Planet Planners

Getting a leg up, metaphorically, at the age of 46 (going on 47) is a lot harder than I had anticipated. When I was a young buck, I could go and start over however I wanted and, without assurances, I managed to get stuck in another comfortable pattern that involved working, eating, consuming, being lazy, and indulging. I work to satisfy my baser instincts and needs so that I can inch in a forward momentum, while holding on to my vices. It's quite tiresome. My body doesn't know what my mind knows, it merely responds to the chemical reactions that are going on inside. I say I don't know what my hips hurt, or my joints ache, knowing full well that it is the over-excursion that I place on myself due to the weight of my body. I still want to get to point b from point a, but it's now a slow crawl to the finish line. 

And what is the finish line really? I have a friend of mine who is already looking at retirement. It's crucial to him that he retires at an age where he can still enjoy things and have money to live off of. He talks about retirement all of the time. Whenever he starts, my mind drifts, because I have never lived in a world where retirement ever happened. Both of my Grandparents were unemployed when I was growing up. My Grandma eventually got a job as a cook for a retirement home, but when she developed cancer, she was no longer able to work. She didn't retire so much so as her body forced her to take a step down in life. She lived off of social security and whatnot until the day she died. It was hard for her to have the things that she wanted. My Grandfather was a vet. I suppose he lived off of social security and whatever government safety net that he was provided because of his service. I never saw him when he went into hospice. At the end of it all, both of my Grandparents died without ever really having benefitted from living out the rest of their days in retirement. And they died in their 60's. 

As I inch closer and closer to those ages, I am reminded that I have nothing to fall back on. At some point I feel that I would be homeless if all the people in my life never existed or we had some kind of falling out. The high cost of living, bundled with the basic necessities of  needed to exist, is frustrating. I know that in order for me to make any kind of progress financially, I would have to restrict and discipline myself heavily. Things that cost money for entertainment would cease. Food choices would no longer be based off of what I am craving at the time, rather, based on what the bare minimum needed to keep me from tearing off someone's head. The joy, however small, in my life would forever be squashed. The timeline to get from point a to point b looks much further off when viewed from that perspective. Having to stop doing all of the things that I love, the things that I still do anyway, would almost feel like death. 

Joy and happiness aren't both mutually exclusive, but they can exist when a person doesn't have to worry about where the next day will take them. When you are financially secure, the idea of being able to do something or indulge in something, doesn't seem as demonstrative, because money does in fact buy happiness. If the richest people in the world had little to no money, all of their possessions taken away, trips and vacations cancelled, homes in foreclosure and whatnot, if these rich people were destitute, they would sing a different tune about money and happiness. I mean if love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, money and happiness are not far from that pairing. 

Ultimately, I have no plan on what I will do when I am no longer able to do the things that I need or have to do. Living has always been this "well you get what you get" mantra that echoes in the back of my head from time to time. I get what I get and I have to be grateful that I am able to get what I get in the moment. There are no guarantees that what I have will carry me over in to a ripe old age. In the long run, I have to go with the flow and hope that I don't get so miserable, as I am aging, that the folks around me won't have me committed or banished.