Why I Don’t Give a Shit About Retirement

As of now I’m self-employed, and I plan to be for as far ahead as I care to plan. When you’re self-employed you pay twice as much in taxes, you don’t get a 401k, you don’t get cheap insurance, and you don’t get a pension. People don’t want you to be self-employed. They’ll remind you that you need those things to have a comfortable retirement.They get a little worried when you tell them you don’t give a shit about a comfortable retirement.

Most people work safe, incorporated jobs for 40-odd years, saving up their sick days to take a three-week vacation one year. Retirement’s the carrot on the stick, the milk and honey for a lifetime of work. And then they spend most of it sleeping and watching TV. Sure, I could do that. Or I could live like I do now.

I have an extremely low cost of living, mostly because I’m not in debt and I don’t feel the need to buy useless shit or throw money into funnels like smartphones and mixed drinks. I live in a gorgeous area where everything I need is within biking distance. I’ve mastered a skill that allows me to earn money without a college degree. If I want, I can pay the bills working 30 hours a month. If I feel like saving up for something worthwhile like a month-long road trip, I’ll work a little more. I love what I do, so I don’t mind if I have to work three hours a day.

Sure, I could work 40 hours a week, make twice as much. Math: that’s a 400% increase in labor for a 100% increase in earnings. Besides, I don’t need the money. Nothing I want costs $20,000. I’ve got no desire to buy a house. If I want, I could do this for the rest of my life. If I felt like it I could save for retirement. I could get a Roth IRA; $100 a month would make me a millionaire by seventy. The thought makes me laugh – I’d have even less use for a million dollars at that age than I would now. Nope, I’m not doing either of things, not now. I don’t give a shit about retirement.

What’s retirement, anyway? Twenty years of not working with a little travel thrown in? That sounds exactly like what I’m doing now, only I’m in the prime of my life when I can truly appreciate it. I don’t need anything a retirement has to offer; I have it already. Everything I want to be doing I’m doing. I’m pursuing my happiness in the present, not the future. I could die today with no regrets. I feel like I’ve lived. To have this for thirty, forty more years? So much life – the thought almost scares me.

I could go on living into old age, if I’m in good health and feel like sticking around for things. Still, those of us who make their mark on the world do it in youth and adulthood; rarely is something notable accomplished in senescence. Nor do I have any desire to linger on past my due; when my health, strength or mind reaches its limit, so do I. I look forward to dying as much as I look forward to living. After a life like this, I’ll be happy to retire permanently. That’s my retirement. Choose yours.

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Brokenchord – A Girl of 13 Summers || 2011/A Girl of 13 Summers/Orion

A Dream in August

The August God drew the blade from its sheath and moved towards the wolves. The man who was Wàngjì found himself breathing very heavily. To weep in front of the God-King was to show weakness in the presence of the highest order. He did not avert his eyes.

There were throngs of people on the hill; senators, retainers, priests, their robes flowing in the breeze, their jewels shining in the golden sun. No one spoke. The blade flashed and the first of the wolves fell. The remaining two sat on the grass, panting. They had not seen, or did not understand. The hand of the God showed neither mercy nor hatred, for he was beyond men. When the three wolves lay motionless, he turned to the man on the hill. The man was shaking. He was tall, and heavily muscled, and his hair was long. He was a fine specimen of man, but there was a great fear in his eyes. He bowed his head.

The blade flashed, slicing off the top of the man’s scalp, sparing the brain. There was a short silence, and then the man jerked back with a scream. He would not have a quick death. Quickly the August God moved, catching the man’s face in his hand, carving off his lips and nose with the blade. The screams were constant now, and blood began to run down the hill. The man who was Wàngjì felt his stomach turn, his heart pound in his chest. Slowly he rose to his feet, gathering his robes.

In The Beginning

In the beginning, in the dream-time, there was a beginning before the beginning, before even sky-father was to be, but this is not our beginning. Sky-father was born in the dream-time, and was alone for more spans of the lives of men than have ever been lived. And in the dream-time sky-father became so great that earth-mother was pulled to him, and this is our beginning.

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In the beginning, sky-father rained his seed upon the earth until she ran red, and when she could take no more she cried out, and her breath enveloped her. And it was not long before her womb began to swell, and she felt a stirring, delicate and small within her. Within her it grew, and she held it inside her waters until one day she shuddered, and behold; it-child came forth from her waters and breathed of the air, and blinked its eyes in the light of sky-father.

And it came to pass that it-child grew and became strong, and walked upon earth-mother and was fed and clothed by her. In time it-child became many, and learned to speak, and with speech it-child realized its thoughts, and gave things names, and called itself man. And man looked about, and saw his mother, close and embracing, and his father, distant and powerful.  And man reached out to sky-father but could not touch him, and there was much he did not understand.

So it came to pass that in some places man turned his back on earthly things and sought to commune with sky-father, and in these places he built great temples and towers, that they might be closer to his radiance. And in some places man turned his gaze from the skies to commune with earth-mother, and in these places he beat drums and stamped feat and reveled in her ecstasies. And in both places there was joy, but there was always a great terror, and a great sadness, for sometimes earth-mother would shake and there would be a great many deaths, and there were times when sky-father seemed to have forsaken man, for he did not answer his calls.

Much time passed. To earth-mother it was a mere day, to sky-father it was an eyeblink, but it was many, many lives of men. For man had grown stronger still, strong enough that some days earth-mother felt pain from man as strong as he had once felt from her. Time had passed, and though man was still young, there was much that man had forgotten, from the early days, the dream-time of man. Though he still clung to earth-mother, with every passing day he took more from her, and grew farther from her, for the time was nearing, the coming-of-age, when man would leave behind his mother-home to enter into the halls of his father, irradiant beyond measure, and beyond: for until that age, man had never known that one day he would go where even sky-father could not; that one day, he would be truly grown.

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Paul Winter – Under the Sun || 1990/Earth: Voices of a Planet

Paint

The canvas is blank; white-tan. It needs some black, a little brown. Slowly he adds both, in watered-down strokes. He shivers. Should start the fire again.

More brown, less black. It’s still uninspiring. Walking to the hearth, he kindles a new fire. It burns, feebly.

He remembers the green. Dipping his brush in, he dabs on a few spots. It’s magic; the entire canvas lights up. He decides he needs…