Tag Archives: retirerenew.com

Create and send a little inspiration

As part of my AOK Writing project, I’m creating a slide-based tutorial on fashioning your own inspirational message for those needing a little support and, using bit.ly, including the shortened/memorable URL in any handwritten note. There’s also no reason you can’t create a short inspirational video instead of a static message. Hmmm…

[Note: my tutorial includes the step of publishing a Google Slide to the web; there’s no reason you couldn’t just post your message on your blog and ‘bit.ly-ize’ your post. I just chose the other route to make the link more exclusive.]

The steps:

  1. Create a PDF/PNG/JPEG poster of support or inspiration. I used Canva.
  2. Place it on a  blog page.
  3. Create a bit.ly link to it and include the link in your handwritten letter/note.

Here is a 90-second video showing my steps that included Canva, Google Slides [optional], and bit.ly.

Here is the link to the completed project.  http://bit.ly/tryagain2

Guys weekend!! My latest eCard

cavemen attending to daily chores

Passing this along from my other blog, retirerenew.com…

After completing a five-day ‘showing up’ challenge, I’m focusing these next four days just on my Incomplete Book of Retirement Wisdom**.

More on the challenge later…

**The book doubles as a collection of eCards.

Suggestions:

— Save/download the image above and send it to a retired/soon-to-retire friend.

— Better yet…

  1. call it up in an image editing program [even a presentation program like PowerPoint will work]

  2. slap an even better caption on top of mine or add a personal comment

  3. export it as a JPG or PNG, and email/text message it to that friend.

Writers: Looking to suck some valuable time from your already busy day? Launch an all-out investigation into whether or not you should add an apostrophe between the ‘y’ and the ‘s’ in ‘guys weekend’. I skipped that annoying grammatical gnat–I figured ‘guys’ answers the question ‘what kind of weekend?’, which makes it an adjective, not a possessive. I’ve also been sticking to the  ‘better done than perfect’ guideline. Now I can sleep peacefully…until the dog digs his shoulder into my solar plexus. [A writer’s day isn’t complete until he shoehorns ‘solar plexus’ somewhere into his digital blather.]

Word clouds…a productive diversion

I’ve worked with word clouds for at least four years, but just added this short tutorial to my ESL course.

Other projects I’m working on: [some more actively than others]

  1. http://nextstepenglish.net/
  2. https://retirerenew.com
  3. http://stretchingtech.teachable.com