I'm a newly licensed ham radio operator. I thought it would be a fun thing to do both in my pre and post retirement years (assuming I live that long Lord willing). My Grandfather was a ham, and while I don't have a lot of memories of him (I didn't spend all that much time with my paternal grandparents growing up) he did introduce me to the world of ham radio. In the backyard of their house, they had a 60 foot tower and I think he spent most of his ham radio on the 20 metre band (amazing that I can still remember some of the frequencies that I saw on the dial of the radio). At the time, I thought it was amazing but being young and the personal computer revolution that was happening in the late 70's and early 80's my interest wained.

Fast forward to this winter...

One of my neighbours has recently retired, and while at a block party I spent some time with him just chatting about how he approached retirement. It was interesting to hear that he actually employed a retirement consultant to advise him on the process of retiring. We often think of retirement from the perspective of acculumating significant wealth to allow us to live a lifestyle that we have fantasized over for decades. One of the things that the consultant made him do was to make a list of things that he would do in retirement. This shook me a bit, as we like to just think that our retired life will just organically form, with rest and such forming something like a content life.

With the thoughts of what would I do in retirement, ham radio once again came back to me. I found I like to be in community with others both where I can serve and interact with those I normally wouldn't talk to or see. Ham radio ironically checks off a lot of these things to me. It let's me chat with people all over the local and some more distant area. There are service opportunities in terms of emergency planning for the local area. There is a lot of information sharing and encouraging each other about the hobby. And finally, the ham radio crowd is surprisingly diverse from what I've seen. There are folks from all walks of life, with some younger folks coming into the hobby and now attracting cultural diversity too.

So, there's my new hobby. See you on the air everyone...