Category Archives: Miscellany
Day One
Feels like I’ve been “retiring” for a long time. Months. Didn’t plan it that way but it sort of dragged out. I grew weary of talking and thinking about it and assumed others did. But a few people have asked about The First Day of the Death of Your Life so here’s a brief run down.
Got to the Soldier of Fortune Command Center (Coffee Zone) around 8:00 a.m. Shot the shit with my buddy Clyde for a couple of hours until he had to go to work. He’s supposed to be retired, too, but “doing nothing” is not an option for him.
Ran some errands and then drove to nearby city to have lunch with one of my house-mates from college. Back home for some (daylight!) fetch with Lucy and Hattie (the Golden Retrievers). A little meditation then off to the gym for 45 min. Really didn’t have much trouble filling the day but there was a noticeably different tempo. Almost anticipation. Probably what dogs experience when they find themselves on the other side of the “invisible fence.” Waiting for that shock that never comes.
Stay tuned.
My offices
While cleaning out my office yesterday, I reflected on the spaces in which I’ve worked over the past 40 years. During my radio days I spent most of my hours in a studio (on-air or production). When I came to Learfield they didn’t have a real office but provided a tiny desk on a tiny sun porch attached to the old house.
I don’t have a photo of my desk but it looked just like this one (in which Roger Gardner is hiding his face for some reason). I got a nicer space when Jim Lipsey and I each had a corner of a big old room in that same house.
We eventually built the nice building we’re in now and I had a nice office just a couple of down from our CEO. That proximity mattered in those days (perhaps it still does). The carpet was a different color in these offices to visually make the point we were special.
I suppose we once needed offices to put things like filing cabinets and typewriters and chairs for visitors. And we needed a private space to talk about things that others weren’t authorized to hear. My little office started feeling like a small prison cell (albeit with a big window).
In an era of smart phones and MacBooks, a building filled with little square rooms lining hallways seems… quaint. Hardly the best use of space. But then, where would I keep my stapler.
Gulfside Cottages
The beach at Destin, Florida
Less to think about?
Depending on your source, we (adult humans) have between 40,000 and 60,000 thoughts in a day. Let’s split the difference at 50,000. How many of those, I wonder, might be thoughts related to your job and the work you do? Twenty percent? Given that most of us spend eight hours a day on the job, that seems reasonable. So, 10,000 work-related thoughts a day.
Now, lets assume your Uncle Ernie croaks, leaving you enough money you no longer have to work for a living. Can we assume that — eventually — you will no longer have those 10,000 thoughts? Your mind probably won’t go into neutral but will replace those thoughts. How, I wonder, does that work? What mental process determines what gets those CPUs?
Walking slooowly toward the door
In grade school I became adept at timing a trip to the pencil sharpener (located next to the classroom door) so I arrived exactly at 3:00 p.m. and could bolt at the first sound of the bell and be the first one out the door.
I began a similar slow shuffle this week by announcing April 1, 2013 would be my last day of full-time employment at the company I have worked for the past 29 years.
Yes, that’s a lot of “notice,” but I won’t be 65 until next March and want to be sure to qualify for some of that great public health care for which the US is known and admired.
And there are a few things to hand off. Shoot, it’s going to take weeks to remember where I hid the master list of all the passwords for the company websites I’ve been tending.
I’m making an effort to not think of this move as retirement but haven’t come up with the right word. Sabbatical suggests I’ll be coming back to a full-time gig and that’s not likely. Freelancer has a sexy ring to it but sort of implies income. I have no interest in “consulting” anyone. So far, I like my buddy George’s suggestion: Soldier of Fortune!
The list of things I won’t be doing is pretty firm. No RV. No vegetable garden. No cruises.
“So, what are you going to do?” is a common question.
“I have no idea,” is a troubling answer for folks who have known me as a hopeless workaholic. And I understand their concern. I always insisted I would work until I dropped. This new let’s-see-what-happens Steve is a new and troublesome persona.
After driving the MINI Cooper that first time, I said, “Yes! No more cars that aren’t fun!” That’s sort of how I’m approaching this next chapter. Only fun and interesting stuff from this point on. (Not that making banners for the company websites wasn’t fun)
What bothers my friends, I think, is my lackadaisical attitude about this transition (metamorphosis?). I’m making an effort NOT to plan the rest of my life. I’ve come to believe such planning is folly (Planners scoff at this kind of talk). Planning is important, I suppose, if the outcome is important to you. But I’m trying accept any outcome (I’ll let you know how that goes).
As I walk verrry slooowly toward the pencil sharpener, I’ll probably share some of what I see and experience along the way. And I’m counting on those who have made the journey and bolted onto the playground to pass along their advice. I’d especially like to hear suggestions on interesting things to do, placed to go, people to meet. I might even take on a project or job along the way. (Will work for free if I can do it the way I want. $100K if you want to have some input)
T-shirt slogans by Scott Adams
- Goals are a form of self-inflicted slavery.
- I’m not lazy, I’m useless. There’s a big difference.
- I can no longer resist the urge to text while you talk.
- You might want to pick a defense that’s less checkable.
- I tried to read your email but the signal-to-noise ratio was too low.
Bruce Sterling’s State of the World 2012
“The mid-century will be about “old people in big cities who are afraid of the sky.” Futurity means metropolitan people with small families in a weather crisis.”
Future Change as Seen by American Right-wing Talk Radio (2011-12)
- Existential threats to the American Constitution. Mostly from “Sharia Law,” which is sort of like the American Constitution for Moslem Islamofascists.
- Imminent collapse of all fiat currencies, somehow leading to everyday use of fungible gold bars.
- Sudden, frightening rise of violent, unemployable, disease-carrying “Occupy Wall Street” anarchists who are bent on intimidation and repressing free speech.
- Hordes of immigrants being illegally encouraged to flood the polls.
- Lethal and immoral US government health-care.
- Radical Gay Agenda / Litigious Feminazis (tie).
- God’s Will. Surprisingly low-key, considering what an all-purpose justification this is.
“I’ve got a soft spot for chemtrail people, they’re really just sort of cool, and much more interesting than UFO cultists, who are all basically Christians. Jesus is always the number one Saucer Brother in UFO contactee cults. It’s incredible how little imagination the saucer people have.”
“Space Travel people. There’s no popular understanding of why space cities don’t work, though if you told them they’d have to spend the rest of their lives in the fuselage of a 747 at 30,000 feet, they’d be like “Gosh that’s terrible.”
“Transcendant spiritual drug enthusiasts. You go into one of those medical marijuana dispensaries nowadays, they’re like huckster chiropractors, basically. The whole ethical-free-spirit surround of the psychedelic dreamtime is gone. It’s like the tie-dyed guys toking up in the ashram have been replaced by the carcasses of 12,000 slaughtered Mexicans.”
P. O. Box: Fighting spam
Reply
I rented a post office box this week. The smallest size. Costs $42 a year. The post office is just a couple of blocks from The Coffee Zone, my morning hang-out. My plan is to check the box on Saturday mornings. If someone needs to reach me more often, there’s email.
“Home delivery” for us has been a box at the entry to where we live. Every night Barb brings up all the cataloges and 3rd class junk mail that cannot be stopped. Nine of ten pieces go into the trash. Nothing –absolutely nothing– needs to be delivered every day.
So I pursaded Barb to let me rent a PO Box.
The USPS will forward 1st class mail to the box but not the junk (“You’ll want to let them know your new address,” reminded the carrier.) Uh huh.
I’m unclear if all of the 3rd class spam will find me. I assume it will. The spammers just pay USPS for sticking some shit in my box. I got the smallest box in an effort to make it harder for them. If the piece is too large, they leave me a note and I can pick it up at the front desk. Right.
I don’t feel like I am giving up any convenience and I will have at least the illusion of some control.