Farook Maricar
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Breaking Free from Loneliness
The companion piece to When the House Goes Quiet. Not the problem — what happened next. On going first, small threads, and the surprising number of people waiting in their own quiet houses.
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The Most Important Relationship
I was a weekend husband for the better part of my career. Retirement changed that overnight. What I’m learning about marriage, presence, and the relationship across the breakfast table.
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When Did I Decide I Was Too Old?
My neighbour knocked on my door to show me a video she’d made on her phone — edited, soundtracked, sent to her grandchildren in Australia. Three weeks earlier she’d been ready to throw the thing into the sea.
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We did not come this far to coast
I wasn’t looking for Denzel Washington quotes. But a pinned page in Google Keep changed my afternoon — and reminded me why we didn’t come this far to coast.
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The Marvel Smartphone That Makes Life Easier
Your smartphone is the most powerful tool you own — and most of us use about ten percent of what it can do. Let me walk you through what I actually use, and why.
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When the House Goes Quiet: On the Loneliness of Retirement
It was a Thursday afternoon when the silence in my house got so loud it startled me. Eight months retired, and I hadn’t had a real conversation in three days. On the loneliness nobody says out loud — and going first. · 790 words · 4 min read
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You Don’t Need to Understand Electrons to Turn On a Lightbulb
I was in a Grab car last week, and the driver — a man in his late sixties — told me his daughter taught him the app. He’s not a tech person. But he figured out the one button that matters. · 1033 words · 6 min read
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The Da Vinci Secret to Joyful Living in Retirement
Leonardo da Vinci had a word for it: *connessione*. The understanding that everything connects to everything else. He used it to describe how he thought about his work — the machines, the paintings, t… · 1,517 words · 8 min read
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What I’m Learning About Happiness in Retirement
This morning, I woke up at 4:30 as usual. Prayer, warm water, a few stretches. Then I took our poodle for his walk while Vung Tau was still quiet and the air still cool — the kind of cool that only ex… · 1,527 words · 8 min read
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The Warm Tofu Saturday — Finding Joy in Retirement’s Small Moments
It was a cloudy Saturday morning in Vung Tau. Joyful living in retirement, I’m learning, rarely looks the way I expected — and this morning was a perfect example of that.… · 1,559 words · 8 min read
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