Life at 66

Someone asked me yesterday why I still work. Of course, I had a semi-smartass answer - "But for certain unfortunate addictions, like food and housing, I'd've quit by now." Now, there is a certain amount of truth in that - I do have debts, and I like being able to spend money. A simple subsistance lifestyle would probably bore me to tears, or drive me into self-destructive behavior.

It cannot be said that we live high - both of us work, and our lives don't intersect often enough. Choir directors never have a weekend off (or hardly ever, anyhow) and spouses of choir directors either join in the musical activity or spend weekends alone. As a choirboy, I choose to sing - I still enjoy it, and like to think that I still have enough talent to make the choir better, not worse.

I have tried imagining being retired - and failed miserably. I truly don't know what I would do. I'd use up a month of blog material the first day, and then have 29 days to wonder whatthehell I ought to be doing. We're headed into winter, and while I do love motorcycling, I'm not stupid nor do I have a love for pain - so motorcycling on snow and in rain and snow is not for me (At least not as long as I have a solo bike without a sidecar!) and while there is a certain amount of fun available throwing my old Volvo around in the snow, somehow it just isn't the same.

And there is a certain amount of satisfaction in doing what I do for money - because much of what I do creatively is useful for people around me. I'm too lazy to do it just for myself, and without the work environment to improve with things I create, there isn't feedback of any sort - this no incentive to extend myself.

Living on just my social security is a little scary, too - with my salary, it's a nice addition, but without my salary it just isn't all that much, and it would make a big hole in spending for computer parts & software, as well as weekends away. We'd have the time again, but the money? I dunno....

I used to tell people that I wanted to return to Germany, but when I had the time, I didn't have the money - and when I had the money I didn't have the time, and then I got married and had neither money nor time. Frankly, it is more comfortable having neither than thinking about having lots of time and no money.

I like what I do, although it occasionally bugs me that I have to work a certain amount, and have little or no flex built in. But once I am involved in what I do best, time flies, and I can put on a headset (now that I no longer have an office with a door) and ignore what's outside what I'm doing.

It would be better if I were more active, but my life has been spent (since leaving field engineering in 1972) in front of a monitor on a desk, not out killing things to eat, so my exercise is minimal, which means that interruptions are minimal, and as a person afflicted by ADD the minimization of interruptions keeps me on track.

But my knees hate me. They've carried too much weight for too many years to suffer in slence, so now I suffer in silence while they make life and motion hard for me. Picking motorcycles up doesn't help, bit I do not have to do that very often, and frankly do not miss that activity at all. I know so many riders who claim never to have had to pick one up from laying on its side, but I am convinced that they all lie, too embarrassed to admit to being so clumsy.

Anyhow, I think I'll keep on working for a few years yet. As long as they'll pay me, I might as well, at least until my lovely wife decides she's had enough and wants to retire.

Ideally, we'll sell our house and buy into a retirement community - an hour up the road is the one that my parents were in until their deaths, and we both find much in it to like - so that is a possibility. I seriously do not think we'll move to Australia with grandkids here, so we'll be staying close. I don't think the rest of the kids are going anywhere any time soon, so there'll at least be that small island of stability.

If we're very lucky, we'll be able to maintain enough health that we can do pretty much what we want - that's the ideal case. We'll see how it all shakes out.

Meanwhile, being 66 feels a lit like 55, which felt a lot like 44, which wasn't far from 33 - but I no longer remember 22 at all - it was lost in a beer-fueled haze in Germany somewhere. If I'm as old as I feel, on good days I'm around 12 (according to my wife and some coworkers) - and on the bad days I'm probably 99 - which averages to 55, so I'm ahead!

But the sum and substance of this ramble is for my contemporaries - don't let your age distress you and don't pay attention to the numbers. You'll live until you die and there's no point at all in anticipating and preparing for that event, because if you guess the time wrong, you'll die slowly waiting for it, and that's probably no fun at all!

Be well, y'all.