A little while back you celebrated the beginning of a New Year as seniors. Sure, there were a lot of changes and new stuff added this past decade. But you made it through the Y2K fiasco, the millennium bug, that threatened to stop the world in its tracks, and through to the end of a single-digit century-turning event. Nine years older, and not a one of you looks it and are much wiser, healthier and more aware of a world that is moving faster than a hare passing a turtle. Certainly there were a lot of changes and new stuff added to people’s likes and dislikes this past decade, but how does it affect seniors? Or maybe you are already getting use to it?

New technology has transformed easy living into complicated, but sometimes easier, lifestyles. You’ve seen mail and photos pass between friends, families and grandparents, thousands of miles apart, and at the speed of light. To some your money became electronic bytes that appear in your checking account every month. Those same seniors used the same bytes to purchase whatever, and pay bills without writing ever signing a check. It’s a marvel.

But there also has been a whole new vocabulary to learn, such as Apps, the name for technical gadgets you can buy which could describe the whole explosion in these years. Blogs, or in other words, discussion web sites, which took the place of plain-old gossiping over the back fence. Blackberries that are not eatable, preserveable, and don’t grow on bushes. These are smart phones, sort of like a cell phone which has been around a while, that do more that make phone calls.

Twitter on which you can Tweet 140 character messages to the world. GPS, a global positioning system run by satellites, like AAA in the sky that can map you from where you are to any other place on earth. There is Facebook and the Facebook Friends which is another way to meet other geeks, senior or not, on the internet. And so much other stuff that crams the airwaves such as, Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Netflix, and Texting. The best way to describe this decade phenomenon is Information Overload, or explosion, depending upon the way you look at it.

Oh, then there are those gadgets creeping in from the last decade and gradually appearing in this one. Like the electronic book readers produced by several sources that can store hundreds of books; books that are downloaded on to the reader from the Internet or from wireless space. Those seniors who love to read will no longer have to pack around a pile of books. They just have to pop the electronic reader into their pocket or purse and read anywhere.

Another event, catastrophe, that happened to all of us was called, 9-11, you all know about that, and would like to forget it, the day we went to war with the unknowns who are trying to disrupt our peaceful retirement. It put kinks and delays in travel plans, and placed young people, sons and daughters, into war and harms way.

Other things happened that affected seniors this past decade. Congress passed a bill that made prescriptions cheaper for a while, then expensive, then cheaper again … or something like that if you can figure it out. There was an economic crash that impinged on everyone’s financial well being. It especially hit seniors who had their retirement funds invested in an IRA, which all took a plunge along with the stock market. But then again, “Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?” said Ralph Waldo Emerson.

No doubt there were a lot of changes for seniors to deal with this last decade, but we have a lot more to look forward to, Ten More Exciting Years. “And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years,” said Abraham Lincoln. And more of those good years with all their changes are coming in this new decade. No time to lose. Get living. “Lost time is never found again.” Benjamin Franklin.

Visit: www.funwithretirement.com