Tue 1 Oct 2019
One year
Posted by PJ under aging, folklore, journeys, the self, time, transformation
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As of today, I have been retired one year.
It was the best decision I ever made, although it was actually my body that made the decision. It had been rebelling against me for some time—arthritis caught up to me much earlier than it does to most—and it had become increasingly difficult physically get in to work and do my job. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to retire, it would just have been better for me financially if I could have waited longer. But it wasn’t in the cards.
As it turned out, as things often do with the Universe, what I thought of as a negative turned into a positive. If I hadn’t retired when I did, in the month following my actual retirement date a large portion of my funding would have dried up and I would have been scrambling, with diminishing energy, to find new funding. Not only that, my colleagues who have continued to work at my former place of employment have seen changes that have left them deeply distressed. Everyone I’ve spoken to has told me I got out just in time.
I had thought to accomplish more in the year passed. But in reckoning up the score I realize I have accomplished quite a lot. It’s just that most of it has been internal. I am not the same person I was one year ago, and the changes have been mostly positive. Oh sure, there are things that could be better, and in some ways I’ve backslid, but this has been a year of finding myself, of redefining myself. I’ve spoken of this before: I never knew retirement would be so much like adolescence.
So here I am again at the time of the Autumn Equinox, seeking balance and rectification and redefinition. But none of that scares me particularly. It’s part of the ongoing journey, a lifelong process. In the fairy stories, journeys and geas and curses and whatnot always last a year and a day. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? But I’m good to go.
