Hello and Welcome to Keep Turning the Pages the online journal of me EK Karn. The premise of the blog is that life is like a book and at 67 years old I have written a lot of pages in my life’s book. But I don’t want to be anywhere near the end yet. I want to keep those pages turning, exploring new things and writing about them., ultimately creating new pages! This blog will focus on the things I do to try and make that possible.
Three Books that Help Me to Keep the Pages Turning
I would say three books that have helped me to keep moving forward are: Gretchen.Rubin’s The Happiness Project, Younger Next Year by Chris Crowley and Dr Henry Lodge and Ultralongevity by Mark Liponis, MD. At some point, I will discuss each of these books in more detail, but for right now let’s just say that they all focus on keeping your mind and body in top shape. The result is that you may forestall the aging process. And even if you don’t, you had a good time along the way!!
For me two there are two ways that I try to keep my body in shape. First, I try to fuel my body correctly. Now I know I don’t always eat the right things or at least enough of the right things, but I do at least keep trying. In this blog, I will discuss some of the things I try to do to keep on the right track!
The second is to exercise! My exercising consists of dance- cardio workouts, running, and yoga. The dance-cardio workouts include use of various exercise equipment including: kettle bells, light weights, resistance bands and jump rope.
The running includes three days a week of running between 3-7 miles. I have been running on and off ever since high school. I hope to keep going for many more years
Finally, the yoga consists of regular Hatha yoga, and occasional Kundalini yoga. I usually do a Hatha yoga routine on the two days a week I still work. And over the last 9 months I have been doing a yoga routine before bed.
Music, Reading and Family Generate Happiness
Ok now on to three big happiness generators. They in reverse order of importance (least to most important): music, reading and my family.
I have been a music fan since the mid-sixties. Over the years my taste in music has grown to include a variety of music beyond rock. Now, I love to listen and explore: Americana music ( folk, blues and bluegrass), Jazz, Progressive Rock (Prog Rock) and New Age. Through this blog I hope to introduce you to some of the musicians that I enjoy in hopes that you will explore their music too!!
Books and Reading….
Like running and exploring music, I have been reading forever! I will admit only to a little lull for a few years between graduating from college (1974) and the mid-80s.
Since the early 90s, I have been keeping track of the books I read. First in book journals and more recently on Goodreads. One of the main reasons I keep track of my reading is I read a lot of books that are part of a series, so it allows me to remember where I am in the series, etc.
Anyway, I will be writing posts about the books that I read. I hope that like my music listening, the posts may introduce you to an author you have t read before or let you know what I thought of a book by one of your favorites.
Family – Present and Past
Last but not least is my family. Yesterday was the 44th anniversary of my wedding! It seems like just yesterday that event happened! Neither my wife nor I understand how we got so old so fast! But that’s life I guess.
Anyway, over the course of this blog you will hear about my four children: Nick, Andrew (Meaghan), Peter (Missy) and Elizabeth (Marcus) and my three grandchildren: Oliver (Andrew) and Zoe and Logan (Peter).
Keeping Those Family Trees Growing
In addition to our family, my wife and I both have done extensive research on each of our family trees. Her tree is way larger than mine. A big part of that is she is a better genealogist than I am! In my defense though it is somewhat harder for me to develop a big family tree because many of my ancestors arrived in America more recently than hers. Both sides of my father’s family came from Germany and Switzerland in the late 1800s early 1900s.
Both of our family trees have grown though thanks to Ancestry and DNA both of us have found ancestors and cousins that we never knew we had. And in some cases have unearthed family secrets!!
So Let’s Get Started……
So now that you have an idea of what I’ll be writing about let’s get started writing so new pages to My Book of Life and I’ll hope you’ll join my effort to Keep the Pages Turning!