Retirement

So after a long and relatively boring day at work I’ve a number of things I’d like to write about. It’s a shame that these thoughts always seem to come in torrents, and never at regularly spaced intervals- like twice weekly. This would make things much more consistent and maybe I would appear more organized. Ok, I’m trying to think of an appropriate quote- it seems there is a proverb that mentions something about an organized mind, but apparently my mind is too cluttered to remember it. My Bartlett’s is staring at me from across the room, but I refuse to be further sidetracked.

Virginia Woolf wrote that in order to write fiction, one needs have an allowance of at least 500 pounds a month. I’m not up to date on my inflation rates, monetary conversions, or which alt+keypad code results in the pound sign, but I think 500 pounds translates to something in the neighborhood of $5,000.00 a month in the world of today. It’s a very novel idea. Now, besides the NEA, where do I find someone willing to give me $5,000.00 a month so I can write?

When I was six months out of high school and a neophyte in the working world, I realized that I was ready to retire. Working for a living is very overrated. It’s really a shame that we have to devote the majority of our lives to working, just so we can afford to spend more of our time doing little, unimportant things, like eating. Don’t get me wrong, I love to eat, but I’d much rather be without the need to eat than have to spend the rest of my life working, at least at a regular job. Why can’t people just run on solar energy instead of food? Wouldn’t that be better for the environment? Yeah, I’m sure scientists might have developed a way for us to synthesize ATP using only sunlight years ago, but McDonalds would have bought and destroyed the research.

Back on track now- so this idea of retirement had really taken my fancy… That is, until I met Eddie. Eddie is the retired brother of our accountant at work. He’s in his late 50s, and is so bored that he wanders into our building at least twice a week for his complaining session with his sister. I’ve noticed this tendency in retired people to spend the vast majority of their spare time complaining. (Actually, I’ve heard that it’s a tendency exhibited by most people who don’t have enough to occupy their time. Which may be why you find so many critics on youtube) You know, “idle hands…” and all that. Don’t get the wrong idea here, I really like Eddie, we’ve had some really great conversations, but he has to be the most eccentric bored person I’ve ever met. He’s always taking up the most bazaar new hobbies. Some of you may remember the movie Twister, which was about these people who chased tornadoes, well Eddie chases cell phone dead-zones. No joke. He even has a red pick-up truck that’s outfitted and insured to the max, just so he can get as close to any cell phone dead zone as he can. He has a polychrome map that displays the different dead-zones for different service providers, which he made via his own research. Last year he made a snow machine for his grandkids. We don’t get very much snow around here, maybe one storm a year is actually worthy of being dubbed a snowstorm. I don’t know where he got the idea, maybe from Popular Science, but he built the thing out of a pressure washer, and it actually makes enough snow to cover your average front lawn in about an hour. About six months ago my boss decided to relieve him of some of his boredom, and recruited Eddie to be our mail carrier. Now, twice a week he goes to the post office and picks up our mail from the PO Box, and then brings it by with him when he comes to visit his sister. Today he announced his newest hobby. Apparently he spends enough time complaining at the post office that he’s on a first name basis with the workers there. He informed us that he’s put dibs on post office box #1. According to the workers, it belongs to some 90-year-old woman who is due to croak at anytime. Supposedly she hasn’t checked her mail in over a week, so it may be he won’t have to wait much longer. How morbid. I really need to introduce the guy to Youtube, or maybe Digg.com.