the goal

 

Sometimes all I can think about is retirement.  It's become an obsession.  I've found that obessivly checking my retirement funds, however, does not speed up the process of reaching my goal.  In fact, doing so can make me feel as if the goal will never be reached.  But still I check.  I've run through more "retirement calculators" than you can imagine. Most of them tell me I'll be "ok" if I retire in a few years, but I'm not sure if I trust in the world to stay relatively sane enough for those numbers to work out. And in any case, "a few years" sounds like a lifetime away.  I know, I know.  It will go fast.  Years tend to fly.  But honestly, I would prefer to retire now.  Or, say, Christmas.  (That's not going to happen.)

I don't hate my job.  I wish I loved my job in that way that people do who say, "Why would I ever retire?"  But I do not.   I love the people I work with.  It pays pretty well and I get five weeks off a year.  But I find that I'm just very very tired of doing what I've done for 36 years.  Tired of experiencing Monday morning anxiety which often turns into Sunday night anxiety.  Tired of trying to keep up in a field that no longer holds my interest in a deep way. And then there are all of the things I want to do.  I want to live in some other city for a few months at a time sometimes.  Doing that in NYC was such a learning experience--to have time to explore a city (and myself) in-depth and not to be rushed. I want to do more art, if you could call it that.  More like crafting than art, and I may never be an "artist" but I love making things.  And who knows, if I had real time, I might make something I didn't think I could. I want to hike with my dog.  I love that dog.  It makes me sad every time I have to go to work and leave her behind, looking at me with those eyes because she doesn't understand how I could leave her, not if I love her as much as she loves me.  I want to keep bees.  Or, I think I do. It's something I've always wanted to try.   I want to garden more. I'd like to get better at power tools and build myself a pergola.  There are at least a million books I want to read, and trails I want to hike.

I just have to figure out when I can cut the cord, let go, and trust that I'll be okay.  The kicker is that I have to plan, financially, to live to be 100 (or who knows, maybe 110), and yet maybe I'll only live to be 70, in which case I should've retired years ago.  Most people say they don't want to know when they'll die.  I think I might like to, so that I could plan accordingly.  It would definitely eliminate some guesswork.  Is that weird? 

Sigh.