If you don't want to work you have to work
to earn enough money so that
you won't have to work.
OGDEN NASH

It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work.
He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours.
The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.
WILLIAM FAULKNER

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them.
Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday.
Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
W.H. AUDEN

I was surprised at the sources for the above-quotes, because it sounds like they understood firsthand the common thesis of ‘work.’ The work they did was amazing, but still, if you understand this work concept in general, then maybe you didn’t like it as well. Perhaps, after a while, as is so often the case, if the work suddenly became your livelihood instead of your source of pleasure, then the pleasure pays for it in ‘drudge’ cents. I imagine anyone could have said that, someone who had nothing else to fill the void of daily living, didn’t like what they did, or perhaps just didn’t like to work at all. I knew somebody once, who from the moment he was born, or so it seemed, thought of nothing but the day he would retire, and I always thought that was such a pathetic way to spend ones’ days...waiting.

The point is that if all you can think of is the day you retire, those days that you are working are missing a time that could be well spent. If you have to do something, do what you like, or find something positive in what you are doing to make it more pleasant. I know that it might be impossible for some to find the joy in a bummer of a job, something that you had to find to do because you needed the money to live, but if you are happy in other ways, it can pass on to that. Granted, it’s not a small moment out of a whole day, those 8 hrs or so, but at least make the effort to like something about it or look for another way that won’t eat away at you (robbing a bank or marrying into a rich family aside). I know that some people are lucky to have a job at all…lucky to have a paycheck, and it is getting more and more impossible to not feel the stress of it.

If you have to work, and most do, you might as well look forward to every day of it, or life would be such a drudge. Perhaps the key to the joy of that is to know how to take the time to relax after a good (or bad) day of it, which is a feat sadly lacking in our ‘American’ culture these days. It is amazing how many don’t bother to take a vacation, or if they do, the long weekend is the goal, rather than a week or two spent doing something other than thinking about work.

I didn’t plan to do what I ended up doing for a “career.” I always avoided that term because I had a notion that those with careers had nothing else better to do with their lives, which I did. But I fell into it, and one part of it moves on to another part of it, and there I was! I had a good run of it, and then one day I began to notice that the world of medicine was moving in a different way, and I didn’t like where it was going. I suspect that it had something to do with where I was working…it was a HUGE medical center connected to a HUGE university. There were too many people in charge of things they really had no concept about, and they were younger, so they didn’t come from the base that I did, and it was dog-eat-dog mentality, and I felt like I was back on that dreaded elementary school playground that I left years ago. Anyone like me entering the mix with a mature brain intact could only be a presumed threat to them. Anyway, I began thinking about a change. It is quite an emotional process, but it is fun to watch the Universe unfold to allow it to happen.

BEWARE
of all enterprises that
require new clothing.
KURT VONNEGUT


Retirement isn’t a Dirty Word, is it?
How beautiful it is
to do nothing
and then rest
afterwards.
UNKNOWN

The above quote is funny and cute, but really represents a lot of BS to me personally. I gave a framed version of it to the FrenchDude, the one I mentioned at the beginning of this page, who has been waiting to retire since his was born. At the moment, I am getting a taste of what retirement might be like. Friends all around me, who are in the early throes of it, are asking me why I don’t actually take the plunge with it, while extolling all of the virtues of this entire blank calendar laid out in front of me with my having total control over how I fill in the little squares. Drives me nuts, not having a plan for the day, so I do make one, using pencil for those irritating little squares. There’s only so much to tolerate, such as lunches, which have never been my favorite way to fill in the blanks, dinners (well, I do love dinner out), and traveling around like a lost nomad. I try not to notice the hours ticking away. I was lucky to love what I did, and for a long time it was worthy of what (?), I can’t remember. But now, here I am, and there is something next, I can feel it; I just don’t know what it is.

Just an FYI from what I’ve observed: Age Discrimination IS a Dirty Word (so-to-speak), and is alive and well and a very active part of hiring (and firing) decisions here in the USA, and don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t.

To be continued...much to say!