Howdy y’all!
Ye Olde Blogge is going through some major changes. We’re moving our secret headquarters to keep the ICE gazpacho police guessing and off of our tails. And, we’re changing our top secret cover story from mild-mannered full-time citizen and part-time blogger to full-time blogger!
What?!? Can that be right? I guess it is. It seems to me that blogging was made for retired old farts, so I’m going full-time, baby! That’s right, we’re quitting the day job and retiring during the most inauspicious, capricious, and malicious moment possible in the history of the US, humanity, and the world.
Luckily, just between you, me, and the server, we won’t be moving to the US. We’ll be in the Americas, and if all goes well, meaning I live long enough, I will even change mcitizenship.
However, all this has enormous implications for Ye Olde Blogge!
First, I’m giving up my work computer, which means I’ll be using my Kindle Fire as my primary Interweb interacting device. It’ll be okay, but it ain’t no computer. The biggest problem is with memory because it has very limited capacity, so everything will stored up in the clouds. It’s gonna be different.
Second, I’m terrified. I have worked nearly everyday of my life for the past fifty years. I came up poor. I was poor until I began my professional career. Most of my life has been spent living paycheck-to-paycheck. The idea of not being employed just leaves me a little freaked out. Even though the financial advisor, and more importantly, Ma Belle Femme, says we’re good to go. It leaves me sweating bullets.
I got my social security notice in the mail, and it ain’t much since most of my employed time in the US was working minimum wage. Supposedly, we’ve got our “savings” and investments that will provide us with income, but with everything going on in the world, I’m just not feeling at all settled.
Third, we’re moving back to civilization — no insult intended to the good peoples of Cambodia, China, Kenya, Viet Nam, or South Korea where I’ve lived during the past thirty years — but we’ll have a dryer, steady reliable electricity, and potable tap water. We’ll be able to understand the casual conversations going on around us for the first time in forever. Every time I’m in what passes for an English-speaking country, it always leaves me feeling harried, haggard, and unnerved. I can’t ignore what people are saying. I’m sure it will pass, but still.
And fourth, I’m teaching a summer camp! God help me! It’s five to fourteen year olds. Five year olds. Besides needing to provide daily infotainment sufficient to occupy such frivolous minds, I’m in my old classroom. You could be forgiven for thinking that is a good, but there is nothing good about being in an empty school building. It’s a little frightening and echoy. I’m wandering the halls and looking into dark empty classrooms hoping to see a friendly face that just isn’t ever going to be there again.
What are we doing?!? How can we be leaving all of this behind? It’s madness! Madness, I tell you!
So, posting is going to be a little more erratic than usual… if such a thing is possible.
Blog On, Siblings!
Jack
The Psy of Life 
Good luck going forward, with all your ambitions 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Congrats! I retired in November due to health issues so I know the apprehension. I remember Jo being good with numbers so believe her. I might return permanently to the “Americas” but no time soon. I will be returning the States twice a year to see the grands. I have 4 now. I am easing into retirement because I work part time as a speech therapist online,10 hours a pay, but where I live that goes a long way with the social security income. When I saw how long I have been working in my life, I relaxed a bit. I’ve done my duty, time to chill a little. Two couples have inspired my retired life and they have shown me that retirement is a new adventure ( in slow motion in my case). Embrace it! Bonne Chance!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Lisa!
Long time no hear from. Four grandbabies! Congratulations! It is important to keep up with them, but yikes, going in and out of the US right now is frightening. By taking a shortcut through the US, the drive from Winnipeg to Toronto can be shortened by three hours. The risk of ending up deported to a concentration camp doesn’t seem worth it, though, especially since they’re doing social media searches.
You’ve really piqued my curiosity, though, about where you’ve retired. I’m hoping my retired blogging role-models will be as supportive and mentoring as yours has been.
Like you said, you’ve earned your retirement. We’ve worked long enough and earned enough. I’m lucky to have Ma Belle Femme in my life. Before her, my thought was doing a stretch in the federal pen when I got tired of working. So, things are looking up from there at least.
Retire On, Sibling!
Jack
LikeLike
All my very best to you and your family in your new life. It will be OK. Dare I say, it will be good, even. We worried about all that, too (granted, no Trump in office at that time, but still, you have real and legit concerns. Maybe the creepy school being creepy isn’t, but it is to you. Anyway, I’m excited for you all. And maybe I can get caught up on my backlog of reading you! :-)🖖
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Ali!
I keep telling myself that there is no problem that can’t be solved by completely ignoring it. Retirement can be resolved that way, too. Luckily, in this case most of the financial matters will be resolved by me ignoring them — the rule in our family is never give me money — and Ma Belle Femme tending to them. However, my other rule — always put off until tomorrow what should’ve been done yesterday — won’t work here because we’ve got some very hard deadlines coming up. Luckily, Ma Belle Femme is good with hard deadlines, too.
I know I’ll habituate to retirement eventually. It’s not like we haven’t made big moves before. The only one comparable in stress, though, is when I decided to quit my jobs in the US and move to Korea to teach English back in 1996. We’ll get there… I guess.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, Jack, blogging is made for us retired old farts. The unemployed or under employed 15-25 year olds are all doing something else, like TicTok. From everything I’ve ever heard about your Belle Femme (all of it, of course, from you), if she says the time and the finances are right, then that is truth. Good luck and safe travel.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
Blogging and a few of my other hobbies — gardening, brooding rumination, the occasional long-distance race — are the only things that really kept me going the last few years of work. I’m really looking forward to having the time to pursue my interests. Being bored is not one of the things that I’m worried about.
There is not a day in the past thirty years of marriage that I have not paused at some point and been grateful for my spouse. I think the secret sauce in our relationship is that we complete one another.
My next blog post is how our technology is actually making us stupider unlike technological innovations in the past. I’m sure I saw one of my foundational articles in your Scrapings a month or so ago. It was about a finding that using AI to write essays made people worse writers and less informed. It really means that we’re doing it wrong — like most things humanity does. We may be the most fearsome predator in the history of the planet, and the only thing that can, and probably will, drive us to extinction.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
I suspect that you will discover abundant material for blog posts that your memory has stored away when you didn’t have time to take it all on.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
I keep notes for future blog posts. It’s a pretty disorganized tangle of ideas and links, but it’s all there some place. And then there is the issue du jour that often bumps a good idea to a later post. Once I can spend the first couple of hours each day blogging or at least several days a week, I’m going to be happier and more relaxed. It’ll be good because it will give me some structure to my days.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
We await the results.
LikeLiked by 1 person
it is never easy changing one’s life, but I think it will be a good thing for you and la belle. I was just wishing last night that I could move some
where south of our border…somewhere I could live easy and understand the words being spoken around me. This I can not do…but I so wish I could. I no longer recognize my own country…or countrymen. The incivility alone is enough to bring fear into the hearts of those of us who are “others” to the white male elitists who control our futures. I will be vicariously li8ving through your words. Blog on dear friend and speedy, uncomplicated move to you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Suze!
It is one of the reasons that I am relieved that I have the option of living outside of the US. I truly fear for anyone still residing in the borders. We have been overtaken by madness. There is a big fight ahead of us. I hope we choose the civil disobedience route and that sanity can be restored relatively soon.
I just can’t believe how shortsighted our fellow country folk are. It’s like we’re caught in some feeding frenzy where everyone is out for their own betterment at the expense of everyone else around them. None of us are likely to escape it unscathed and everyone will have to participate in some form or fashion.
I will endeavor to spice up your life vicariously, although it won’t get much beyond the single half pepper on the Thai restaurant menu.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s a good thing, that you will be, working with young children, because if you give them enough inoculation from the current government’s BULLSHIT, there just might still be hope for the U.S yet, so, don’t sell your self short, you ARE, doing things to make sure, that young minds don’t get, tainted, and that’s all you can do, your job, and, that should be, more than, enough!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Taurus. I am doing everything I can to help my sixth graders understand the choices their wealth and social status will thrust upon them, although most of them are non-US nationals. It doesn’t matter since they are all members of the oligarch class.The importance put on the ostentatious displays of wealth and the entitled self-importance that comes along with it is one of the most sobering aspects of my job. Luckily, most of them still respect their teachers enough that a bit of disapproval or disappointment from me goes a long way.
I’m just hoping that we all survive the next four years. It is almost certain that a significant portion of us won’t, though. Depressing times are upon us, my friend.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
LikeLike
First, congratulations on officially reaching oldfarthood! I’m told it’s wonderful but like you, it’s more than a little terrifying (I am facing that myself…some days looking forward to it, and some days sweating bullets. Often in the course of the same day).
I can only imagine combining that with moving … then getting the five year olds! AIEE!
Seriously, it is good to hear good news for you and yours.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bruce!
I swear this summer camp gig is going to kill me. I’m going to die covered in paint. Oh, the enthusiasm that a five year old brings to a task. Thank goodness they aren’t ICE agents.
I used to have good days and good moments to my days, now it is all living in absolute exhausted fear. I did realize today, though, that one of the issues is staying at the school past the closing of the school year. There’s no one to say goodbye to. The ending of school years is too frantic to say proper goodbyes and everyone, literally, departs the country in the first twenty-four hours of the closing. There wasn’t a proper goodbye then and now there’s no one to say goodbye to. Hrmph.
I am trusting in whatever maybe greater than us and Ma Belle Femme that our retirement will be adequate. If not, there’s always my original retirement plan of getting a twenty year stretch in the federal pen.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLike
I am an old fart and a full time blogger…..after an injury forced me top retire I fell in love with blogging….I hope all goes well with you and all your endeavors….good luck, Jack chuq
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Chuq!
I count myself fortunate to have stumbled upon this little vanity project when I was still earning enough to justify funding it. Now, it’s become such a big part of my life that there is no cutting off the funds. It is in the annual budget. I used to think like Medicare and Medicaid, but that analogy no longer works, so I’m just keeping it on the down low in the hopes of avoiding the budgeting axe.
With Ma Belle Femme — a force of nature if god ever created one — at the helm, I’m sure we’ll be fine. It’s just myself that I have to keep myself from tripping over.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
I hope all goes well and that we see more blogs! I’ll be joining you after one more year, and, yeah, retirement is kind of daunting.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Ted!
I guess everyone will get their turn in the barrel if they’re lucky. I just can’t imagine not teaching. Everyday I think about what I’m going to be doing in class next year, how I’m going to tweak what I’ve just done, and then remember that this is it. That’s the most sobering thing of all.
It’s not even that I think I’m going to be bored or directionless or anything. Between the blog, La Petite Fille’s university life, and my other hobbies — brooding rumination, for example — I’ll have plenty to keep me busy and fulfilled… it’s just hard to imagine doing it all without the context of school, colleagues, and students. It’s weird for an introverted stay-at-home wallflower like me who was thriving during the #COVID19 lockdown for two years would think that I would miss the social milieu of school. Did not have that on my lifelong BINGO card.
Hope to hear from you more, Ted. I’m glad your girls seem to be doing okay from what I can glean from my occasional visits to Facebook.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLike