Today begins a new chapter for me. After long
years in the world of employment I have turned off all my alarm clocks and
tossed my hat into the ring of the retired. It was time to reclaim my life. For
years I had a long bucket list in a corner of my
life waiting patiently for me to come to my senses. It is
time to begin work on that before there is no more bucket and no more me
I cannot say it is the end of my career because I never actually had a career. I wish I had, if a career is a calling, but instead like so many of us and for whatever reasons I followed the wooing of wages ignoring the nudging of my spirit urging me toward endeavors for which I was reallly created. It was just a job and something I had to watch like a junkyard dog to make sure it didn't bite me.
I heard most of my life that the way to riches was the use of other people's money. After six plus decades of watching many of the unexplainable wealthy I decided that was a simple red herring to conceal the truth. It's not other people’s money but your allotted time here on earth, "other people's time", that is an all too frequent vehicle to untold and unearned wealth. That time, your very life, is the most valuable possession of humankind, a tiny unique flash, all your own, against the background of an unfolding universe. Somehow along the way through human history we have allowed it to become cheap labor for the expansion and profit of commercial empires. If somewhere in all the minutiae of enterprise you can find a niche that you can truly proclaim is your calling, then more power to you as long as your gain is not at the expense of others. For the rest of us it is time we consider, ever so carefully, what we leave on the table when we exchange a substantial piece of our finite and only life for simple wages.
I cannot say it is the end of my career because I never actually had a career. I wish I had, if a career is a calling, but instead like so many of us and for whatever reasons I followed the wooing of wages ignoring the nudging of my spirit urging me toward endeavors for which I was reallly created. It was just a job and something I had to watch like a junkyard dog to make sure it didn't bite me.
I heard most of my life that the way to riches was the use of other people's money. After six plus decades of watching many of the unexplainable wealthy I decided that was a simple red herring to conceal the truth. It's not other people’s money but your allotted time here on earth, "other people's time", that is an all too frequent vehicle to untold and unearned wealth. That time, your very life, is the most valuable possession of humankind, a tiny unique flash, all your own, against the background of an unfolding universe. Somehow along the way through human history we have allowed it to become cheap labor for the expansion and profit of commercial empires. If somewhere in all the minutiae of enterprise you can find a niche that you can truly proclaim is your calling, then more power to you as long as your gain is not at the expense of others. For the rest of us it is time we consider, ever so carefully, what we leave on the table when we exchange a substantial piece of our finite and only life for simple wages.
