It is interesting to read about how poorly government worked and how corrupted it was. It’s also interesting to get the deep references of a variety of characters.

Papa Was A Rolling Stone

Just a quick reminder that today is “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” Day.

While the Temptations version is the classic, I also really like the Was (Not Was) version. (Quick note, the Temptations was not the original. The Undisputed Truth put out the first version.)

It was the third of September
That day I’ll always remember, yes I will
‘Cause that was the day that my daddy died

Original Version:

Temptations Version:

Was (Not Was) version:

Officially Retired

Well, I guess that I’m officially retired now. School has started and I’m still sleeping in. No alarm clock. No worries about security. No concerns about “did I tell so and so to do such and such”.

However, I still feel more like I’m on vacation rather than retirement. I’m still working through exactly what the days should look like.

I did apply for a couple of jobs. I applied to be a substitute at the beginning of August. I followed up a couple of weeks later. I was informed that “they’ll be looking at substitute applications in the middle of September”. I then looked at a different school district to sub. That district had a job for a “Technology Analyst”. Seemed vague in the job description. I followed up. I ended up going for an interview. The job is a basic computer tech. I would’ve loved helping teachers and students, but decided not to return to full time work.

So, I’m getting stuff done around the house. I’m learning more about photography. I’m taking more pictures.

I’m still looking for a part time gig. Or, some volunteer opportunities.

© 2026 Troy Patterson

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑