A Year Later
June 27 is the day on which my professional career abruptly ended one year ago. I will remember it as I do November 22 and December 7 (among others) for so long as I live.
The ending of a career is one of the great transition in the course of one's life. Everything you did to prepare for it, all the sacrifices you made to further it, the successes you achieved and the failures you endured over the decades are vanished in an instant. Puff! Yet, my only regrets are two, specifically that I always worked for someone else and that I gave them a far greater measure of devotion than, in the end, they gave me.
I have overcome my professional demise and rarely think upon it in retirement, the concluding passage of one's life.
Perhaps the greatest joy of freedom from one's career is the time to think. And, I've given a lot of thought toward understanding life and the universe in which we live it. The only conclusions I've reached is that, ultimately, neither is understandable. They are what they are. Accordingly, I've simply gotten closer to nature, of which I am but an integral part, and go with the flow of it.
Creativity has always been a passion and I have put the right side of my brain to more frequent use in retirement. Whether it be sculpting, refurbishing a townhouse or establishing a mushroom farm, I get great pleasure from these things.
And, yes, I've failed to achieve a few goals in the first year. Those Harvard Classics are still in a moving box. Brush has yet to touch canvas. But, please be assured that these failures are minor in comparison with the joy of sitting on the deck in a cool breeze, watching the sun set in all its radiant glory over the Peach Bottom Mountains at day's end.
Retirement is a long weekend without a Monday morning and, folks, it comes highly recommended.
The ending of a career is one of the great transition in the course of one's life. Everything you did to prepare for it, all the sacrifices you made to further it, the successes you achieved and the failures you endured over the decades are vanished in an instant. Puff! Yet, my only regrets are two, specifically that I always worked for someone else and that I gave them a far greater measure of devotion than, in the end, they gave me.
I have overcome my professional demise and rarely think upon it in retirement, the concluding passage of one's life.
Perhaps the greatest joy of freedom from one's career is the time to think. And, I've given a lot of thought toward understanding life and the universe in which we live it. The only conclusions I've reached is that, ultimately, neither is understandable. They are what they are. Accordingly, I've simply gotten closer to nature, of which I am but an integral part, and go with the flow of it.
Creativity has always been a passion and I have put the right side of my brain to more frequent use in retirement. Whether it be sculpting, refurbishing a townhouse or establishing a mushroom farm, I get great pleasure from these things.
And, yes, I've failed to achieve a few goals in the first year. Those Harvard Classics are still in a moving box. Brush has yet to touch canvas. But, please be assured that these failures are minor in comparison with the joy of sitting on the deck in a cool breeze, watching the sun set in all its radiant glory over the Peach Bottom Mountains at day's end.
Retirement is a long weekend without a Monday morning and, folks, it comes highly recommended.
Comments
Post a Comment