At the University of North Carolina at Asheville, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute offers a "Paths to Creative Retirement" weekend workshop to help people deal with identity changes in retirement, figure out how to find purpose and investigate new work opportunities.

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But it might be worthwhile to take a weekend writing workshop or a week-long summer workshop and get a teacher and just say show me with 10 pages, show me what to do with the first 10 pages.

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They also offer an impressive slate of specialty themed weekends including the wine-focused Harvest Weekend, Songwriters Workshop, a BBQ Bootcamp, the girls getaway Cowgirl Bootcamp and the family-centric Mother-Daughter Cowgirl Bootcamp, along with spa packages, golf packages, riding packages, wine packages, romance packages, and so on.

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" Attending a workshop last weekend in Venice of the Council for the United States and Italy, I heard one of them sum up the problem as succinctly as a French aphorist: "The growth agenda is nice to say but difficult to fill up.

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For example, last weekend I presented a negotiation workshop for the Journalism and Women Symposium keynoted by Gloria Steinem and Keesha Gaskins a group of 230 incredibly hard-working, powerful women journalists.

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So this is what I get to go over with an impressive array of real-world Scottish managers in workshop mode in Edinburgh over the weekend.

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