Are we ready for this?
Sitting here alone, in a bed that squeaks with every move I make. I am in a cabin at a lodge in a remote part of Utah. Gazing out the window, trying to gather my thoughts. So many trees and at least 100 chipmunks lie before me and the lake just a few hundred yards out. It is a gorgeous clear fall day, with gusts up to 14 miles per hour coming out of the south. The dry, golden grass between here and the lake is mesmerizing as it dances to the music of the wind. There is a very raucous duck on the kid’s lake just west of me, making himself known every 20 minutes or so. He seems particularly disturbed today.
It’s quiet in this place, with visitors out and about, doing all that they came here to do. Bob took his poles and gear down to Little Hole to get outside and fish a bit. As much as he comes to these places to fish, I come to reflect and to write. We actually drove a bunch yesterday, had lots of activity and honestly, I could feel the rumblings deep in my gut for some quiet writing time. It’s why I come here. Often times when we go somewhere I do my best to squeeze it in when I can, in between his activities. Let him do what he wants for a while and let me write for awhile, although sometimes the scale isn’t quite balanced. Today I am working on evening out the scale, pouring a little more onto my side.
It has been my intention my whole life to write a book. A book about what you ask? Who the fuck knows, not a bloody clue, but it has been the constant drum beat in my being across my lifetime…be a writer, write a book. Just write, declare yourself a writer and it will come one day.
Well, here I am with 60 biting me in the ass and not one book completed by my pen. Maybe when I get a little more time, when I take a few more classes, learn a few more skills, then the masterpiece will reveal itself. Sure. Give it time. There’s always time. It will come. Yet here I am as 60 approaches, surrounded by jobs, family, new babies being born, friends and family passing away and just so much day to day obligation. As I enter what I like to jokingly call, the last trimester of my life, I am gravely aware, it is time to get busy if I am ever going to kick this baby out of the womb and into the world. It’s time has come…maybe my time too.
As a little kid, I remember being told my grandmother had written a book. Spoken about in hushed tones, they called it a dirty book. I didn’t have a clue what a dirty book might have been at that age and over the years I never thought to ask her about it. Its interesting to me now though to think about her; a woman born in the early 1920’s, married in her early teens, raised three kids, had six grandkids. She was able back in the 60’s and 70’s to knock out on an old school typewriter, what might have been considered a dirty book in her spare time. I wonder now how dirty it might have been, and who the hell told her it was dirty? How did she feel knowing the story she felt compelled on put down on paper was considered by some to be dirty? Did she feel empowered to write her naughty number or was she made to feel shame for it? Did that shame keep her from writing the next one? So many questions and too late to ask. I wish I had been able to speak to her about her desire to write and to give her all her flowers for what she had come up with, even the naughty bits, because I understand now that the accomplishment was a grand one!
And now here I sit, wishing in my heart I had a book, even a dirty book simmering just below the surface. Maybe one day in the future my dirty book will come, but for now, I am here, less than two months before my 60th birthday ready to take a look at where I truly am and what is before us.
For the past year or so we have attempted to plan for my husband Bob’s retirement. I have to admit, for most of our 35 years together, we couldn’t quite grasp the idea of how retirement would ever be possible for us. Early on, after being self employed for nearly ten years, we lost everything, filed bankruptcy and had to start all over again. The damn near debilitating cloak of shame was heavy and took almost 20 years to take off. But we are fighters. We live, eat and breathe our self declared family motto of GSD. To our detriment at times, it’s what we do; we get shit done. We don’t really have another speed, just GSD, rinse and repeat.
When you are trying to rebuild your lives with a young family; three kids and a dog in tow, GSD can be a good rule to live by. We hustled hard, Bob got a good job with the city. I had a good job, finished my bachelor’s degree and went to grad school. We were goin’ and blowin’ as the Texan in Bob likes to say. We were doing well, pulled ourselves out of our hole. Six months before I was to finish my master’s degree, Bob got hurt; a back injury that caused him to lose his steady, dependable job. Overnight the cloak of shame doubled in weight on his wounded back.
Since that time a lot has happened. While we made progress, we never had a clear understanding of how retirement would ultimately be possible for us, what it might look like. I didn’t have what you might call the best role models on making this chapter in life happen. My mom and step-father’s retirement plan once upon a time had been to grow a lot of pot in a partially underground greenhouse in our backyard. After his arrest for said greenhouse, they never did quite come up with a new plan to replace that original one. My father and my stay at home step mother on the other hand were dependent on his union pension. One plan too conservative for our liking, while the other not conservative at all; neither of which made sense to us. So we just kept GSDing as hard as we could.
No matter how hard we worked, it seemed we just continued to live pay check to pay check. It felt as though winning the lotto was the only way it might ever happen. Honestly, the pot plan could be workable, especially now that it was legal in our state, but I digress.
In 2019 I sought out the services of a career coach to help me get unstuck and guide me in planning the next iteration of my career. She told me I was chronically underpaid for my level of experience and education. That stung to hear, but I also knew she was right. Fortunately, or unfortunately, in 2008, after my husband’s back injury, I stumbled onto a career path, starting in my mid 30’s that notoriously underpaid and where women were few and far between. I had some great opportunities fall into my lap, did a stint at Amazon and then had a very tumultuous run at a small logistics company, with an abusive owner at the helm. Thank God I was fortunate to be able to secure a job on the other side of the fence in my industry, on the customer side.
For once in my lifetime, I found myself being paid what I was worth. With this one change in our lives, suddenly retirement felt within reach, reach-ish at least. There were many challenges in this job but it also had regular raises, bonuses, stock options, what?! You mean this is how people have been operating around me all along?
We made a plan for Bob to retire in 2024 and in June we made that happen and still have not starved to death as he was certain we would. Did he go easy into retirement? Oh hell no! Recently when we figured out we had received some roof damage in the last hail storm, his immediate first reaction was that he could go back to work. Dude, that boat was burned months ago, we aren’t going back. We will figure it out. But my goal is not just to figure it out, I want with all my heart to make this time of our lives the best yet. I still have a few years left to work, but plan to join him sooner than later.
I do genuinely hope that a book is in me at some point in time. In the meantime I want to tell this story of discovery. This isn’t going to be a story about the basics of retirement; how to save and invest enough, because lord knows we haven’t been very good on that front. This is just a simple story of how we make the transition from being full time employed people, out there getting shit done, to being retired, taking time to mentally and physically rest, to do all we can to improve our overall health, to be open to the idea of having fun and adventure and to once and for all lay down the mantle of obligation. Not too much to ask is it? Time will tell.