Retirement: Month Three

Financial challenges continue to abound. Evidently, the US does not value its older and poorer citizens, judging from the efforts of Congress to ignore the economic imbalance and quash any reasonable effort to provide for anyone making less than $1 million/year. Bernie Sanders says it best:




You'd think that the folks with the big money are trying to kill off a significant portion of the population. Is this truly all that capitalism is about? Greediness with murderous impunity? Do these people truly believe they are performing Christian acts? If the Bible is to be taken literally, did not Christ ALWAYS reach out a helping hand to less fortunate folks? I am blown away by the attitudes and actions of people who lack compassion for humanity while steadfastly maintaining that they are the embodiment of Christianity.

And don't get me started on how a simple phrase--Happy Holidays--is taking Christ out of Christmas. Rampant support of buying tons of "stuff" mostly made in China, fer crissakes (literally) belies that knee-jerk gem of hypocrisy. Be honest--do you decry outsourcing (by those very same obscenely rich US companies) on the one hand while gobbling up thousands of tons of plastic crap that does nothing to enrich the true Christmas spirit on the other?

The same thing is at work here. We seem to be denying our collective responsibility to individuals who have worked long and hard AND PAID INTO SOCIAL SECURITY and our insistence that $$ = right = the One True American Way.

Folks, you can't have it both ways. Either you follow Christ's principles, or you cede power to filthy lucre. Either you practice what you preach, or you doom yourself to whatever hell you subscribe to. Good luck with that!

Back to retirement. November saw some health scares (clean lab results, thank goodness!), lots of research on internet business, learning new networking tricks, meeting new friends and reconnecting with old, singing a fabulous concert (go AVAE). Baby face time, gratitude for what I do have, despair over back pain limiting physical activity, resulting in jillions of boxes left to unpack and resistance to any chores whatsoever, raccoons ripping off siding, life is NEVER dull.

So December will find me still trying to make sense of a wildly disruptive employment situation and readjusting plans and goals to stay afloat. According to Linus Pawling, retirement is Paradise: he gets all the benefits and none of the angst.

(Note the very full belly)

All clean and fluffy, ready for the next nap.