Just retired. Plenty of time. Nothing pressing to do.
That sentence sounds like heaven when you’re working. I can now report from the other side: for the first few months, it mostly sounds like a clock ticking in an empty house.
I stayed busy the way you’re supposed to. Walking. Exercising. Fixing things that weren’t broken. And dreaming — more dreaming than I’d done in forty years. Dreaming of what to do, where to go, how to travel. I found myself reviewing everything: my life here in California, my years in the Bay Area, the career, the habits, the family and friends. And two truths kept floating to the top.
One: I’ve been here a long time. Maybe too long.
Two: I spent most of my working career traveling — factories, fabs, airports, hotel breakfasts in cities I never really saw — and even at its most exhausting, I loved it. The moving. The looking. The being somewhere else.
Boomer’s note: He reorganized the garage twice. TWICE. I was concerned. — B.
So here’s the plan. Or at least, the question.
Let’s travel the world — slowly — in search of the true Appreciation of Life.
Not the postcard version. The real one. How do people in other countries actually live? What’s important to them? What makes them happy? What are their priorities — their daily joys? A grandmother in Okinawa and a noodle vendor in Chiang Mai have answers to questions I’ve been too busy to ask for seventy years. I’d like to go hear them. Across Asia first. Maybe the world.
Which immediately raises the practical avalanche: But how? How much? Where first? What’s next? How long? What will it cost? How can I save money doing it? Which credit cards actually earn the flights? Where should I stay — and what does a month really run in Da Nang versus Sapporo?
A year ago, that avalanche would have buried the dream. Too many unknowns, too much homework, too old to start. That’s how dreams die at my age — not from “no,” but from “it’s too complicated.”
So I asked AI. All of it.
Every one of those questions, I’ve started handing to an AI — and the answers are already reshaping the plan. It now checks apartment prices in 53 Asian cities for me every month (see them all on What Does a Month Really Cost? — and yes, I published a wrong number once and had to confess it). It compares credit card bonuses. It reads visa rules so I don’t have to. It built most of this website, honestly.
But here’s the thing I learned first, and it’s the thing this whole site is really about: AI knows — but it only tells you if you ask it properly. Ask it vaguely, you get a brochure. Ask it well, you get a plan. The difference between those two isn’t technology. It’s a skill — and it’s learnable at any age, by anyone who can hold a conversation. I’m proof. I type with two fingers.
Boomer’s note: He also says his questions out loud. To the computer. The neighbors have adjusted. — B.
So that’s lesson one. Coming next.
How to talk to AI. What matters, what doesn’t. What to ask, and how to ask it — in plain English, no jargon, no code, from one beginner to another. That’s the next post, and it’s step one of everything: the trip, the plan, the second act.
Because that’s the whole discovery, really — the one that turned a restless retirement into a departure date: you don’t need to know how. You just need to ask.
Okinawa, early 2027. The search for the Appreciation of Life starts now — and you’re invited. Subscribe below and come along. Slowly.
— Uncle (with editorial supervision by Boomer 🐾)
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