I'm retiring.
The Daily News
1 Yup. On May 29, 2015 I intend retire. No ifs, ands or buts. It is practically in stone.
2 Last night I wrote tons on this.
3 I must have erased it. I used two different puters, so I probably saved the one that had nothing on it.
4 It's just as well.
5 For the record, I began arranging for this on January 12, scheduling meetings with retirement people and all.
6 I'll spare the details unless you wish to go into a coma.
7 Monday I officially reported my leaving to HR chief Cari Vaeth, quite fitting if you ask me. Cari hired me at my current gig when she was running the show.
8 I also wrote an official letter to my Admin, two of whom responded with lots of congrats and other fancy stuff.
9
10 Lots of reminiscing.
11 Lots of good memories.
12 Right now I'm looking at an old grammar book the exercises of which I memorized a bazillion years ago.
13 It has tragically torn pages and comfortably familiar lessons.
14 Faces come at me, all good.
15 That's the thing about it. Retiring that is.
16 You have regrets, but no room for them in your life.
17 So off they go.
18 Just like that. <dusts off hands>
19 In the piece I wrote last night I had thrown in a bit about Vonnegut's description of shizophrenia, which he likened to sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes. That's a bit what the past two days have been like: sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes.
20 He wrote that in Breakfast of Champions. Here is the actual passage:
There in the cocktail lounge, peering out through my leaks at a world of my own invention, I mouthed this word: schizophrenia.
The sound and appearance of the word fascinated me for many years. It sounded and looked to me like a human being sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes.
I did not know for certain that I have that disease. This much I knew and know: I was making myself hideously uncomfortable by not narrowing my attention to details of life which were immediately important, and by refusing to believe what my neighbors believed.
21 I remember reading that odd book years ago and worrying about the state of his mind.
22 He even apologized. He said this later on:
I am better now.
Word of honor. I am better now.
23 Last night I went to my dusty bookshelf and looked all over the place for Breakfast.
24 It reminded me of going through all of Dad's books so we could sell them at a garage sale a few weeks back.
25 Lots of dust.
26 Looking through my own stuff I realized I didn't have any novels or story books.
27 This makes perfect sense.
28 Most of my working life I have spent hours reading papers, so much so that I'm coming to think that milk should be spelled mikl.
29 The point being that I now associate reading with working.
30 Sad in a way, I suppose. I read and write all the time.
31 Fiction bores me.
32
33
2 Last night I wrote tons on this.
3 I must have erased it. I used two different puters, so I probably saved the one that had nothing on it.
4 It's just as well.
5 For the record, I began arranging for this on January 12, scheduling meetings with retirement people and all.
6 I'll spare the details unless you wish to go into a coma.
7 Monday I officially reported my leaving to HR chief Cari Vaeth, quite fitting if you ask me. Cari hired me at my current gig when she was running the show.
8 I also wrote an official letter to my Admin, two of whom responded with lots of congrats and other fancy stuff.
9
10 Lots of reminiscing.
11 Lots of good memories.
12 Right now I'm looking at an old grammar book the exercises of which I memorized a bazillion years ago.
13 It has tragically torn pages and comfortably familiar lessons.
14 Faces come at me, all good.
15 That's the thing about it. Retiring that is.
16 You have regrets, but no room for them in your life.
17 So off they go.
18 Just like that. <dusts off hands>
19 In the piece I wrote last night I had thrown in a bit about Vonnegut's description of shizophrenia, which he likened to sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes. That's a bit what the past two days have been like: sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes.
20 He wrote that in Breakfast of Champions. Here is the actual passage:
There in the cocktail lounge, peering out through my leaks at a world of my own invention, I mouthed this word: schizophrenia.
The sound and appearance of the word fascinated me for many years. It sounded and looked to me like a human being sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes.
I did not know for certain that I have that disease. This much I knew and know: I was making myself hideously uncomfortable by not narrowing my attention to details of life which were immediately important, and by refusing to believe what my neighbors believed.
21 I remember reading that odd book years ago and worrying about the state of his mind.
22 He even apologized. He said this later on:
I am better now.
Word of honor. I am better now.
23 Last night I went to my dusty bookshelf and looked all over the place for Breakfast.
24 It reminded me of going through all of Dad's books so we could sell them at a garage sale a few weeks back.
25 Lots of dust.
26 Looking through my own stuff I realized I didn't have any novels or story books.
27 This makes perfect sense.
28 Most of my working life I have spent hours reading papers, so much so that I'm coming to think that milk should be spelled mikl.
29 The point being that I now associate reading with working.
30 Sad in a way, I suppose. I read and write all the time.
31 Fiction bores me.
32
33
34 Allow me to re-phrase: I would rather read true things, because quite often true stories are more fun because well,
they're true.
35
36 Or exaggerated.
37 I'm thinking of taking the entire bookshelf to a lake and backing it into the water.
38 I just looked again at the grammar book. It is my last chance to teach anything.
39 W-A-T-E-R. It has a name.
40 Ever laugh and cry one note simultaneously?
41 Yeah, me neither. Especially just now.
42
43 I am better now.
44 Word of Honor.
45 I am better now.
46 I gottago.
47 Peace.
~H~
fin.
No comments:
Post a Comment