Personal Best Contest

Wife Vicki's first marathon.

Welcome back. For over two years in well over 200 blog posts, I have divulged many of my personal bests in such diverse pursuits as jogging, sleeping, fishing, swimming, softball, basketball, guitar and probably others. It’s time for you to stop holding back, to forego your humility. Tell us about one of your personal bests.

Since you will never speak up without being tortured or enticed, I’ll make it a writing contest! (Note the exclamation point.)

This is a contest for you to describe your personal best in or at a topic of your choice. And “you” can be young or old, retired or not. (Most of the blog’s readers are far from retired.) 

Topics 

In keeping with this blog’s history and theme, recalling and exploring, I will be really loose about topics as long as you keep it G or PG rated.

You might write about achieving a personal best in a traditional pursuit of personal bests like running. For example, our friend Willie once wrote about running farther and farther, advancing his personal best, in his blog Bill’s Running Shoes.

Or you might reach deeper into your bag of bests. Suppose you were my former colleague, Jim, who never bothered to learn touch typing. You might describe the ecstasy of reaching 20 words per minute keyboarding with only two index fingers.

Symbols of our son Noah’s personal
best in grade school.

Contest Rules

I think the following covers everything you’ll need to know:

-Topics: Describe any personal best but keep it G or PG rated.
-Length of Write up: No more than 500 words, all or most in English.
-Due Date: Monday, 1 July 2013

-To Submit: Include your write up in the body text of an email to: RetiredNW@gmail.com  No attachments; attachments will not be opened.

-Photos: It would be nice if you had one or more digital photos ready should your write up be selected, but there’s no need to include any with your submission.
-Contestants: Anyone, retired or not retired, may enter, except a member of my immediate family, who would never enter anyway.
-Judges: I haven’t gotten that far yet.

If the judges throw up their hands at the difficulty of choosing a winner, more than one winner might be selected, especially if the top submissions are in different categories (e.g., Frisbee toss and SAT scores).

If there are no submissions, I will be inconsolable.
If there are no worthy submissions…nah, not possible.

Oh, almost forgot:
-Prize: Publication here on the Retired--Now What? Blog, using your true or pen name for copyright.

I hope you’ll jump at this opportunity for fame. Thanks for stopping by.