Retirement

Though it is accurate basically to say that I am retired, it is also useful to say that my wife and I also run a couple of businesses. The reason we do this is it is more practical on various levels and we have delegated responsibility to others regarding a lot of things and left only the most important decisions to be left to us. So, what this means in real time is that we have to be on call 24 hours a day to make decisions and to gather information so we can make important decisions. However, to say it is a full time job isn't a useful thing to say because basically I have been retired mostly since 2000 when I was forced to retire because of my having had a heart virus in 1998 and 1999. So, basically if I hadn't retired in September 1998 I would have died. However, I did work on the Census in 2000 but in some ways it was sort of for fun more than anything else at that point and to get used to being retired which in the end isn't for everyone.

For example, my father passed away only 5 years after he retired and so this taught me a great deal about the fact that many people aren't cut out for retirement. Or better said, "The dream of retirement is not the actuality of retirement."

I think my father's identity was too tied up in his work and the fact that he was a very proud workaholic (he sort of never stopped working at something all the time). So, as I observed my father growing up myself, (though I love my father very deeply) I sort of thought to myself, "I won't abandon my children the way I feel abandoned by my Dad when he works so much.

However, around age 12 I was still surviving  childhood epilepsy until it went away at age 15 and because my parents knew I was a very physically strong and intelligent kid and big for my age my father thought it might be useful to teach me his trade of being an Electrician in case as an adult I wanted to be an electrician or electrical contractor like he, my Grandad and one of my uncles. So, summers starting when I was 12 I worked with my Dad most of the time he went to work. Also, they knew that stress caused childhood epilepsy seizures(I only had them at night in my sleep) and wondered if I would grow out of it like I did eventually by age 15. So, as a result I not only learned the electrical trade, I made a whole bunch of money while still a kid and bought myself Scuba Diving  Lessons, and anything else I wanted and eventually when I was 16 I bought a car for 800 dollars (a 1956 Ford Stationwagon that I called my "Surf Wagon").

But, as time went on I realized that if I wanted to live a long time I had to approach life in a different way than my father did. In addition to this I decided to become enlightened at age 17, because I saw all these different people making all kinds of money and not being really happy or enjoying the money they made. So, just making a lot of money didn't seem to make anyone very happy. Also, remember my teen years was the richest people in the U.S. de facto ever got. (in other words there were jobs to go around even for me in my teens and I always had enough money from age 12 to do almost whatever I wanted to. Also, a kid even age 15 could not only afford to get a job, buy a car and pay for gas, a 17 year old man could marry and easily support 5 to 7 people right out of the gate just be being a garbage man, carpenter or something like that starting at 16 or 17 at that time. It was like this in the Los Angeles area from the 1960s to the 1970s until around 1973 during the first Arab Oil Embargo.

So, it was obvious to me even then that mental, physical and spiritual health was equally important to having enough money to retire on. So, basically I sort of planned to work until I died. However, God and life have a way of changing our lives into something completely different than we ever expect. So, when I almost died from September 1998 until May 1999 when my doctor told me my heart had recovered and I would be expected to live a longer normal lifespan, I was stunned in a way I cannot explain because I wasn't prepared to learn I was going to live after being forced to retire. But I had promised God I would start a website to share my experiences with God all over the world and throughout my interesting life until I died which I thought could be within a couple of years at that point.

So, realizing that God had to almost kill me to start what people now call: 'Blogging' is kind of interesting to me, especially because in 1999 I don't think the term "blogging" was widely used or even known at all by me or anyone else I knew. But by the early 2000s the term blogging came up in usage and after researching what it meant I realized this is what I had pretty much already been doing since about May or June 1999 at Geocities. And then in fall 2007 I read about a lady who advocated blogging at Blogger.com so I set up "intuitivefred888" then and started blogging in almost the same way I had run previous websites I owned and developed since 1999. So, blogging is something I do because God seems to want me to do this and also it is sort of fun helping other people through whatever Wisdom I have garnered since I was born almost halfway through the 20th century.

So, since I realized what it would actually take to live to 70, 90, 100 or more I psychologically began to condition myself for this potentially long life because I was intelligent enough to start doing this as a teenager. However, as far as believing how long I would actually live I expected (especially between the ages of 21 to 24 or even 25  to die before I turned 25 because of a broken heart and various and asundry difficulties I was going through back then. So, in this sense we are all paradoxes and I don't think any of us actually stop being paradoxes as long as we live. So, I see it as accepting the paradox that each of us are that allows us to actually live a long time in the end. By getting comfortable in your own shoes you are more likely to see 70 or even 100.

First of all, you need a hobby and friends and relatives if possible to do well retired. Where you might have been living may or may not work for you after you retire. So, thinking about all this is important. As much as I like the beauty of where I live I really can't stand 3 months of high and low fog during the summer. This really makes me crazy. But on the good side, redwood trees and pine trees and streams and ocean nearby I really love along with all the trails through forests and along the beach where I can walk my dogs or hike with my son or other friends. Or if I am really lucky sometimes my wife will walk somewhere with me too. So, not just living in a really big city is really nice at this point in my life. So, I can put my dogs in the truck and within 5 minutes be walking a trail and literally 1 to 5 miles from the nearest person and I really like this as I walk down a canyon with ferns, redwoods and pine trees and northern California wild foliage.