Keep on keepin’on? Nope, not me.

Is this your idea of retirement?

 The easy road.  Man, I wish the easy road was reality…  I really do.  It would make life less complicated – or maybe not. The easy road. What a wonderful concept! Roll on, oh silver lining. I guess there really is a silver lining in every dark dirty cloud we accept as our life. Seeing your life as a dark cloud of misfortunes is strictly a matter of choice.

Taunting yourself that everyone seems to have it easier or better than you is self-flagellation at its worst. Poor pitiful Pearl.

I’m a senior citizen.  Yea, I know.  I don’t feel like one.  I feel like life is really opening up opportunities. Of course, real opportunities don’t come to us by winning the lottery, or Publishers Clearing House winnings. Opportunities come with sweat, blood, and often tears. Real opportunities require that four letter word – work and let’s not forget that other bad word, sacrifice.

That peaceful easy feeling Glenn Frey wrote about is not so peaceful or easy when it comes to getting something worth having.  It’s a struggle brother. It’s suffragette city.  Its sunrise on the wrong side of the city, sky high, and six thousand miles away. Yes, it’s real work and there is no easy living. You want it? You work for it, or wait a lifetime for something that will most likely never happen.

I’m retired. Life should be the life of Riley, right? Wrong. Life is a battlefield sister. Let someone else have that hammock and glass of ice tea. You watch that fellow run a marathon in Houston and think you could never do that. Wrong. You can do it, just not in the time they did it. You have to get your buns off the couch and start moving those gams. Get a plan and stick to it.

Jimmy Buffet has it all wrong for the most part. Lying around on the beach drinking tequila and thumping lime slices into the Gulf all the time is for delusional slackers and drunks. All you will end up with is perpetual sunburn and parrot poop on your clothes. Anything worth having is worth working for, remember? That sandy island retreat is a reward and should be a very short one - not a long term existence.

I read an obituary of a man of 86. His 60-something son wrote it and was extolling the work ethic virtues of his father. In the Obit he said his dad was learning Chinese at the time of his death. The list of disciplines he had subjected himself to over the years was amazing. He never let up. To me he is an example of what I should attempt, not that I have a history of taking it easy or anything. I just think there is more and I want it and am willing to work for it.

Sure I play the lotto now and again, but like my youngest brother told me the other day, “Even if you won the Powerball, you would find a way to go back to work”. What he meant was that I would find another discipline to tackle, not go back into the chemical plants. I took this as a compliment.

Physically, there is nothing I am doing harder than the Group X classes at the gym named after the clock.  Boot Camp Monday, cycling (Spin) Tuesday, Les Mills Body Pump Wednesday, cycling again on Thursday, and finishing up with another Body Pump on Saturday. It is hard exhausting work and like my Tuesday Spin instructor Page Morton said the other day, “If this was easy, the place would be packed.”

Do we who push so hard do it because we like to abuse ourselves? Maybe, but the truth is we want short and long term benefits and results and we can’t get them by watching TV or videos of people playing sports. You can’t become a millionaire by watching poker players on TV either. How many times have we said, “Boy, I sure wish I could…” but we are not willing to go the extra mile to make it happen? I know I am guilty.

That silver lining is unreachable for us simply because we are not motivated enough to go after it.  It hurts to admit that to ourselves, but it’s true. Living below our potential is a lifestyle choice. Complacency is the result of those choices. Accepting these low standards becomes what we are. If you don’t like where you are – change it.

That forest full of trees can be cut down one tree at a time, so telling yourself the problem is too large is simply getting back on the hamster wheel you have allowed yourself to traverse. To be honest, I don’t always write such uplifting motivational stuff as this, but we all have areas in our lives that need to be visited now and again. Remember folks, your life is what you make it, so make it or keep dreaming.

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Ahoy there, Mr. Castaway?

 I have 12 working days until retirement.  12 working days.  12-12’s as they say.  4 on, 4 off, 4 on, 4 off, 4 on, and then 4 off...  Off.  Finally off from work since I started at the ripe age of 14, sacking groceries in Woodstock, Georgia.  14 and sacking groceries for five dollars a day and .40 cents total tips for the day.  Often less.

Sunday morning, I will sit up on the side of my bed about 0315 - before my alarm clock sounds the dreaded “cherry picker backing up sound”. I detest it, but faithfully set it each night and to be honest, rarely does it actually get to blast its obnoxious siren.  You see, I have the curious affliction my fellow process operators suffer from, the one where the fear of oversleeping causes us to wake up before the alarm sounds and begin the “look at the clock routine 5 times and finally shut it off before it alarms” syndrome.  Daylights get a bad rap for 99% of shift workers for this reason.  We just don’t get enough sleep.

If you are one of the hundreds – maybe thousands of workers who work a rotating shift schedule in this old oil town listen to me on this.  The secret to getting up in the dead of the night… is to go to bed early.  Get out your pad of paper and pencil and write this down.  Go to bed.  Don’t cheat yourself.  You will lose my friend.  Trust me on this.

37 plus years of this rotating vortex of shift work is now almost in my wake.  Add in 200 to 500 hours overtime each year and I’ve somehow crammed anywhere from 13 and a half months to almost 16 months of labor inside of 365 days.  Wait!  Am I saying what I’ve done is unique amongst shift workers? Not at all.  My experience is typical in so many ways of the wear and tear shift workers routinely endure.  God bless their sleep-deprived souls.

I feel so alive, but at the same time a bit of trepidation perched on the bow of my boat as I row for the final work berth.  Will I be a castaway at journeys end?  Some, like many of my peers, will be thrown or fall off the boat for whatever reason.  I choose to be the one who dives off and swims with strong strokes and my fellow travelers watch and say, “Now that’s how its done”! 

I hope so and to be honest, that’s pretty much how it’s going.

Lord, what a compliment from my peers!  To think I could actually spend all those long shifts and walk out of there feeling good about myself and the many coworkers I know endorse me and the work I’ve done and retain a feeling of accomplishment to boot?  Wow.  Simply wow and that is how I choose to believe it, see it and accomplish it. 

Once ashore though, will I be a castaway, a person who has been shipwrecked and stranded in an isolated place because I now have no work detail or purpose?  I know guys who won’t retire for this very reason.  They won’t come out and say it, but in the secret locker of their heart, they feel they will no longer be needed.  I guess the answer to this is up to me, right? 

Well, over the years I’ve watched my peers retire and all too often, it’s been ugly and I have to be honest and say I am going out kicking and on my own terms.  In the manner of my USMC buds, I am going to do a beach landing on retirement, semper fidelis.  In other words, I’m going out, like Chuck Norris would ready to kick butt and take names later.  I’m jumping overboard and swishing my arms through the warm Gulf waters, Forrest Gump style.  “That’s my boat”. 

Most go out totally rung out, or hospital out of the job.  They limp to the gate looking like their head wore out 3 bodies.  It’s true; why say otherwise?  They look old and tired and are most likely mad about something or someone.  Shoot; I can still run 5 miles if need be and dang it, I might just do it on my last day to stuff it down the throat of the man to prove it.  I came in kicking and I’ll go out the same way and on my own terms.  By the, the man is this mysterious entity that can be blamed for most anything we dislike about a job.

“Mighty big talk for a one-eyed fat man.”  Yea, maybe.  Maybe.  However, there’s still a lot of the crusty salt left in this old Nomex uniform.  I like to think there is anyway and that’s good for something.  Maybe a blueberry cake donut at the Doughnut Wheel at the corner of Garth and Rollingbrook.  I’ll ask my friend there and find out if it is. 

I have a co-worker who is about 30 who has been studying Jujitsu for about 5 years.  He told me he would like to spar me – he calls it rolling.  I told him he would lose either way.  “What?  How is that,” he asked.  He is 30 years my junior and full of vinegar.

“If you beat me, you can tell everyone you beat up a 62 year old man.  If you lose….”

Come July 1^st, I’ll begin my first full month of retirement.  I’ll be hiking, biking, geocaching, or at the gym.  Look me up.  I’ll be the one with a look on my face that my life is just now beginning.

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Boomers, listen up!

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I am a baby boomer and proud of it.  I won’t bore my readers with the definition, as even homeless people have access to the Internet thanks to our current administration.  Not to be rude, but suffice it to say I do not fit the usual mold of growing up having everything handed to me, in fact quite opposite.

I do not remember my Dad ever fixing a flat tire on one of my 3 bicycles I owned before I left home at the old age of 18.  The 3^rd bike I owned, I bought with money I earned when I was 16 and it was a Schwinn Varsity and I was very proud of it.

Being born in 1952, I was part of the explosion of children following World War II and the Korean police action to stop the spread of Communism.  My older sister and 3 younger brothers never went without room and board, but if we wanted anything considered extravagant, it was up to us to go earn it.

My first venture into Capitalism that I remember was in 1960 living on the Compton line in Long Beach, California.  It is also the first time I ate what would later be known as a Jack in the Box taco.  My 8 year old blood brother David Bradshaw and I started a door to door shoe shine business.  If I remember correctly, we would shine a pair of shoes for 5 cents per shoe.

10 cents would buy 2 Hollywood candy bars, which looked like a modern day Zero bar with delicious nougat inside and caramel.  I’d pay 5 dollars to have just one more right now.  David and I had heard about blood brothers and took a small knife and cut our fingers to mix our blood.  I hope he’s still out there somewhere.

The title of this column is an alert of sorts, as many of us have yet to cross over into Social Security benefits or retirement.  Seeing I am throwing in the towel in a month or so, I am approaching the whole thing the same way I do everything else – full immersion.  I wasn’t a Marine, but I do beach landings on anything I tackle.  What I’ve discovered from my peers is, well, either partial ignorance or full blown head in the sand behavior.  So much so, that many are now turning to me to give them what I’ve discovered and this is frankly disturbing.  We are baby boomers for goodness sake; the change the world generation.  Maybe peace, love, and dope took its toll?

A number of years ago, a very intelligent coworker retired after about 40 years of service and I saw him when he visited us at the Texas A&M Fire Field.  He shocked me when he confessed he had no idea what he was worth at retirement.  “If I would have known how much money I had, I would have retired years ago.”  He lived about 3 more years and passed quietly on his farm.

Another bright fellow with 37 years service told me he was retiring August 1^st of this year.  I asked him why August 1^st?  “Because it’s my birthday!” he exclaimed with a toothy grin.

“If you leave on the 1^st of the month, you will forfeit an entire month’s pension as working one day in the month, counts for the entire month.  You won’t get a check for August.  Why not leave at the end of July and draw your pension for August and take your birthday off?” I said dryly, but meant every word of it.

My company offers free consultations with the financial wizards that handle our 401k, but almost none of my coworkers have taken advantage of it, living in fear that inflation will deplete what they have socked away for 30 years.   

Note: Boomers, if you do a small bit of homework, you will know what your financial future is rather than living in shaky ignorance or fear.  Do not let this time in your life creep in front of you like something scary or spooky hiding alongside the trail.  Grab a stick of knowledge and beat the bushes.

Finances are something most people (read men) don’t usually discuss, but as that retirement date stands like a monolithic marker in front of you, it’s high time to seek advice.  No one wants to end up like the starving grasshopper who unlike the ant did not put back provision for the harsh winter.  It is far better to know you may not be ready to retire and get out there and make emergency corrections then wondering if you are going to be living in a van down by the river.  Chances are you will find peace instead of confusion.

I know men approaching 70 years of age that apparently are so unsure about retirement that they will most likely only leave the job when their health fails and all because they won’t ask the right questions.  Don’t approach retirement this way boomers.  Don’t.  You worked for it, now take retirement by the horns and start enjoying the fruit of your labor. 

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