I am grateful that, through no fault of my own, I was put into circumstances that required me to learn how to do hard stuff starting in my late twenties. I took an amazingly slacker approach to life starting at about age 18. It lead to a Marketing degree with a fairly lousy GPA and no good job opportunities. Fortunately, my parents helped me get back on the right track, not so much by providing money (although there was a little of that), but moral support. I went back to school and got an associate degree that led to some technical jobs and I was on my way up. I ended up with a Masters degree in Engineering and now have over thirty years experience in a great field. The whole thing was typified by something my father asked me when I told him I was two old to go back for a Masters degree at age 31.
I said, “I will be 33 years old when I finish my Masters degree.”
He said, “How old will you be if you don’t finish your Masters degree.”
I have thought about that quite a lot over the years. On some levels, I am not that old, but am moving out of middle age now and thinking about retirement in a few years. When I look back at my life, I feel the greatest fondness for the times when we signed up for hard stuff then followed through on it. The Masters degree was one example of that, but our best one (other than Christianity) has to be homeschool. It was a ten year effort and we took a path that was far from the easiest in terms of the available homeschooling methods. It also brought us some of our greatest joy.
Now that I am thinking about retirement, I hate the thought of not having something hard to do. I think the idea of retirement is a recent idea. Did anyone ever really retire in the Greek or Roman eras or in Medieval times. I think people must have slowed down a lot in their later years, but retirement seems like somewhat of a luxury. And it sounds boring and a waste, too. I need to consider what I am going to do after I quit my full-time job. Maybe I can consult for while. But then what do I do after that? I need to consider this more. I want to do something hard that is of service.
Maybe I will get hit by a truck and never have to make these kinds of decisions.
Betty Blonde #287 – 08/24/2009
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