Satan Is a Termite
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam sat in a church fundraising meeting and pitched drawing the termites as the devil himself. It did not go over the way he'd hoped. Here's Cam. ------ It was a thoughtful meeting. Pensive. Cerebral. We were all leaning over the table with pens poised over paper for important notes to be taken. The church needs your help, they said, and we have a small role for you. I listened as the issues and challenges were made clear, and then I heard myself beginning to speak and thought, "Don't do it. Don't say it." But it was too late. To help the...
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A Quiet Morning
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
For years, Cam Marston wondered how he'd handle the empty nest once his last kids left home. This week, with his youngest twins dropped off at college, he finally gets to find out. ----- For several years now I’ve thought about my last children leaving home and wondering how my wife and I would fare in our next life chapter of empty nesting. I thought I may like a quiet and neat home, or not being waked late at night with kids coming in from a night out with friends, and many many fewer dirty dishes in the sink. When the older kids came home...
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Lining Up to be Judged
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
This weekend Cam Marston watched 130 girls squeal with joy on Auburn's quad. Here's why his mind went straight to the ones who didn't get the call. ----- We sure love cruelty, don’t we? As refined and as smart and as elevated as we claim to be, we love us some cruelty. We line up to dish it out and, strangely, we line up to potentially take it. Saturday afternoon I watched the culmination of Auburn’s bid day. My favorite youngest daughter got a bid. I watched as she ran from Neville Arena to the quad where she and her 130 some odd new best friends whom she had never met before squealed....
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Climate Battles
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, It's August in Alabama, which means two things: the air conditioner is running non-stop, and somewhere in a house near you, a married couple is fighting over the thermostat. Cam is losing that fight. ----- It’s the time of year in Alabama where when the temperature tops out at only ninety degrees we feel like it’s a crisp fall day. The mercury is so high so often that ninety degrees feels like a cool breeze. And right now, the weather report online says the “feels like” temperature is one hundred twelve, a full twenty degrees higher than the actual...
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I Take Thee, Claudia
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, Cam Marston insists there's nothing going on between him and his favorite AI — which is exactly what a man in love would say. Here’s Cam… ----- So, my wife has accused me of liking my new best friend and favorite AI Claude more than her. In fact she’s accused me of being in love with Claude more than her. This came about the other week when I was standing in the kitchen working on some project in Claude and I heard the words “I think you’re cute.” I looked up and it was my wife saying this. I thought, “uh-oh. Something’s up.” Apparently, she...
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No Longer Having to Try
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Cam Marston bought an electric bike last weekend, and this morning he rode it to his writing spot without pedaling once. He calls it the best commute of his life — and that's exactly what's got him worried. Here's Cam. ----- I got an electric bike last weekend. I had ridden my brother in laws a year ago when we were vacationing on the Carolina beaches and thought it was the funnest thing in the world. I left that weekend thinking I wanted one but one of my children’s cars needed attention and my hopes for an electric bike disappeared into...
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Couple's Retirement
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Cam Marston has been digging into what makes retirement happy — and it turns out, part of the answer is that spouses need a break from each other. Here's Cam... ----- My work continues to lead me deeper into retirement studies. My small team and I are creating a non-financial retirement assessment that anyone can take and get a gauge on how well positioned you are to retire. The key here is this is non-financial information. It is not retirement readiness based on what’s on the spreadsheet or what’s in the bank account, it’s retirement readiness based on how well prepared you are...
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A Raccoon for Everyone
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
The World Cup has taken over America this summer — and it's brought more than just soccer. It's brought raccoons drinking gin. ------ The World Cup sure has been wonderful to watch. I’ve loved all of it, though I’d be hard pressed to clearly explain offsides. The broadcasters show replays of goals that have been taken back and the commentators say “Oh yes, that’s clearly offsides” and I have no idea what they’re referring to. It’s the equivalent of the infield fly rule in baseball or the tackle eligible receiver in football. It’s taken me years to understand these rules, and...
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Death of the Accord
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Cam Marston has a confession today — eighteen months ago, he and his wife made a pact to declutter their house for good. Here's why it didn't survive contact with a U-Haul trailer. ----- About eighteen months ago, my wife and I made a deal in a hotel room overlooking the Atlantic. We called it the Fort Lauderdale Accord — not a bucket list of what we wanted before we died, but a list of what we wanted gone. Our aim was to simplify and we agreed on one thing: we had collected too much stuff. So we made a rule. One thing in, two things out. Net loss, every time. We clinked glasses, pinkie...
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A Grief No Words Can Describe
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
This week's Keepin' It Real comes from a place of real pain. Cam Marston reflects on the loss of two young men from his community, and a grief he says words can't quite reach. ----- “There are no words” is an expression often used to truly describe deep grief. It’s a feeling in your gut, your stomach, that you notice only when the world around you is crumbling and those important to you are experiencing something truly awful. That’s the way I feel now. A grief has set in and there are no words to describe this feeling. ...
info_outlineCam Marston has been digging into what makes retirement happy — and it turns out, part of the answer is that spouses need a break from each other. Here's Cam...
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My work continues to lead me deeper into retirement studies. My small team and I are creating a non-financial retirement assessment that anyone can take and get a gauge on how well positioned you are to retire. The key here is this is non-financial information. It is not retirement readiness based on what’s on the spreadsheet or what’s in the bank account, it’s retirement readiness based on how well prepared you are between the ears. From what I’ve learned in this study, about thirty-five to forty percent of retirees are unhappy in their retirement. The expression I’ve heard so many time is this: retirement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Turns out there is data on what makes for a happy retirement. This data is collected in studies by some government agencies and big-name universities and if you know how to find it, the data will tell people what makes retirement happy. What’s caught my attention lately is the information on couples and retirement.
I remember when my father-in-law retired. The story is he came into the kitchen at lunchtime and said to his wife, “Momma, what’s for lunch?” She shot back something along the lines of “we will not be living this way. The refrigerator is there with food in it, the bread is over there, figure it. Make a sandwich.” She was very clear that she was not going to serve him every day and, after that, it was never a problem again.
Turns out, retirement has a lot to do with boundaries and here are two that have caught my attention. One is that each person needs to have a place in their home that is uniquely theirs. Maybe it’s a desk, a closet, a workshop space, a gardening shed. That space is not to be intruded upon by the other. There can’t touch anything in there. They can’t offer to help clean it or organize it. They enter that space or touch its contents only with permission and then, only carefully. Each person needs their protected and sacred territory.
The other is that each person becomes more interesting to their spouse if they have a completely separate social life. He needs his friends that don’t much overlap with her world and she needs her friends that don’t much overlap with his world. Each of them needs regular connection with those friends because, as it turns out, when they reconnect with their spouse after, say, a night out with these friends, they have content to share with the other. And that content makes each other interesting. That content gives the couple things to talk about and share. If they only ever do things together, whether it’s only just the two of them or only going out with friends as a couple, they run the risk of becoming boring to each other. I found that fascinating. Having a healthy social life outside my wife promotes a happier retirement with the two of us. One may think the opposite is true but it’s very clearly not.
So, if you’re looking at retirement, take my advice on this. Or try asking your spouse to make you a sandwich that first day, and see how it goes.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.