Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Counting the Days...

02/17/2010

Quite a few people know I am now less than a year from retirement, and I know a lot of people who are already retired.  Some of them encourage me to do it now.  “Why wait,” they say.  “Why not do it now?”

A little over a week ago we got nearly two and a half feet of snow dumped on us at The Farm.  The Nancy and I were trapped.  Had we begun to dig ourselves out, we might still be digging.  I estimated there to be 5,866 cubic yards of snow on the half-mile of gravel driveway from the house to the road.  There was no way in hell I was going to even move a shovel full of snow from the driveway.  We were stuck.  And, stuck we were for five days.

Five days with The Nancy is a blissful way to spend time; however, not when forced to do it.  If she were here watching me write this I would say the same thing, and I bet you a bucket full of snow she would say the same thing.  Since we were forewarned of the impending incarceration, The Nancy did bring home her laptop and was able to do some work.  I relocated my office to the basement of our house back in July (whatever I was thinking at the time leaves me clueless), so working was not a problem since all my stuff was already there…except. 

The “except” part is I didn’t want to do any work, though I did and I can tell you it took a great deal of focus on my part.  What I wanted to do was light a fire in the fireplace, grab a book and a beer, and settle in a soft chair and read away until I fell asleep – generally about ten pages or so.  I never got to do it.  The reality of being stranded in your own home is that all you really want to do is get out of it.

Contemplate retirement: if you are not wealthy, or at least somewhat well off, retirement is nothing more than confinement.  If retirement is so damn wonderful, why are retired people always looking for something to do?  I have had friends tell me they are going to retire, but in the same breath tell me they will have to find “something” to do.  What? 

What the hell am I going to do if I retire as planned next February?  My dreams of becoming a geriatric porn star may not materialize because of possible faulty, irreplaceable equipment.  Plan “B,” the micro-brewery, takes a bunch of money and I do not have enough set aside to risk it.  Plan “C,” I do not have one.

The gist of this is simply this, if retirement is so frigging great, why am I waffling on it?  On the other hand, is it at all possible to speed up time to 2-9-2011?  God, how I hate conundrums.

And that is all I have to say about that…