Retirement.
It never occurred to me I would face, plan, endure or even enjoy it. Hell, I didn’t really believe I would live past 21, much less more than thrice that. C’est la vie.
It started late in 2025. The idea that I should start “planning” to retire. I am very aware of the bureaucracy of it. Not the details, mind you. I don’t even think the government fully understands them. Believe me, there is a LOT of bureaucracy. But far more daunting than the reams of paperwork is that empty canvas: “What will life look like when…?”
I don’t play golf. That was my father’s game. Fuck that. I don’t knit, or needlepoint, or garden, or bake. I don’t have any collections beyond the dust on my cleaning supplies. I love to travel, but even with good financial planning, I can’t afford to excurse around the world or even loll in the Florida sunshine. There are more than 10,000 minutes per week to fill. And everybody (well, three people I can personally identify) tells you if you don’t somehow fill EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM you will probably die within, like, three days.
So, out came the whiteboard. No, literally, I have a whiteboard and some markers. Out came the AI models — ChatGPT and Claude specifically. I prayed. A lot. I daydreamed just as much. I asked myself – never mind “the rest of my life” – what would I like to do for the next five years? And the ideas came and filled the board. Nothing was too small or too large. One of my favorite directors often reminded me, “We can always pull it back later…” Dreams are a place for grandiosity.
Meetings are at the top of the list. If you know me, you know what I mean. If you don’t, why the hell are you reading this shit? I want to attend meetings and groups in places I’ve never been. Hell, in places I can’t pronounce and in languages I’ll need those earbuds to understand. I want to drink coffee and enjoy sun-baked naps in new towns and cities. I DO want to travel the world – in manageable pieces. Maybe I’d like to LIVE overseas. Maybe I would eventually like to die there. Not soon – this isn’t a suicide note. Just finish someplace different than I started. Is that progress?
So…when? One can draw Social Security starting at age 62, with monthly payments increasing from there. I began looking at 67 – what Social Security calls full retirement age. But that’s another two years. (I knew instinctively 70 was out of the question.) The tradeoff comes down to money to live on versus time to live. Somewhere in all that arithmetic, 65 became the right answer for me. I can always figure out how much money I’ll need to live on. None of us knows how long we have left. I decided I didn’t want to miss one minute of it.
I chose to start living. Intentionally.