Retirement offers the opportunity to pursue new interests, hobbies and pursuits. But getting retirement right takes practice. How do you start? Mary Jo Hoffman shares her story of how a daily photography practice on her daily walks with her dog evolved, culminating in her new book STILL:The Art of Noticing.

Mary Jo Hoffman joins us from Minnesota.

__________________________

Bio

Mary Jo Hoffman is the author of STILL:The Art of Noticing.  An aeronautical engineer-turned-artist, since beginning her artistic practice and founding the blog, STILL, she and her project have been featured in Martha Stewart Living and Better Homes & Gardens, among other publications, and she has collaborated with West Elm, Target, the United States Botanic Garden, and the Scottish National Opera








She is renowned for her unique and personal engagement with the natural world around her, primarily in North America's Great Lakes bioregion and the iconic scrubland of Mediterranean France. Best known for her multi-year, ongoing project, "STILL," she captures and posts one photo every day, on a white background, of a natural object found near her, whether leaves, flowers, seedpods, twigs, insects, or animals.

"STILL" images reflect Hoffman's profound admiration for nature's subtle, seasonal expressions. Her photography encourages viewers to pause and contemplate one thing at a time, to be still, if only for a moment, in a world of distracted hurrying from one thing to another. The project is an endorsement of the power of dailiness, and an invitation to re-see the too-often overlooked "infraordinary," that surrounds us--those sights, sounds, and subtle changes that we think of as common and familiar, but which can come alive with delightful possibility when paid attention to.

Hoffman lives in Shoreview, Minnesota, on Turtle Lake, with her husband, Steve, a food writer and author, and her aging and indulged puggle, Jack, with whom she takes walks as often as possible, in woods and fields, and along lakeside trails, on the hunt for that day's STILL blog subject.

__________________________

For More on Mary Jo Hoffman


STILL Blog

STILL:The Art of Noticing










_________________________

Podcast Episodes You May Like
Retirement Rookies – Stephen & Karen Kreider Yoder
Edit Your Life – Elisabeth Sharp McKetta
Living for Pleasure – Emily Austin, PhD
Best of 2024 – Part One


_________________________

Wise Quotes

On Practicing Retirement

"...think about practicing for retirement. Put those pieces in place with the community, the hobbies, the interests, whatever you want to do. Start early enough to have those in place when you retire so that you don't just one day walk out the door, and then you don't know what to do with yourself. That struck a chord with me. So we are in France, the kids are in school, it's the first free time in my adult life and I say to my, my husband who's a tax preparer, but who also had creative ambitions. He was wanted always wanted to be a writer. I said, let's practice for retirement. We have we have six hours a day between parent drop off and parent pickup. Let's practice for retirement. So that was 2012. So 12 years ago what happened is I started a photo. So I came up with a project for myself is called a photo a day for one year. So it was a one year project to do a photo a day, which then resulted in this book that I just came out with."

On Daily Practice

"If you've never done anything like a 100-day challenge. I have a 30-day challenge. I think 30 days is too short. I did a one year challenge that turned into a 12 year challenge. I highly recommend them. That's why  I call it the sneaky superpower of daily -  of having a daily practice. The other one of the other things that that totally surprised me  was something an idea I call placefulness, which is it is this a really deep and nuanced knowledge and connection to my place."