Life After Worklife
I’ve been retired for almost a year now so it is time to report back on life in the post-work world.
1-Plans change: I had intended to work until age 65. But I guess the Universe had other plans for me. When the Altered Situation presented itself, there was no compelling reason for me to continue to work until that age. It’s no secret that I have had health issues in the last five years. I am not the man I used to be. I am currently at large in the community and feeling good, but I’ve got some new scars and some exotic metal hardware. As I investigated whether or not to apply for Social Security, one of the criteria listed on the site was the state of your health. Plus, your monthly payments may be marginally higher, but the total amount of benefits you collect over your lifetime will not change, if you wait longer to retire. I did not need a lot of persuasion to decide to retire at age 62.
2-I am in a good mood most of the time: What do I have to be worried about? Rain? Snow? Heat? I stay home. If I feel like going to the gym, I go. If I feel like sleeping in, I sleep. If I want to indulge the cats with gourmet cat food and a new piece of cat furniture, I indulge. If I want to make a cup of tea and sit down to listen to music, I make it so. I don’t have the aggravation, agitation, anxieties, frustrations, foulups, confusion, complications, unreasonable responsibilities, reservations, restrictions, obstacles, obfuscations, snags, snafus, deadlines, difficulties, dilemmas, drawbacks, dramas, developments, dead ends, or dire consequences that are common in the work world. Life is pretty (bleep)in’ sweet. All of my life, since I was about six or seven, I’ve been in pursuit of the dollar. Back then, I would cruise my Pittsburgh neighborhood looking for pop bottles to cash in for the deposit. Or I would hang out at the local grocery store and carry bags of groceries home for the little old ladies, or bolt out the door with a broom and shovel when it snowed so I could shovel sidewalks: all for cash. Then came the jobs. I’ve had seventeen jobs in my life where I was paid by check and contributed to Social Security. I have polished brass doorknobs, mowed grass, washed dishes, flipped hamburgers, torn down houses, delivered mail, worked in the steel mill, made pizzas, sold cars, and finally, edited syndications and movies, film and videotape for news, shot video, done live TV, and managed a government access TV channel. But no more-I’m done, concluded, consummated, completed, finished with work.
On my last day at work, when I left, I did not let the door hit me where the Good Lord split me.
3-By retiring, I created a spot for a young person to get a job: Economists say this is not the case but what do they know? They can’t agree on anything. In a macro-economic sense, this disconnect between someone retiring so someone else can get a job might be true. But the person who was hired after I left is a lovely young woman who is excited to have that job. So anecdotally, economists can keep on arguing.
4-I don’t spend as much money: I spend most of my money on food. I don’t need many new clothes except to replace old clothes that have frayed or faded or look totally, hopelessly outdated, like pleated slacks. For a long time I have made the effort to dress my age. There is practically nothing worse than a middle-aged person who tries to dress like a skateboarder. Newsflash: You look like a twit. But my clothes are good. And I don’t look like a bum. I shower twice a day, shave everyday, do laundry, and put on clean clothes. I get to wear jeans every day-none of this “business casual” bunkum. I wear cowboy boots because I can, and I know my way around a tin of shoe polish. I refuse to be seen badly groomed, in a tee shirt so old that it is beige instead of white, wearing sweat pants, rubber slippers or flip-flops. If you are of a “certain age” and you wear flip-flops or Crocs, you might as well get a tattoo on your face that says “I have given up.” And besides, no one needs to see sixty-three year old feet. They are not pretty.
5-I eat what I want: My diet consists of mainly: bacon, cashews, smoked oysters with cheddar cheese and crackers, Vienna sausages, bacon cheeseburgers, Italian beef sandwiches, ribs, spaghetti carbonara, onions, potato salad, the vegetables on bacon cheeseburgers, watermelon, pineapple, green table grapes, grapefruits, coffee, tea, various fruit juice permutations with cranberry as one of the ingredients, popcorn, tortilla chips and salsa, and the occasional artisanal root beer. I get my vegetables from a jar of liquid vitamins. Over the last year I have lost five pounds without trying. My blood pressure averages about 110 over 65, and my doctor says I have “freakishly low cholesterol.” So, I’m not seeing any reason to change here.
6-People who are still working are jealous of my changed circumstances: At least that’s my interpretation. I am continually badgered to do stuff for other people because “You’re retired now.” People seem to feel that I am bored, under-utilized, and should be happy to do tasks that they think will make me feel useful and fill up my time, and that they themselves now don’t have to do. Uh, sorry. I didn’t ask people to do stuff for me while I was working. I did my own laundry, shopped for food and clothes, cooked, cleaned up, did the yard work, emptied the litterbox etc. I did all that on evenings and weekends. I can and do volunteer to do service work in the community to help people who have a hard time helping themselves. I have numerous hobbies and interests to fill up my day. So to put it nicely, people, you can do your own chores.
7-I have a sense that time is limited: If not now, when? If not here, where? All of our lives, we are told that retirement is the last stage of life. There is nothing after this but the void of eternity. There are places that I want to visit in this world before I am too infirm to travel and enjoy once I get there. It will be nice to leave a little something to my children, but traveling to Spa Francorchamps and Monza and Bali and the Galapagos Islands are more important to me right now than leaving a nestegg. Sorry kids. There will be something left but air fare is expensive and I feel like seeing where the cashews grow in west Africa. I love cashews! They are my favorite nut. And I’d like to be able to drink a nice glass of gongo. I feel compelled to get my affairs in order so as to not leave a mess for those that survive my tenure on this side of the grass. I accept the inevitable decline of my physical and mental prowess and keep vigilant for signs of their decay. I’ve given up on trying to change the world. My generation may have screwed the pooch in many ways, but we kept the mass murder, genocide and world wars to reasonable levels. Plus we gave you cable TV, internet shopping, and high potency weed. And if we can’t do anything about global warming, at least we’ve let the coming generations know what’s ahead. Good luck with that beachfront home on the Outer Banks!
8-I have the benefit of perspective: Not much that I see and hear these days surprises or upsets me. Ebola doesn’t worry me because I remember the panic and brouhaha that accompanied the outbreak of AIDS. I don’t freak out too much about Ukraine and Russia because this is Russia doing what Russia always does: expand. And having lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War, I’m not going to get too amped-up about the Russians flying bomber patrols in the Caribbean. They did that the whole time I was in middle school. Obama has terrible poll numbers? Yup-just like Bush the Younger, Clinton, Bush the Elder, Jimmy Carter, Nixon, LBJ, and Eisenhower. The Democrats lost seats in the Congress? Uh-huh. Just like the Republicans did when Reagan was President. And Reagan was popular! Yes, the Islamic State is terrible, and the war crimes are unspeakable. This is also not the first time that impressionable European youth have flocked to the mideast to fight for a “just” cause, although the Crusades did happen before social media was ubiquitous. It is not a new phenomenon that beheading has been used to intimidate populations. I believe the Ottoman Empire created quite a few skull mounds while trying to subdue their neighbors to the south. And it was only about a hundred years ago that the Ottomans did a faceplant onto the pile of Failed Empires. I don’t mean to belittle or dismiss any of these current events, but my pulse remains pretty slow when they crop up in the news.
I am amused when young people rediscover things that have been known for decades. I recently read a post on Reddit where a breathless young person wrote about how The Beatles put out a cover for the “Yesterday and Today” album that had them dressed in lab coats, and holding raw meat and dismembered baby dolls, and they had to pull the album because there was a huge stink and then they put out one with different cover art. I couldn’t even make a snarky comment. I figured at least they’re still listening to The Beatles. And it did bring back memories of high school girls in miniskirts and go-go boots.
Well, I’ve got to sign off now. The cats are getting excited because it’s close to their dinner time. I think I’ll go downstairs, crack open a can of salmon and shrimp chowder and then have a few cashews washed down with some cran-grape juice. That should hold me until the delivery man shows up with my Italian beef sandwich.
