The shell cracked. I emerged. How it will end is anyone’s guess.

  • 0 Posts
  • 19 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 17th, 2023
  • subspaceinterferents@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•What do you want to do when you retire?
    16·
    1 month ago

    OK Boomer has entered the chat. Seems most comments are from those looking forward. I left the paycheck life in 2019. Except for 2020 (catching up on every episode of The Office), I’ve been having a measured good time. I have lucky stars to thank. Got married in ’85. Adopted a daughter in ’91. Wife and I inherited a home when my mom died. We spent 30 years saving for retirement instead of paying a mortgage/rent. Was self-employed the whole time in marketing communications. Wife was a mid-level manager in health services, retired 2 years before me. We spent decades living below our means. I threw the towel in at 62. I think being self-employed (and a one-man show) prepared me for my after work life. I wasn’t going to miss the office life and friends because I didn’t have any, in the conventional sense. These days I work in the garden, getting dirt in my fingernails. I teach QiGong and Tai Chi pro-bono to a dedicated senior group at a local park, and I’m getting a similar gig with the city rec services to do the same. I’m a small-time landlord (one-unit granny flat behind the house). I recently transitioned from Mac to Windows (sorry Linux users, I know…) with great success. I drive a 25 year old stick-shift Toyota truck and hope it makes it to 300K. At 66, I exercise almost every day, and while I could be convinced to take a nap in the afternoon, I never do. My wife is a pickleball queen, and we manage to have lives together and apart. We both have pretty good health for oldies. Several of my peers have died recently, and the end of the road looms closer for me than ever before. My life is devoted to staying healthy and paying it forward as long as I can keep it together.

  • subspaceinterferents@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•What has been the best thing that has happened to you so far?
    272·
    10 months ago

    My best thing happened unexpectedly on March 15, 1973. (Probably makes me the oldest person in the room.) My high school guidance counselor died in his sleep. Bummer for him, but lucky for me. Back in the ’60s, my school system had me pegged as a gifted student, which was a one-size fits all label. That tag followed me to high school, where as a green sophomore, I was assigned the “gifted” guidance counselor, Mr. Daly. Daly was also a history teacher, and greatly loved and admired. He was a retired USMC Vietnam vet, and suffered from Marfan syndrome, giving him a strange and imposing appearance. He was a force of nature, that guy. I was 15 when we first met, and I had no idea about what I would do with my life. Because of my label, Daly had it all figured out. In his mind I was on my way to become a doctor, lawyer, CEO, etc. Yeah — no thanks. I had no goals, only passions — Photography and Design. I wanted to enroll in my school’s tech classes and follow my interests. Daly squashed that idea. Wasn’t going to happen. I was heartbroken. As a kid of 15 I had no leverage, and didn’t know how I could get what I wanted. My parents were no help; “He probably knows best” was the best they could do. A few weeks later, when I came to school on the 16th of March, word was that Mr. Daly had died the previous night. While the school was in mourning, I was a pretty happy kid. My new counselor had no objections to me taking the photo and design track. :: After high school, university and some preliminary jobs, I started my own marketing communications business (then called freelancing, today gig work) and continued for 30+ years by myself. Of course the work had its ups and downs, but I was happy and always employed. :: Now I’m 66 and retired, and I always wonder what my life would be like if Mr. Daly had lived and imposed his vision on my life. Guess I got lucky. :: Rest in peace, Mr. D.

  • subspaceinterferents@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Have you read the Unabombers manifesto?
    2·
    1 year ago

    I think the next hundred years will bring more changes to humanity than the last 10,000 years have. We have devised methods to gaslight ourselves; we’re moving into a world where the concept of truth is malleable and unknowable. The machines will get smarter, the rich will get richer. I’ll be 66 years old in about a month. I have many more yesterdays than tomorrows. I’m not looking forward to leaving this world, but I’m not particularly interested in being a participant in what comes next.

  • subspaceinterferents@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Have you read the Unabombers manifesto?
    131·
    1 year ago

    Sure, the guy was a murderer and somewhat nuts, but this quote of his always rang true with me. This is, in a nutshell, the future: “But I am suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What I do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.”