Is
That the Finish Line Up Ahead?
I've been working for a
long time. If I'm figuring it correctly, and I think I'm pretty
close, it comes out to about 50 years. Half a doggone century of
working for someone else doing something. Sometimes something I
maybe wouldn't have done if I had more of a choice. Maybe, maybe
not.
I started my working life
when I was 16 years old. I had a job cleaning the Chamber of
Commerce offices in my hometown. I went in Saturday mornings and
emptied trash, cleaned desks, swept and generally spiffed things up.
Don't know how I got the job. Just remember doing it for a period of
time, maybe a few months, maybe a bit longer. It had to be around
1963 because I can always equate that particular job with the
assassination of John Kennedy. That tragedy happened the fall of the
year I was an office cleaner. Then there was a couple weeks as a
carhop at a local restaurant. Yes, they had guy carhops back in
those long-ago times and we did NOT have to wear roller skates! That
didn't last long but I still remember that place had the BEST peanut
butter pie! Alas it's been out of business for many decades. Then I
was hired at one of the first fast-food restaurants in my hometown.
No, not the one with the golden arches and the clown. This one was
called Burger Chef. I performed most of the positions there, waiting
on customers, cooking the food, cleaning, stocking. All the stuff
that needs done at one of those places. I worked there my junior and
senior years of high school. I worked there after school, weekends
and holidays until I graduated, then I worked at the factory where my
dad was employed. I was an assembler on an assembly line (go figure)
and attached various parts to Post Office trucks as they
metamorphosed from bare chassis to finished red-white-and-blue truck.
This was for a fairly short period of time after I graduated high
school and before I joined the Air Force. The military then had me
for four years. After that I went back to the factory for a while as
they had to hold my job while I was in the service. Knowing I just
wasn't cut out for factory work by the mind-numbing repetition of the
assembly line, I then started business college and worked part time
at a department store in the electronics and hunting/fishing
departments. That job lasted until I got my diploma from business
college when I began working for J. M. Smucker Company – the jelly
guys. I worked in their computer room as an operator for them for
about three years in the early '70's. Then about 9 years at a local
insurance company also in the computer room. In '81 I went to work
for a telecommunications company in Hudson, Ohio called Mid-Continent
Telephone, again as a computer operator. I held several positions
there as it changed names a few times and finally became Alltel. I
was “downsized” from there in '01 and about three months later
started work for a neighboring county's water department as, again, a
computer operator.
That brings us to now.
I'd been toying with the
idea of retirement for a number of years and had never really got
around to setting a date. It was always “in a couple of years”.
But recently my wife and I had actually sorta/kinda picked a target
date a little over two years in the future when we decided that we
would pull the pin. After setting that date, I received news from
P.E.R.S., the Public Employee's Retirement Service that their rules
were changing and, to qualify for their retiree's health care you had
to have at least 10 years service and you had to retire before the
last day of November, 2014.
Otherwise you would need
to have 20 years service to qualify.
Since I will only have 13
years service next year, that announcement made my choice of
retirement date easy. It would not be “about” two years from
now.
It would be Thanksgiving
of next year.
Wow! I was going to be a
retired person! No more “working for the man.” No more having
to go somewhere when the weather was awful. No more long hours doing
things I might not particularly want to do or sitting and waiting for
the day to end.
Now I'd be able to do
pretty much what I wanted to!
And then I thought, what
the hell do I want to do?
And it scared me a bit.
As I've shown you, dear reader, in the earlier paragraphs of this
blog, I've been working for FIFTY DOGGONE YEARS! I'm afraid that I
don't know exactly HOW not to work. It's such a massive transition
that it concerns me as transitions are never without some
cost, some initially and some down the road.
The only thing in my past
I can really equate this to is possibly my quitting smoking. That
was a giant leap at the time as I'd smoked for many, many years
before finally bidding the butts adios. And my life changed at that
time.
A lot.
But there are no patches
to put on your arms or gum to chew when you retire. There are no
groups to join for assistance and advice on the correct procedures to
guarantee a sure and total conclusion to the working habit.
So I'm planning on
spending the next 17 months thinking about what my options are after
retirement and to make some tentative plans.
There are a number of our
friends and family who have retired and who like to tell us that it's
“great” and that “you'll really enjoy it” and “you can do
what you want when you want.” Which all sounds good. But two of
the couples travel around the country and that really isn't too
intriguing to my wife and I. Another likes to fix stuff up and yet
another likes to fish. Likes to fish a LOT. I guess I could do some
of that, too, and it does sound nice that if I wanted to start a
project, I wouldn't have to piece it out between working hours.
That'd be nice.
It's probably an
unfortunate personal habit of mine that I always like to plan stuff
before I do it. Sometimes, I'm told, I'm a bit of a fanatic about
it. But that's the way I am and that surely isn't going to change.
I've even queried Uncle
Google on the internet with the question: “what do retired people
do?” And, after a long list of this and that, one reply stuck in
my mind. It was something like, “Don't think you really have to do
anything. If today you only want to watch the birds build a
nest in your back yard, just do it. And if nothing is the plan for
the day, go for it!”
I do know, however, you
have to do some stuff to keep the brain and body active and
functioning. There is one activity that I'm sure I'm not
going to do. It's sitting in a recliner until I die. As the famous
singer Meatloaf said in his immortal song “I'd do anything for love
(but I won't do that)”, I won't do that!
So don't be too surprised
if you see another blog or three on this upcoming even in the next
year-and-a-half. I'm sure the subject will be at or near the top of
the pile for quite a while.
At least that's the plan.
