OK...so....I'm backkkk....again.

It has been May since I posted to this blog.  I have been overwhelmed with running my business, David's Music House, Inc. for the last two years and in these economic times, it has been a spectrum of highs and lows. This is the first business I have ever attempted and I knew it would have to be something that was connected to my passion and love of music, to get me through any difficulties. When a new business is started, it is often said that it will take 3 to even 5 years to see success. The idea is unique, the model is good and being tweaked and developed all the time but it is longevity and resources that are the critical piece. I continue, month to month, looking for ways to keep costs as low as possible while looking for new revenue sources and so far, I have been able to keep things going due to the support and help of a good many people!

In the meantime, I am going to try to amp up my posts on this blog. There's was just too much time spent on it and it has a good foundation to keep building upon to let it go of.  I began blogging to become knowledgeable about social media while discovering that I loved to write so I need to continue developing those skills.

The Baby Boomer Generation is not going away.... yet, that is. We are getting older, to be sure. I was just realizing that I am finding more people who I graduated with who are passing away! I can remember my parents and their friends talking about the fact that they felt that all they were doing is going to funerals of friends.

As I have stated in previous posts about my small business venture and it being something I, as many Boomers are doing, am doing to be my "extended pre-retirement working years". Boomers have been told by financial advisers for quite a few years now, that we will not be enjoying the same type of "retirement" as our parents did. We will be working past 62 or 65 and beyond. I began thinking about this about ten years ago and knew that I really wanted to do something that I was more passionate about, which is music.

With Boomers being the largest segment of the population, whatever they do....is indeed, a factor that has a domino effect on many aspects of the country, with the main one being financial. As we Boomers age, all the aspects of aging will effect everyone in this country. What remains to be seen is how will the younger generation feel, react and care for their parents as we age.  However Boomer children behave and react to their aging parents can not be blamed on how the Boomers raised their children anymore than the Boomers can blame on their parents, the Greatest Generation. We are each responsible for our own actions in our lives and responsible for the decisions we make.

It has been quite a while…

If any readers of this blog have seen my other articles about what I have been doing lately, you may realize why I haven’t been active for quite a while on this blog, especially if any of you own or have ever owned your own business. The saying, “if it were easy, everyone would do it” is as true as true can be!

The purpose of this article will be to speak to why I haven’t been writing for a while and to bring my passion of sharing issues and raising awareness of The Baby Boomer Generation.

The short story from 2008 is that my job of 22+ years was outsourced at the beginnings of our country’s second biggest depression. I was unemployed for two years, while trying to look for a job and also deciding what else I could do. In 2009, I began my journey to create my own business, beginning with a “How to start a small business” course at a local community college, talking to my local SCORE representative and many other business mentors I either knew or just reached out to. I opened my business, David’s Music House, Inc. on October, 10, 2010 (10.10.10) I have now been open for 18 months and it has indeed been a journey of highs and lows! What I have learned is exactly what I was told in the beginning by all my mentors….it would be hard, it would take 3 to 5 years to see success and you can only succeed IF you don’t quit. The key to not quitting is continuing growth and searching for solutions for the dollars to last until success. It is indeed a FACT, that no one can succeed by quitting.

As I continue to search for ways to search for ways to make my business grow, I am also quite aware that I am still moving on the path of extending work years, or delay of retirement. I planned my business to be one that I not only have a passion for but also would be able to continue working beyond what were once considered retirement years. Being a member of the Baby Boomer Generation brings me to think about these actions that I and all of us Boomers are currently going through.

Only time and history will tell the true story of what effect the Baby Boomer Generation has had on our civilization, but there is no doubt that the Boomers effect our country by their sheer numbers. This applies for what this largest segment of the population is going through as we approach the retirement years. Retirement has been re-defined by occurrences of the last decade. Healthcare and new medical advances are continually extending the lifespan. While is definitely a good thing, from the perspective of us Boomers, what we do and go through has a profound effect on the course of all others as well.

Baby Boomers have been caring and dealing with their aging parents while we hit our 4th and 5th decades of life and we well know and wonder how our children will deal with the same issues. Will they even be able to deal with the impact of Boomers aging? One thing is certain and that is that we Boomers should be doing as much as we can to lessen the impact of what our children have to deal with….such as homes not cared for, estates not properly and legally planned, how to make decisions without living wills and legal documents to guide them.

I went into this segway of Boomers aging as that is what I am currently thinking about…..what do I need to do to deal with aging? How can I make it easier for my children to deal with my aging? One thing my wife and I have done is to create all the legal documentation, such as wills, living wills that clearly state and therefore take the decision and issues out of the hands of our children. We are also downsizing our home to one that we can more easily care for, is less of a financial burden for us rather than continue living in a home too large to care for so that they someday have to deal with their homes as well as ours.

It is important for us Boomers to do the same things we have been doing for our children since they were born…and that is everything we can to make them better people, follow the golden rule, try to make the planet better for them by recycling and paying attention to supporting better ways of energy consumption and prepare and clean up our lives so that they don’t have to do it. We are always parents, as long as we are on this planet, even if we don’t have children….all who remain after the Boomer Generation is gone are all of our children and they will benefit or not based on our actions.

PBS Special: Caring for Your Parents

Don’t forget the PBS Special: Caring for Your Parents airs tonight, April 2, 2008.

Mom can no longer live on her own!

It has been a long hard road for everyone, since my mother fell and broke her hip in November of 2007. (see various posts in aging parents and alzheimer's folders) It has been really the hardest on her, as she is the one who is going through the scary changes of knowing that her mind is not working as it used to. I can see her searching for the next word as she speaks.

Her fall was accidental, but it was the beginning of all of this. It was going to happen eventually as she has been somewhat forgetful for the last year or so, but nothing really so bad that it seemed like it would for sure lead to Alzheimer disease. We did ask her doctor about her memory and what could be done earlier in 2007 and he started her on Aricept. She did seem to get better after the fall in November and healed physically and was mentally pretty stable in Feb 2008. It got to the point where we all felt she could try to live on her own again, as she had a really nice, new apartment in a retirement residence where she has many friends. She was doing well. We had her stay over at my house on some weekends.

It was last weekend, on March 5th, that she fell again, in her apartment. She was taken to the hospital and luckily, nothing was broken, but she did get some bad bruises. But in the span of about 3 days, her mind seemed to completely spin into a later stage of Alzheimer's... she is pretty much out of it now. She has bouts of knowing our names and then she doesn't and she just rambles into and out of the many memories that are stored in her mind. She has just been approved for Medicaid, which was to enter into an adult daycare program called Community Life and now this happened. It is probably good that we went through the approval for medicaid as it will probably enable her permanent stay in the nursing home she is in now. It is really a good nursing home as far as the staff being caring and the facility is very clean. It is however, very depressing to me to see the hundreds of seniors in this home as they are all needing 24 hour care and they are just in this state of waiting for their end of life. It left my wife and myself in a sad state of mind when we left. We went from the nursing home to her apartment to start cleaning out her things to close out her lease. That was even sadder!!!

My dad was 74 when he died and that was 18 years ago. This made me realize that he went the better way. He was healthy and just went down with a massive heart attack. He did not have to get old and go through all the pains and fears that my mother has gone through. He would also have not handled it as well as my mother can. This final phase of my mother not being able to take care of herself and have to live in a nursing home has... sort of felt like someone flipped a light switch in my life also. I feel different from the day before I visited my mother in the nursing home where she will most likely spend the rest of her life... the day before, I guess I felt hope or that she will get over this.. or something that made me think it will get better if we all try to do whatever we can.. show her more family love and caring and help her use her mind more... I guess the nursing home visit made me feel some cold hit of reality and of feeling OLD! Now I feel a sense of what all of us Baby Boomers are actually going to go through. We are going to face the issues that we are seeing our parents go through now, only there will be many millions more of us. What will that do to our country? How will our government be able to handle all of this and more so... what can we start doing now to prepare for the future in order to not be a burden on our children. I feel much older......

Absolutely beautiful slideshow for boomers!!!

I received an email today from a friend and fellow baby boomer who is actually a care giver of her mother and works a full time job as well. This is a slide presentation that is from a site called http://www.parentswish.com/. If this presentation doesn't make you cry... you have a heart of stone! This is absolutely beautiful and the idea is about a parent who is an Alzheimer's victim trying to tell their child to be patient while caring for them, as they cared for them when they were young parents. It will touch your heart!

Enjoy and if you still have a parent living, love them, be patient with them and love them!

http://parentswish.com/site01/big.html