The Ten Thousand
The other theory is that a genuine break always consists of a change. In that model, a mental worker can go out and recharge his batteries by building a cabin or chopping his way through an enormous woodpile. This theory has the virtue of appealing to balance. When we do too much of one thing, it poisons us until we rid ourselves of the toxins by doing something else.
But the ultimate vacation is the temptation to walk out on our own lives the way we walked into the way we are. We don’t want a vacation. We want a new life. You can call this the “Lost Weekend” theory of leisure and there are two sides to it. Down one road is the sad realization that we’re stuck in a rut and might as well accept it. A vacation in this world, is a chance to fool yourself into thinking that you’re not stuck, just waiting for the right time to start your new life.
There isn’t any cure, besides just stopping. And how many of them can do that? They don’t want to, you see. When they feel bad like this fellow here, they think they want to stop, but they don’t, really. They can’t bring themselves to admit they’re alcoholics, or that liquor’s got them licked. They believe they can take it or leave it alone — so they take it. If they do stop, out of fear or whatever, they go at once into such a state of euphoria and well-being that they become over-confident. They’re rid of drink, and feel sure enough of themselves to be able to start again, promising they’ll take one, or at the most two, and — well, then it becomes the same old story over again.
But then again you might actually do it. Maybe all true vacations are ones in which risk and uncertainty are ultimately accepted; where the vacationer really goes out the door not merely apparently, but actually. How many of us really trust ourselves enough to regard the door as really open?
He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: it’s springs were at every doorstep and every path was it’s tributary. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to.”
“No Way In” print edition at Amazon
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Vacations and recreation are fun, but a real re-creation of one’s livelihood or avocation is a serious thing – both exciting and sobering. Look before you leap, but sometimes we must leap, because our human nature is rooted in creativity as well as security.
If you’ve ever had an inkling, study a foreign language. For one thing you’ll re-learn grammar, maybe even really learn it for the first time. And not a Romance language if possible; make it something else.
When I left family practice I took a couple of years off and one thing I did—had it in the back of my mind for decades—was study three years of college Russian. It led to many interesting things, totally unexpected, and was great fun. You being a writer type, this may be something to think about.
My recommendation would be fly fishing. Especially if you’ve never done it before. Learning a new skill is (as WTF posits in #2) good for the mind. And being in a fly fishing environment is good for the soul. Then there are the folks you will be interacting with in this activity: other fishermen, guides, shopkeepers who make a scant living selling artificial flies for a few dollars and rodmakers who engage in their art because they love it, not because it keeps food in the larder. Go somewhere the fishing is good and engage the services of someone who can show you how to use the equipment and where to go. And don’t be surprised when you realize one day that you’ve just spent 5 hours standing in cold water trying to throw a lure than weighs less than a housefly to fish who are dumber than your thumb but still recognize the difference between a real midge and the feather speck you are offering — and enjoying it!
Or take up soaring. . . That’s what I did. F
None need a vacation more than those who must get away from themselves. A vacation is usually about the right amount of time to begin to vacate the mind of the folly of self importance and immediacy. What is needed is a mini-retirement. May I recommend the 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris?
Within the first five or six years of working as an independent area, I found it was a great way to enjoy variety. That is, operating my own studio, humble and tiny though it was, involved sitting with scientists, business owners, military officers, epidemiologists, educators, and so on. As it turned out, this meant that just about anything I read about casually or intensely, sooner or later proved germaine to my business. That included my dilettante interests: astronomy, history of science, physics, chemistry, aeronautics, sailing, languages, the banking system and monetary policy, international politics and war, et cetera.
Hey! We’re talkin’ about a seriously short attention span combined with a fear of commitment, somehow miraculously transformed to a career. Who needs a vacation when every contract involves working with different materials, different specialities, different types of clients, different audiences, and so on.
On the other hand, animation involves a fair amount of work some people might regard as drudgery — repeatedly revising scripts, storyboards, character designs, combinations of technologies, budgets, schedules, and dealing with cranky and idiosyncratic artists. And then there are the clients… and the loan officers… and the landlords… and the tax collectors…
Now I come to think of it, I need a vacation.
oops.
“Within the first five or six years of working as an independent area”
should have read “…independent ANIMATION PRODUCER“
MF – “Now I come to think of it, I need a vacation.”
Made me laugh!
Well, a vacation is one thing, changes in your life are another. OTOH I could use both. Still, it’s so common to come back from vacation needing a good rest, like working your regular job from your regular home.
You could imitate Bob Wiley and take a vacation from your problems.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103241/
However, it would be totally inappropriate to invade Dr. Leo Marvin’s vacation.
Real work, as in a vocation, is addictive. When men retire from military command or being in charge of a business they devoted 35 years to they die soon after. Make work is drudgery and kills you if you stay in it. Which are you doing? The world is full of people who define a job as good the less of it they have to do, Schoolteachers for example. If they are your co-workers and if you are a Type-A person they will kill your soul.
USS Clueless is dry docked.
Winds of Change is becalmed.
Moonbats cheer.
You’re a writer, you deal in words and ideas. Change the words and change the ideas. Write a science fiction novel, let your imagination run wild, the wilder and weirder the better. After ten or twenty pages it will start to make sense to you, and your brain will take you places of which you never dreamed.
The Age of the Blogger has certainly transformed the way a lot of us work, and think, and relate. It has been an impressive movement in modern history that has brought us many good feelings, many moments of success. Heck, bloggers have even changed the world. In the ramifying ranks of the blogosphere there were roads to travel and lessons to learn; but perhaps the last lesson of that Age is now beginning to take shape before our eyes: namely, that it was just age, a temporary way of “being in the moment” that came, but came to pass.
For the Internet Age involved a lot more than just the spreading of new technology. It was also a fashion and a social phenomenon. Not a passing phase which is here today and gone tomorrow, but one of those deep transformations which lends its color and shape to an entire generation. Nevertheless, those movements, too, are transitory. Of flappers and bobbysoxers there are now none to be found; greasers and socs rumble no more. Even the mighty hippies, whose shear mass once warped the social space about them like a tie-dyed shirt, have largely slipped into memory. Here and there one meets with a few bedraggled specimens who’ve outstayed their day and now linger on as living museum pieces; but the real substance of the movement, the spirit of the age, is gone.
So it will be too with the Blogger. Does not the very word sound timeful—a bit of slang destined to break the surface for a season before slipping through the nets of language, coming to rest on the sandy bottom with other pieces of perished time? Certainly we can expect that the internet itself will continue to exist in one form or another; and as long as it exists, there will always be people who write upon it. But it will not always be “cool” to do so. Bloggers will not forever grasp the levers that move the world. It may very well become a reliable, plodding profession like accountancy: predictably gainful, predictably dull. Then the masses of casual bloggers will exit the scene, and the aspect of the internet will be forever altered. We cannot see exactly what sort of world we’ll be left with when that happens, but it may perhaps be helpful to bear a couple of things in mind.
1. Computing, coding, writing—it’s not for everybody. It never should have been made to be about everybody. When computers went from the bus-sized difference engines of the past to the palm-sized smart phones of today, and graphic interfaces took the place of punch-cards, the skill level necessary to operate a computer plummeted while its value as a consumer status symbol rocketed skyward. This allowed great waves of people who possessed no fundamental understanding of how computers worked, to use them to perform all sorts of mundane tasks, like publish blogs. The idea may sound strange in our ears, but we must entertain the possibility that this metastable situation will not always obtain. More importantly, however, is the fact that writing has always been the province of the very few. At any given time, the number of people in the world who make their livings as professional writers amounts to no more than a relative handful. The popularity of blogs has not changed this essential fact; it has only obscured it by distorting the underlying culture.
I think of it like this: In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary became the first person (that we know of) to ascend to the summit of Mount Everest. It was indeed a noteworthy accomplishment, but it was not intrinsically rare. Indeed, the shear multitude of climbers who have stormed the summit of Everest since that date leads us to believe that the mere ability to climb Everest is somewhat broadly distributed throughout the human population, especially if they train hard for it and spend a lot of money on gear. So why do we celebrate Hillary for doing something that so many others could do, even if he was the first?
I think the answer (at least in part) is because Hillary had that rare kind of life which afforded him the opportunity not only to climb mountains, but to keep his honor at the same time. Anybody can do whatever they want, but very few can do what they want with honor. Most of us could only devote the time and money necessary to climb the Himalayas if we neglected other duties which were more important. Would the world celebrate us for that? Should the world celebrate us for that? I don’t think so. That’s why we don’t bother trying.
The same thing holds in other areas of celebrity accomplishment. I think there are a lot of people who could have played in the NFL, but few whose circumstances allowed them to devote all of their time to football. There are a lot of people who might have been concert pianists, but not many whose parents spent thousands of dollars on music teachers and made them practice 14 hours a day. Similarly, the artificial publishing ease created by the blogosphere removed all barriers that held back the would-be writer. When the internet made writing accessible to all, many people showed that they could do it, but it never really became a part of who they were. It was a hothouse atmosphere that spawned many a prize orchid, but for most it was only a temporary dream come true. Rare is the man who is destined to write; rare is he for whom it becomes his real calling and his real work, in rain or in shine, in sickness or in health. Writing is a very unusual business and few there are who are born to it.
2. We must realize that we can’t get something for nothing; or what amounts to the same thing, that we will only get what we pay for. The few outstanding bloggers out there have accustomed us to getting great news and analysis for free, but that is almost certainly short-lived. If we want to get really really good news, good essays, and good editorializing (on a regular basis, that is), then we must be prepared to pay. We can’t depend on internet cavaliers to always do the legwork for us at their own expense. Many bloggers have put forth excellent material while getting SFA for their efforts; but they have families and mortgages like everybody else, and how long do you think they can keep that up?
When blogging goes out of fashion and into arrears, then we’ll see how much we really want it and need it. Then we’ll see who and what we’re willing to pay for. The “Wild West” phase of any activity cannot last forever. Eventually it must weave itself into the fabric of normal life or it must be abandoned. Perhaps what we’re seeing here is the beginning of the first large-scale readjustment.
So what are you trying to say, W? Are you getting burned out? Give us advance notice and we’ll give you a week or two.
Two ways of looking at this issue:
Just slip out the back, Jack, make a new plan, Stan
Don’t need to be coy, Roy, just listen to me
Hop on the bus, Gus, don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee, and get yourself free
or the Buckeroo Banzi method: “No matter where you go… there you are.”
Sometimes I think to myself, “Man, can’t wait to retire and do just what I want.”
Then comes back the realization that I’m doing the work that I’d always pictured myself doing, even before I knew such a job existed. Tried at least some of the things I’d always assumed I would try. Well, life can be good.
“a mental worker can go out and recharge his batteries by building a cabin or chopping his way through an enormous woodpile.” I never realized why gardening and construction projects that took up the entire weekend or even an occasional vacation time was so refreshing! Thanks.
Thanks Richard. That speaks directly to me on many levels, past and present.
The secret isn’t in vacations, it’s in living a balanced life.
As I read all the above comments, I see snippets of an overall plan. I’ve had the good luck to work, at various points in my life, with folks at the age when they were approaching retirement and then going through the process. And I’ve been able to make the following observation.
There are three kinds of approaches to retirement.
There is the guy who is wrapped up in his job, and that he tells himself he’ll never retire, and means it. This guy goes and goes until he either dies or (if he works for someone else) gets told he must leave. At this point, the guy is either dead in six months, or finds something else to do, goes at it full bore, and drops dead at the switch at 90. This guy almost always has estranged his family if he ever had one, has had multiple wives (in succession, not Muslim style), and is unknown in his community. He has become his job. Sad.
There is the guy who isn’t nearly so enamored of his work, but has lived so that there is nothing much else in his life and is counting the days until his retirement age. He tells everyone, “when I retire, I’m going to take up (fill in the blank), and I’m going to do (fill in the blank) in the community”. But when he retires, he attempts whatever activity he claims he’s interested in, and because all activities have a learning curve, gets frustrated and quits. He still has a giant void left by the departing of his job. In six months, he’s listless and the height of his day is going out to check the mailbox. He’s usually gone soon after that.
The last guy is the one who has multiple things going on in his life prior to retirement. No matter how busy his work is, he’s made the effort to have several hobbies like fishing or hunting, and/or does things like volunteer work or driving the local elderly shuttle or is involved in being a scoutmaster, etc. Any learning curve and its concomitant frustrations and failures has been dealt with at a time when he had a job, so even though he had little satisfaction from the hobby or avocation while getting into them, he still had the structure and feelings of worth and positive reinforcement and feelings happiness from his job. Then, when he retires, he simply drops one activity (his job) and still has a fulfilling life full of structure and things to do to fill the day.
The worst mistake guys make is telling themselves that because work and family are the most important things that you can do just those and have a good and mentally healthy life. Whether this is out of machismo or laziness, or a little of both, that mentality wrecks the soul and in the end harms your family and yourself and your community. The truth is, that life is twisted and a killer. F is onto something with his fly fishing thing. I’ve been doing that since I was a little kid, and added hunting very early on in my career. But it doesn’t have to be those things. There’s a lot of stuff out there to do. Woodworking, gardening, singing, community volunteering, whatever. If you make very little effort you can find something to do no matter where you are. Balance is the key to REALLY having a good life, and REALLY being the sort of person who is a good spouse, father, and member of a community.
Vacations are like mini retirements, week long snippets of what you would do if you weren’t working at your current job or profession. Those people over 30 whose idea of a vacation is sitting around on a beach or a cruise ship drinking and eating and doing nothing for a week or two are straight looking at a preview of their retirement. Good luck with that. Your retirement will be a short one.
“The Ten Thousand” Anabasis, Xenophon’s report of the Greek mercenaries 4th century long fight home.
Different fields require different creative talents and these talents have different burn out rates on an average it seems. The theoretical physicists seem to do their best work at early ages and then just place hold after that period. Some people crank out creative work over a long period.
For some reasons I think of John Ringo’s ” The Last Centurion.” It was inspired by Anabasis but he states that book was written like a long blog and that it didn’t feel like his creation, it seemed to write itself and he was just an instrument. He violated a lot of the things he learned about writing fiction doing it. He said he never writes in first person but for that book he did.
Seems to me it’s all about the vowels. If a vacation is not a vocation, then it’s a waste and a form of self-complacency. If something/someone else is calling, even temporarily, then it is not an escape but another effort in the pursuit of the good, or the bad, as the case may be.
As for blogging, it can fall into either category. If it’s a vocation, how different is it from the earliest efforts to convey the truth, like St. John’s or the writers of the Old Testament? In the beginning was the word, after all.
Years ago I sort of dropped out (no dope or anything like that) for a while and allowed myself to consider literally anything—beachcombing, etc.
What worked out best was to shift to another part of my general field rather than starting new in something completely different. I still had some background but there was enough difference to make it new and interesting.
Plus I was tired of goofing off.
Chemists are a very well employed profession by most standards. However, one branch, Organic Chemistry, has a very late retirement age. It seems they like their work so much that most of them never retire. Yesterday I passed one of my grad school mentors in traffic on his way back to his lab. He’s the guy who invented ion exchange resins, back when the world was young. Now he’s in his mid 90′s (and has had his own lab since he was 11). It made me smile. That guy LOVES life, shares his appreciation, and also shares his knowledge with the rest of us. But he spends every day Playing with molecules and building new ones.
Fishing as a hobby just got more complicated –at least in Texas
Texas Passes Bill to Make Some Fish Tales a Crime
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/us/12fish.html?_r=1&hp
On the main topic–
In Christian spiritual life Aquinas talks at some length about the challenge of Acedia–” The noon day demon that tells us nothing is worthwhile”
Acedia describes a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one’s position or condition in the world.
It can lead to a state of being unable to perform one’s duties in life.
Its spiritual overtones make it related to but distinct from depression.
Acedia was originally noted as a problem among monks and other ascetics who maintained a solitary life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia
I sure do admire y’all “ten thousand” status bloggers! It looks really tough. Just by an immediate word association, I was thinking of the 300 Spartans standing in there for the rest of us. [another thought association moment: I wish you'd taken in Jeff Goldstein to PJM. Lord Allmighty, does that guy have the Progressives' Totalitarian thought control, word game propaganda m.o. mocked and beaten like the proverbial 'rented mule'! I didn't exactly know, either, that the martial art sport of "grappling" could be so expertly applied to Leftist verbiage and alleged "thought".]
I’m “retired” from something which was almost always very difficult for me, so I had arranged to be half on vacation at the same time. Still, doing it managed to conspire with some other positive and negative factors – at least half of both kinds being of my own making – to almost knock me off a couple of times. My vocation was a good thing to learn and do, even a great thing, but I didn’t really want to do it. Amazingly, I hung in there much longer and did much better than I’d expected to do, but man was I burnt! Fortuneately and purposefully, I’d also managed to do some very important things while on vacation that I obviously did want to do. But I had to decide what they were, then do them. No one else could help me with that.
But it’s finally dawned on me that just having the capacity to be able to conceive of and do “real time” battle with these factors and problems is a friggin’ miracle all by itself. And so is this friggin’ Country, which enables us to do exactly that. I don’t regret a thing, and retired or on vacation, or not, we-all ain’t done yet.
Maybe we all long for a trip back to a simpler time and place. There where we gathered the grapes and the young ladies of the village hiked their skirts up to the knee and stomped the juice out with their bare feet.
It was a better life wherein everyone was honest in most ways. There was not subterfuge or deception. You didn’t have to worry about theft or fraud. Leaders were statemen or women who understood that you cannot make life better by demanding control over of people’s lives – you do not know better how to spend other peoples’ money.
Women knew they were quite naturally attractive to men. They did not need to expose more and more flesh to accomplish their goal. An honest, hardworking man was desireable to the ladies.
It was more noble to be poor and honest than a rich crook.
Such a place existed, didn’t it?
Over the years I have seen a number of good blogs either disappear or considerably stop their production. Time, money, and audience are the main issues. Some stop blogging because they see they are not getting much of a response. For most, the main issue is that they are spending a lot of time for little or no money. The nonpaying hobby gets dropped.
I started blogging in a mild way, about the same time that W did – the Daily Brief had a lot of regular readers, and I suppose it still does, but I got distracted by full-length writing of historical fiction. Most of the energy that went into blogging is now diverted into books, to include marketing and publishing them. Blogging was a gateway … and once through the gateway, then what next?
I will note that for someone technically retired and semi-unemployed, I am damn busy!
25. epignosis “Such a place existed, didn’t it?”
Well that’s a heckuva question. Not sure how to answer. But on a summer evening, at an American Legion baseball game in small town America the thought might cross your mind that such a place still exists.
23. Victor – re: Acedia. My gem of a wife introduced the concept a couple months ago. It is a problem which may require some grappling. Or maybe reality will jump up, bite you in the a** and sweep away the Acedia.
W – Write what needs to be written. We certainly appreciate your work, but don’t need quality posts from you every day. You do risk losing market share to other bloggers if you cut back, but you can’t let that make you a slave to BC. Of course, this approach doesn’t solve the problem of becoming a slave to “what needs to be written”. Oh well, cross that bridge when you come to it. I’m now going to send a (very modest) contribution to BC as an additional way of saying thanks.
W – if you are getting burned out by the daily grind, have you considered taking on one or more co-authors?
Thanks for your years of insight, and to the others who’se comments add breadth and depth to the topics.
I’m a writer, military historian, and editor. Although I’m successful in terms of getting published and receiving favorable reviews and notices for my work, my income has steadily and catastrophically decreased over the past several years. In December I took a part-time job as a security guard, working minimum wage, to keep the wolf from the door. So far the wolf has not broken in, but he’s definitely outside the door, howling. I’m in fairly desperate straits. Years ago, I never thought that I would be entering my 61st year on this earth with such diminished prospects, in such dire circumstances. I spend all my time working at my minimum-wage job and working on my resume and applying for jobs; and, oh, yes, on writing. There are no vacations. Not any more.
Well, not entirely. I compete in sheepherding trials with my border collie. I spend as much time as I can training with my border collie and competing in trials. Which means that, for two or three days at a time, intermittently, I leave Cook County (yes, THAT Cook County) and travel to rural Illinois and Wisconsin and hang out with border collie/sheepherding enthusiasts. Many farmers and small-town people, real salt-of-the-earth Midwestern folks, the best people in the world. That’s what I do for my mental health. It’s not exactly what you would call a vacation: maybe it’s better. For now, it’ll do.
Dang I’ve been reading your Belmont club blog for a long time, take some time off have fun you’ll be missed I believe I’ll take some time off also it’s summer here in Georgia.
It’s been great!
Vaya Con Dios Pinoy Amigo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide
May-be “Candide” is appropriate
” let’s Cultivate our Garden”
I’ve often wondered what the human vision subsystem (assuming there is an organizing element with some modicum of perception) would think of the olfactory subsystem if it could perceive of it at all. I wondered further, even if all of the human subsystems had awareness of each other, if they could somehow dimly perceive of the human organism itself.
Humans must face a similar difficulty when attempting to perceive that of which they are merely a subsystem. Get a crowd together and all of its member’s behavior will change noticeably, bestowing a particular personality upon the crowd itself. None of us are susceptible to all crowds, but each of us are susceptible to some crowds.
The hippie phenomenon swept up a sizeable fraction of the boomer generation as did the nascent personal computer revolution of the ‘70s. High school dropouts, PhDs and all those in between participated in one or both of these phenomenons. In a few years time, there were high school dropouts writing code utilizing DB2 on IBM mainframes and PhDs attempting to ‘live off the land’, raising goats and carrots.
How each of these individuals perceived the motivations that brought about changes of such a magnitude was similar; an overwhelming urge to ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’. It seems highly unlikely that these were simultaneous individual events that neatly coincided.
Blogging has similar attributes; large numbers of individuals from all walks of life struggling to determine if an avocation is a vocation. The crowd consists of all the other bloggers and their clients. From public recognition to the shared exploration of life’s questions, the motivations will vary according to the individual blogger’s constitution.
Wretchard’s earlier examination of chaos, complexity, organization and entropy offers a toolbox that may prove useful when attempting to understand man’s relationship with the universe.
These days, I know I’m lucky to have a job. But it gives me no joy and no sense that I’m moving forward. I’m literally in a rut. But I can’t leave until my wife completes her law degree. So I take what time I can off, write some fiction, work on stereo gear and lift weights. It’s the only way I can keep the poison at bay – dreaming of a day where I don’t have to sell my soul to stay alive.
“However, one branch, Organic Chemistry, has a very late retirement age.”
That’s probably because it takes three tries just to pass Organic Chemistry. Wait, maybe that only applies to me…
I recognize many of the monikers in these comments. Milblogging filled a 10 month deployment to Iraq and then some. I stopped blogging regularly 2 years or so after I redeployed, and my last post was almost two years ago. I was one of the lucky few with *dozens* of readers.
I can see blogging as a gateway to more serious writing, but I write all the time on my job, so I didn’t really need the practice, just the topic and motivation. Once both were exhausted, I was done.
I still write and will, that’s tied up with finding and giving voice to what sustains me. I hope to return to blogging at some point, but will carefully avoid getting all wrapped up in the search for traffic. That drove the love of it away. And didn’t help get any of the writing done.
“You have to show up every day because you know ten thousand readers will. ”
Which is why there is so much pointless, inane, sophomoric, polarizing, counterproductive nonsense written. It’s the common ground between the blogosphere with the MSM. Readers realize this but it seems that bloggers don’t really get it.
When your main goal is to keep your readership up you start preaching to the choir, and writing polarizing, divisive rants to feed the beast you are sacrificing yourself for. It explains much of both Bush, and 0 Bomber derangement syndromes. Unfortunately, what society needs is people to step back from the divisive polarizing language and to stop twisting every innocent act into a political betrayal of ethics, and national interest, and to focus on policy.
The best thing a blogger could do would be to write dispassionately about policy and not about politics. However that would not amass or maintain a large readership.
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem
Always remember one thing, Richard.
Just because you have better things to do doesn’t mean that we do.
When the site gets to a certain level of traffic, that luxury disappears. You have to show up every day because you know ten thousand readers will. The only thing worse than having your own business is having a moderately successful blog.
Yep.
BTW the original Winds of Change crew of writers and commenters was full of luminaries including Michael Totten.
I was providing a CV for a conference presentation. It took me longer to list my hobbies, activities and interests than it did to list my relevant accomplishments and credentials. That felt damn good.
I’m trying to learn new stuff. Hmm any smart programmers interested in learning advertising–ie the advertising that decorates the sides of the web pages–drop me line at my email address.
Marc wants to take a vacation. I’m not considering one yet since blogging serves as an escape from other activities, a sort of vacation from other activities. The principle havoc it wreaks on my life is that is neither a career but provides in some respects, the satisfactions of one.
Those satisfactions are considerable. A successful blog is phenomenal networking tool. It is also a source of influence in the world at large. The stuff you write matters, maybe not earthshakingly, but perceptibly.
This is at the heart of the stress inherent in the Ten Thousand Rule. The more successful you are, the more you are torn between the two currents. The blog calls, but it does not really pay in money. The day job pays in money, but it does not afford the intellectual freedom of the blog.
I’ve come to believe that the blogging model must ultimately become part of a larger online presence. Some blogs that have worked best integrate with the “day job” more closely. Author/bloggers, consultant/bloggers, developer/bloggers have got a natural synergy going.
Roughcoat is in a tough situation. About all I can hope for is that somebody notices his problem, and realizes there’s a better fit for him than what he’s doing now. But in the end, the “blog” will wind up being an intellectual shingle, something to hang our mental threads on, but it should offer doors into project or commercial activities because in the end ideas have to become specific, as business ventures or other types of organized activity.
No Mo Uro:
I am like the third guy you described–work is both the funding for my hobbies and the principal time obstacle for them. But I do take (some) vacations that are just sitting on a beach watching the waves, or going on a cruise. I know that if I stay home I will find things to do, and a “vacation” is a week of bodily and mental rest and recharge. There’s a biiiiig difference between sitting on my couch watching tv and sitting in a lawn chair at a state park watching birds. I look forward to retirement because I know within a month after I come home for good, I’ll be as busy as I ever was and wonder how I found the time for that “job” thing.
I’m a prolific blogger. I have probably 8-10 blogs that I have started, written a couple heart felt posts on and then not touched again. Gradually I have forgotten the user id and password. So i start another blog. Blogging is fun. It’s the constant writing that is a drag.
Back when I used to be in the “people” business, I drove a vacuum truck in the oilfield on the weekends. I started doing it because I needed the extra money. But I soon found that it was almost like being on vacation. There were no people to have to deal with. It was just me, and a truck, and some hoses, and a thousand barrels of saltwater that had to be disposed of. It was like a salve on a sore. But who am I kidding? I still did it for the money.
At 46, I’m 3 years into my third career of software engineer — before that, mfg engineer in electronics (13yrs), then university CS instructor (6yrs). Oddly enough, I’m the only older guy the the sharpest young guys in their mid-late 20s particularly respect, tech-wise, and like to work with. I am actually doing some of the most modern design and coding in the company, and am far more current/advanced in my skillset than guys ten, even *20* years younger. That might not have been true if I’d been doing software full time for the last 20 years.
I think it all comes down to changing horses periodically, keeping you mentally younger. My two big transitions both came about due to circumstances changing beneath my feet (IOW not totally by choice), but rather than desperately trying to keep on the same path, I took a sidestep into a different but related field. Scary to a certain extent, but ultimately invigorating. The stress of learning is mostly positive, whereas the stress of the grind or boredom is only negative. It’s a strange, but welcome, thing to to feel like I’m just really hitting my stride now at 46.
Regarding retirement, I hope the working world can work to a model where people can semi-retire but stay in their field. Rather than working all out to 67 or so, then full stop, I’d like to have some sort of sabbatical a few years sooner and be able to either cut back to fewer hours a week, or perhaps do 40/week but the at others times have the freedom to take additional weeks off, unpaid.
Roughcoat,
Start a blog/web site on living frugally. You are probably an expert by now. Hook up with Google Ads, for starters. Write a digital book on different types of ad/monetizing opportunities on the web. Publish for the Kindle. Get together with Charles (see above)
Charles,
Contact Roughcoat and start by placing your ads on his web site (or perhaps I misunderstand your intent, in that case forgive my presumption)
Both,
Please feel free to tell me to mind my own business, many people I know do this on a daily basis.
“However, one branch, Organic Chemistry, has a very late retirement age.”
The physical chemists often are rather long-lived too. Joel Hildebrand was still coming to the office and supervising post-docs when he was over 100 years old when I was a grad student at Berkeley.
Well, I am an official retiree, living on a small stipend. Accidentally, I came upon ‘genealogy’ which has led to a website, and in fact, 3 websites. ‘Genealogy’ is a misnomer, because my Scottish ancestors, all of them, were nameless cottars, peasantry. Their names come up in Parish records, and the latter do not go back that far. So, I have gone on one of those ‘self learning’ trips, focusing on a tiny part of the West Highlands. It’s amazing what one can learn, this way. Major General Sir Archibald Campbell of Inverneill, for example, was one of the few competent successful British military leaders during the American revolution. He won the Battle of Savannah, went home, married the daughter of the most successful court painter (Allan Ramsey) of the time, went on to be Governor of Jamaica, fought off the French, was the governor of Madras, and finally was buried in Westminster Abbey! Cool!
Inverneill? At least half of my West Highland ancestry were peasantry on that Estate in Campbell’s time.
I have stumbled across the whole vendetta thing via an Earl of Argyll, and am following that up. Vendettas are so amazing, and so foreign to me.
Then, there was the “Great Disruption” from which the Free Church of Scotland was formed. At least one branch of my ancestry must have sat on the stoney beach, listening to hours of sermons, probably by the Haldane brothers. For a bunch of poor people the Knapdale peasantry came up with a lot of money to build their own, non-parish, Free Church. That will be a new section. I fear that Scotland’s wholesale rejection of Presbyterianism in favour of Socialism of the Fenian variety has not been a good move for that country.
I think ‘History” of the type that fascinates me is the act of looking across something like the Grand Canyon and attempting to figure out what on earth those people (many of them my relatives) were doing with their time. Much of it is understandable, and some of it is weird.
So, I continue to build my site, it just grows, like Topsie. The present is filled with men who were ‘lyable’ to be ‘balloted’ for the Argyll Militia during the Napoleanic wars. And I continue to cruise around the truly wretched 17th century, the time of wars and killing. And love, too. One thug, ?Turner, fell in love with a Catholic girl, in Ireland. And so did an Earl of Argyll: he just gave up being ‘chief’ of the most powerful Scottish Clan, went off and married a Cornwallis girl, went to Spain, and fought for the Catholic forces in the Netherlands. How’s that for amazing??? Oh well. In my opinion, the Royal Stuart family was a dreadful bunch. I also have to make a better ‘site map’…
So, when I travel, I like to go back to Lochgilphead and the Crinan Canal, and South.
I think the point of living is to learn. The Internet means we can spread that learning around to anyone who is interested.
The hobby should not take on the aspects of a job, although it’s not unusual for it to turn into a real job that actually pays real money. And the reverse can occur as well.
To some extent that is what has happened to me; various bits of knowledge I have acquired over the years, usually incidental to what my “real” job was at the time, are the reason the company values me. But while I am one of the foremost experts in that arcane area in the world, it does not pay much and lately has paid less than not much.
Meanwhile, my first job out of college was fixing airplanes and now I do that as a hobby. True, it’s a money-saving hobby, since otherwise I would have to hire someone to do some of that work, but I have put a lot of effort into helping other people as well.
Here in Florida I note that retirees fall into two groups. The people who came here in their youth, or even relative youth, never seem to retire completely, even if just to support their hobbies. Then there are the ones who came here to retire and are often are of a mindset they should never have to lift a finger again.
Of course, there is negative aspect to those who do not get into a retirement mindset as well. A couple of years back I resigned from one local organization after I realized what was really going on. The man who started it clearly considered it as a form of recreation. Any month that he could not come up with something on which to send angry letters or hold meetings on was terrible to him. He was in heaven when I came in and wrote coherent letters and minutes of the meetings. When I finally realized that he was doing far more damage than good by his complaints and got tired of his incessant nagging, I quit. He realizes now how badly he screwed up and is still trying to get me involved, but I’m not accepting.
emrys & Wretchard –
Thanks so much for your comments, and what I take to be kind words of encouragement. They are much appreciated. It’s good to know that I’m not alone.
emrys, I’m not going to tell you to mind your own business–what you said makes sense to me! Anyway, you mind my business any time, LOL! It’s clear to me that I haven’t been doing such a good job of minding it myself.
Thanks again, guys. You are aces!
There is a school of thought which holds as axiomatic that one should never retire, only change. That your work should serve you and not you it, and that the last check you write should be to your undertaker and it should bounce.
Every one of us is an economic engine potentially.
That has a certain appeal.
Spindok
@ 19 & 24
When I saw the title my first thought was of the “Imortals” from Gates of Fire. Glad I’m not alone. It relates in a way … if you think about it.
KevIN – I feel ya’ bruh. I feel ya’.
The 10,000 were more likely the 10,000 Greek mercenaries who fought their way out of Persia, led by Xenophon, who wrote all about it in his “Anabasis.”
Roughcoat, I start off by speaking to you. Been there, I had an extended absence of work and the wolves were on the verge of break-in and I managed to beat them back.
If you are on Facebook (or even if not) search out “Mindanao Bob” (a familiar name to at least a few Belmonteers & #3!! search me out too!) and read his stuff on making a living off of the web. One thing most people who blog and experience at least a modicum of success at it will tell you is to write about what you love. While #48 Emrys provides a helpful start, your last paragraphs in your opening post suggest very strongly what your angle should be, yeah, blog/write about collies and shepherding! Take your camera to the events take pictures, use them, write stories about the events you attend, talk with clubs, other collie owners & write up about them, etc. Work to promote what appears to be a passion of yours! Practice that photography and sell shots of the dogs to their owners! Build up a stock photo collection of the dogs in action and pitch to collie magazines & other such websites!
The blog is not the end-all of your effort though, I suggest to do it with building a brandname or an image and work that brandname/image into something you can lend to a product. Combine your established ability to write with something you love to do. I am no Hemingway, but friends have told me I write fairly well, I am a computer geek, and I love to participate in Alpine skiing and thus was born The Wisconsin Skier. I work all day writing jobs/programs so a certain set of management know what they are selling to Her and I come home and I am back on the computer either working to learn video production, coding up a ski map application, write a new post, or work on a redesign (or perhaps work on a client’s website). The trick to pulling it off is being able to at least set up a blogger site, which is not too hard. Being an IT professional myself I can get deeper into those woods and self host and create some of my own custom functionality and themes.
Over the 2009-2010 winter season, I was able to pound out at least one post/day from end of 2009 through mid-April it wasn’t always easy, but material was never too far from my finger tips. This last season I’ve been more time constrained so the 1 post/day was not maintained, but had I maybe two more hours/day my posting rate probably could have been about 75% or so.
I tried my hand at political blogging but after about four-five years of trying to make a go of it, my zeal for it waned. The blog survives, the pseudonym I used also survives, but the blog is stale, and the pseuodnym is used when I want to remain sorta-anonymous. I attempted a shot at frugality blogging but I could not make myself open up my $oul enough to write compelling material. I have some other websites out there some for myself, some for paying clients, some still only a glimmer in my mind.
What is a vacation? Some “vacations” are more work than work, and I’m not talking about that week away trading a laptop for a chainsaw or a splitting maul, I’m talking about the fairly typical routine. Last time the wife & I were at her home, we would get roused at 5:00 am and showered & fed and jump in her Sis-in-law’s vehicle and roll off somewhere far, spend a few hours, return, repeat. I generally like those vacations where I get to say when. Of course, when traveling to a place you go to once every few years and spend Ks of $ on you need to see the sights, still, sitting on my sis-in-law’s porch with a cold San Mig & a fired up Al Hambra was heaven and put me into quite a state of contentment.
My wife’s sister lives around Toronto and the best trip we had there was on our third visit. Our nieces were out of school and Mom & Dad had to work, so we just hung around and watch the two girls and I read voraciously. We had already seen the sights — a very memorable vacation was that.
A trip to Ireland was also at our whim, we arrived, rented a car, drove when and where we wanted, parked the car, pub crawled, slept, repeat. No bus driver pounding on the door at 6:00 AM.
I’m not real keen on retirement. I’ve been close to three (well four and one was decent in about every way it could be except for the inevitable ending) of them and I don’t like what I see.
Retirement I — dies within one year of retiring.
Retirement II– not so bad but goes severely senile about halfway through retirement, but had about 10-12 good years
Retirement III — ongoing (person very near & dear), retired in mid-mid late 1990s mostly good, but we are now in a struggle to save his liver & life, something that came on real strong about 4-3 years ago. Fortunately, he is getting help and we hope we did not act too late, doctors seem to be telling us he is still okay, but the drinking HAS to stop NOW.
Retirements I & II were fated, but I wonder if Retirement I could have gone better, he did some volunteer work and had lots of friends. Retirement II went about as well as it could have and a number of his brothers and sisters also had similar mental deterioration as they advanced in age.
Retirement III was going well till Grandma passed away and I think he lost some purpose to his life and was bored and turned to Beefeaters. When he is sober he does well his mind is sharp and gets some ambition, very encouraging. The trick now is to keep that sobriety maintained.
My mother owns and runs a business and we had a talk and her opinion is one of keeping at it until her last day, she too is afraid of what will happen with “nothing to do”. Same with me, I’m not a physical laborer my pieces-parts will not wear out (wife talks of the farmer’s in her nursing home who do have serious pieces-parts wear) just hope the senility doesn’t set in and my drinking doesn’t get out of hand.
I guess my Grandma’s retirement was pretty decent, her mind was sharp up until about 1 day before her passing and that was at 91+ years and a good career’s worth after retirement from her teaching & librarian’s job.
I am one of those bloggers who have ten–maybe–regular readers. I try to be disciplined about posting three or four things a week. Some of my posts are inspired and were great fun to write. Some are labored. Hard to write, and probably hard to read.
My low readership is so liberating! No one I know in the real world reads my blog, also incredibly liberating. I can trot out my unfashionable political ideas when I please. I can be a bore! I can be a monomaniac!
Since I am not getting paid for this, I don’t do any real research. I don’t have to submit to anyone else’s editing. I can go whither I want to–review a book or not, reveal or conceal whatever I want about my family and friends, make fun of sacred cows, be unfair to Dell or Microsoft or whoever.
I would like more readers, if that were to happen. But I did get a link from Tim Blair once and an Instalanche! In the latter case, readership rose precipitately, and then plummeted down to its previous level.
Miriam,
You were an occasional visitor to my political blog. I recall getting the most rise out of you when I worked my musical tastes into my posts.
Say, life ain’t different wether you live on one side or the other of the pond
Roughcoat, much appreciated your story, my man is also competing in with dogs, but in agility, and passes lot of his “retirement” time to train them and to cross our country for joining competition sites. Now he is “president” of his agility club, that means kinda a few admministrative hours too.
Through his hobby, he also meets quite a lot of people, that more or less became friends, cuz they also travel for the same competitions. He also opened a “facebook” where these people wouldn’t miss to watch his results, pics… and to comment.
I don’t follow him often (I don’t like to be waken up early with dogs barks, cuz we sleep on place in our “camping-car”), but only when the competitions happen in a nice city, and or if it is near where my sons live.
Anyway, take care
I just turned 60. I work for the federal government, and I can’t wait for retirement! I’m very good at what I do, but I’m bone-tired of the soul-killing bureaucracy. Also, every 18-20 months, the colonel and the general rotate out, and it’s back to re-inventing the wheel according to their druthers. Institutionally, I and the other old heads know what to do and how to do it, but we have to bugger our internal processes and products to make the new leadership happy. Lather, rinse, repeat. After doing this for so long, and watching activity become a substitute for progress, I’m ready to chuck it all and just sit on the back deck and watch the grass grow. When I was young and stupid, this used to be fun. Google “Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.”
I write and edit for a living, but I lack the energy and motivation to do it outside my office. Why take work home? I am, however, more than happy to read the brilliant essays of people like Wretchard.
I realize I ought to start a new/different hobby, since motorcycling (which I’ve been doing less and less of lately) is becoming too expensive. And I no longer tolerate the extremes of weather as I used to.
I fully realize I’m going to have a problem with my eventual transition out of government service, but no mortal can keep doing it into their 90s and still be sane.
W-I’m not a commentor to BC, but an avid reader to yr blog, that I discovered thru a link on Philippine American Blogspot (Dean Jorge Bocobo)in RP. I,m dissapointed your hanging it up, but agree that 10,000 is difficult to keep up with. I am a “Kano” and lived for 10 yrs with my Ilocono wife/family and daughter in the northen-most part of Ilocos Norte. You really answered some lingering questions I had with Pinoy behavior/character with your insight on one of the many ferry sinkings in the yrs of the 2000′s, and the aftermath. I finally understood what I had been told about Pilippine Culture (by Pinoys) that it is the result of 400 yrs in Spanish Monastery and 50 yrs in Hollywood!
(A hearse with mag wheels). I also respect the tenacity of the people in dealing with the corrupt govt and brutal weather. I also have a large place in my heart for Oz and the Auzzie-being Qantas ground staff (in the US) for 23 yrs, with various training trips to NSW. Good-on-ya mate!
Regards,
Charles M
My idea of the perfect vacation is one I’ve never been able to try. I’d like to get on my motorcycle and go … east. No particular destination in mind, no plans, no itinerary, just ride, as long or as little as I want. Stopping where the whim takes me and going where the whim takes me.
Blast from the Past said:
Real work, as in a vocation, is addictive. When men retire from military command or being in charge of a business they devoted 35 years to they die soon after. Make work is drudgery and kills you if you stay in it. Which are you doing? The world is full of people who define a job as good the less of it they have to do, Schoolteachers for example. …
——————–
I am sick unto death of “schoolteacher”-bashing. My in-laws are retired “schoolteachers.” My father-in-law taught high school English and coached swimming; my mother-in-law taught elementary school. During the summers, they both coached age-group swimming, which makes youth football or basketball coaching a walk in the park by comparison. (Their teams numbered 200 or more.) In 1980, they “retired” from age-group coaching, built a pool in their backyard, and taught swim lessons every summer. 100 kids in their pool from 8 a.m.-8 p.m. every day of the summer. The swim business was also my husband’s summer job. He made enough to pay for his college expenses, and graduated with no debt. His folks invested their earnings.
Since they retired in 1998, they’ve traveled a lot–with the money they earned from the swim business. They’ve been to Australia twice; once for fun, the other for my father-in-law to defend his world Masters Swimming title. When they’re home, he trains with triathletes, while my mother-in-law volunteers at the hospital as a physical therapy “coach” and has more success with patients than the professionals do. Not bad for a couple of lazy “schoolteachers,” who are 74 years young.
There are deadbeats in every profession, but the conscieintious, hard-working professionals are too busy working for anyone to know they’re there. The deadbeats, suck-ups, and coattail-riders make most of the noise and grab most of the attention. But that’s no reason to insult every member of that profession.
“ten or ten thousand”
Rodney Dangerfield: “My fan club broke up;yeah,the guy died” or
“I once quit showbiz, to show you how bad I was doing,I was the only one who KNEW I quit show biz”.
seemed appropriate.
Winds of Change. Wow what memories. During the 9/11 blog explosion, they were one of the top! In those days I had an extensive blogroll, and Winds of Change was one to be checked with daily regularity.
Years have passed since I’ve been there.
In the log run they did not have the cream that rises to the top. It is a pity yet it is so.
Take a two-week wagon train and cattle drive vacation in the Powder River country of Southeastern Montana, for starters. Then go from there…you’ll be fine.
The kids are gone, the dogs dead, its -30 and you have been snowed in for 2 days, it was time. Sold a profitable business, our house, almost everything we owned, put a few things in storage, and like two kids just starting out packed the car and headed out. We were in our middle forties and both of us have never regretted the move. Both our kids and parents thought we had lost it, we hadn’t, we’d found it. It was a gain of 20 years of mental life, with a new life style and the knowledge that the future is not scary or uncertain but challenging and something to truly look forward too. Nearing 70 I still look at change as something great and exciting. If it’s the same old same old for you, try a change, it makes you young again.
Bloggers come and go, but that does not mean they vanish for ever. One of the original Australian bloggers has reappeared six years after the posts mysteriously stopped and he went straight back on my bookmark list.
RE: Public sector teacher bashing.
Every person I know who is center/right in their politics and has transitioned out of the public sector into the private has said the exact same thing. Not similar or like, but exactly the same thing.
They’ve all said that in any government agency or department, 30% of everyone at that job is competent and does essentially all the work, and the rest are either doing nothing or are actually a detriment and are coasting and counting their days until they can retire and get essentially the same pay without working at all.
This dovetails with the observations of so many individuals that there is sufficient data to draw conclusions about the general nature, statistically speaking, of swaths of people like union public teachers. Take it as a given that there is a statistically minor number who are not worthy of criticism and do their job with the same verve that you see more typically in the private sector. That’s the outside of the envelope, not the meat of the matter.
Be proud that your in-laws aren’t like the vast majority, but recognize that they are a SMALL minority.
FWIW.
It’s not “bashing”, it’s “describing”.
Taxpayer,
I taught for years, in both very dangerous and very prestigious public schools. Teaching is the only job I know of in which the people are considered bigger successes the less of it they do. Successful Doctors or Lawyers are admired and promoted for being the best and they work long hours at every level. Weak teachers become Educators and get out of the classroom. If they stay in front of students then after a few years they stop writing lesson plans and often coast. Teachers with credentials based on bogus “teacher’s ed” courses, watered down Sociology if you can picture that, are paid over $100,000/yr to work less than 180 days/yr for less than 3 hrs/day.
Nicely Said.
There is no such thing as a balanced life. If you’re luckier than most, you can look back and assume you’ve had one, but otherwise, attempting to create one, plan for one, is an exercise in futility. Personally, my life has been a total waste. I was brought up to be a “good boy”, one who was supposed to work hard and reap the subsequent rewards. Only the rewards never came. Decades spent in Silicon Valley, never seeing the sun, working 6-7 days a week, 12-14 hour days, and just barely keeping my head above water trying to keep up with all the brilliant nobodies who inhabit that place, is a losing proposition. One day I finally woke up. I realized that any society that wishes to advance itself, has a dirty little secret… it MUST have engineers and technicians who sacrifice themselves, who act as a slave class, so that society as a whole progresses. I suppose it has been true since the days of Rome, and we can see it in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Germany, the US, and now China. Well, I am here to say f!*k all that. There is no “vacation” from such insanity, there is only enlightenment and breakaway. I still have a little time left in this life. I will try not to kick myself for my past absurd choices, and instead try to grasp whatever I can grasp now as a non-slave, and with luck, a free man.
Hmm, My experience mirrors ericcs somewhat, but I always thought there was a reason it was called work, and not fun. It pays the bills. The down side, however, is that one leaves after a ten hour day not really ready to continue mental activities requiring concentration.
Retirement. I have to outlive the cats, so I can replace all the window and door trim they have destroyed. That ought to keep me going for a while. Then there is the gym, and the chance to devote a couple hours a day to Japanese language study.
My best friend doesn’t have that problem. He never made it back from Vietnam.
Blast From the Past, your words here are so true:
“The world is full of people who define a job as good the less of it they have to do, Schoolteachers for example. If they are your co-workers and if you are a Type-A person they will kill your soul.”
In many jobs, woe be unto the individual who approaches his or her job with creativity and enthusiasm!
I have been a farmer, soldier, banker, legal counsel, prosecutor, lumberjack, magazine columnist, programmer, short order cook, lifeguard, heavy equipment operator, blacksmith, carpenter, mason, electrician, math tutor, truck driver, owner, employee, plumber and other things too complicated to explain (how do i describe creating and implementing large scale multi-million dollar robotics systems, where for a couple years I was largely a one man show – ahh, the good old days when software engineers were rock stars…at least in certain venues).
I have seldom been bored. I have been terrified at times,…but bored, never. I do not claim to have been good at all these things, but I learned something at every job. Some were fun, some weren’t. Some I made a lot of money, some I just stayed afloat.
I met a lot of different people. Most good, some bad. I have been in very bad places and had good people help me, people who I did not expect kindness from. I have been in very good places and been treated badly by those I least expected to do so.
My point, other than an old man rambling on? As I look back, I realize I don’t remember any vacations although I took them at odd times. I remember the things I did, the things I built, the people I worked with, the rations shared in the middle of the dense brooding jungle in an old abandoned French fort, the big hulking assistant football coach at Penn State that taught swimming and life guarding during the off season explaining the intricacies of running an efficient urban swimming pool program, … oh heck, I’m rambling again.
In short, live life to the fullest, you can rest when you’re dead.
I thought this was going to be about the Anabasis. Then I thought Richard Fernandez was going to disappoint us by telling us he was heading out the door.
Richard, I’m glad you didn’t tell us that. Interesting perspective.
I also like emrys’ point at #76 about learning from every job. If you ain’t learnin’, you ain’t livin’.
Richard, thank you for the thoughtful comments. I don’t feel like I’m “retiring” as much as I feel like I managed to write myself into as rut – albeit an interesting one and one where a wonderful community of other folks were there with me.
I felt like I was self-referring too often – “As I said in 2004, bblablabla…” – and that I need to reboot my own thinking – and that I weasn’t ready to do it in public in front of the audience and partners who were very comfortable with my thinking as-it-is.
And that was initially depressing to me. Then I realized that part of my original motivation for blogging was to figure things out for myself, and that – to an extent – maybe I’ve done so.
So I’m going to unplug for a bit, and mull over where I want to stand to figure out in public what to do with that ‘figured out’ thinking.
Maybe a book (pamphlet more likely), maybe another blog…I don’t know.
I do know I’m not done with the world, and it appears not to be done with me either.
I’ll have another comment on some of the upthread comments in a bit…
Marc
Marc,
Nice to have you commenting here.
I too remember the earlier days of Winds very fondly–the weekly area reports, among other things. Not fondly enough to volunteer to take on, say, a weekly summary of Africa, though if I were retired I’d do it in a heartbeat.
I have never sought a ‘career’, that is a singular path down one set of things in a specialty so as to have singular expertise and climb a ‘ladder’. My interests have always been many and varied, yet I am willing to delve deep enough in singular areas to understand them become fluent in them and then explain things from that area to others who do not have them… but that is not a ‘career’. Yet even that is only part of what I do in life.
I am not a specialist, I am a generalist. In my time I have programmed computers, used aerial photography to map out geological formations, utilized imagery to map out pre-defined zones for cartographic overlays, learned the techniques of off-set printing, color space rendition and its variations between what your eye sees and what can be put on paper or a monitor, configured system requests to have some of all of that encapsulated, put together computers, ran role playing worlds, played wargames, learned much of military history and thusly normal history, written about things I’ve bought… then I was struck with a debilitating chronic illness, the second in my life… then I began blogging to recover, did some javascript programming to find out what was left in my brain, researched topics from terrorism to organized crime to how we create societies and Nations, then moved on to firearms and not just to fire them but understand them, that rekindled interest in woodworking and metal working which I have never tried my hand at… and on and on and on…
A vacation?
What is that?
I don’t have a ‘career’ to escape, never sought an ‘audience’ and have written novels for my own personal enjoyment so those aren’t in the way of my having a ‘good novel in me’. There is so much to do in life, so much to learn, how can anyone just want to learn one topic well and, say, collect stamps, too (which I have also done). I have never sought the ‘approval’ of others be they peers or my various bosses, and when I worked for the government in all of that I had so many different jobs in different parts of the agency that I probably knew it better than other single person there. Yet that was just happenstance, not intent.
If you write then want to do something else, then I hope you find what you are seeking. It doesn’t matter if you are a good writer, but I thank you for what you have done… I certainly can’t sit still doing one thing in my life, and working with one’s body and nimble hands to make things that aren’t words on a blog post can be more satisfying because they are physical and palpable. Ideas can create Nations, yes, but who is going to put those cabinets together?
I am ill, yes, and desperately trying to claw my way back to something like having some energy in life beyond a couple of hours a day. Yet I dare to challenge myself and find things of interest I have only learned some of the very basics about as a child or young teen and haven’t touched since.
That, to me, is fun.
And rewarding.
It is good to be alive. Never lose sight of that lest you lose it and your life as well.
I keep taking vacations from blogging, always with the thought that I might never return. After a while I come back because I feel something inside compelling me to write about what’s going on. I suppose as long as I have something to say, I will continue. I will say this: it was liberating to get rid of the sitemeter and not worry about how many people were coming to the blog.
Interesting that this drew 82 comments (so far) and not one of the comments drew a reply. (don’t know what that means – just thought it was note worthy)
Anyway, I am approaching real retirement (i.e. age related) and would offer this for what it is worth:
As you get older it gets increasingly difficult to ignore the passage of time. The disquieting backgorund noise of this awareness keeps getting louder and makes it increasingly difficult to enjoy anything. So if you find yourself with the ability to get away for a while in your mid years and to do something that will supply you with satisfying and fond memories in your later years, do so.
Blast from the Past,
I think tenure is outdated and idiotic. Teachers should work to keep their jobs just as those in the private sector do. I’ve worked in the private sector for many years, from small biz thru Fortune 100 companies. I’ve also worked as an adjunct (read: temporary) college instructor for over 20 years. I’ve seen those kinds of cushy teaching jobs. However, at the college level, the number of tenured faculty is now less than 50%. The rest are on annual or semester contract. “Tenure-track” positions are few and far between, and tenured profs who retire are replaced with non-tenure positions. And that’s the way it should be.
Totally true.
What I think is it’s about deciding who you owe. Do you owe readers that pay you nothing? Do you owe your “RL” friends and family for the time spent writing for strangers?
In the end, all of us always have the choice of saying “no.” No one can make anyone do anything. What’s remarkable to me is how many people continue to do something, a job, a marriage, anything, when there is no longer any reason to do so. It’s like we prefer stasis, even when we hate it. We can always walk away.
And of course, we all do, if only to die.
Great article. I work in New York city in the financial industry and so my days are hectic.
The way I keep the toxins away is through wilderness canoe trips. I enjoy the planning (route, equipment list, menu) as much as the trip itself. Spending a few days paddling and portaging to get to a very remote, beautiful isolated location and staring up at a sky ablaze with stars just takes me away from it all like nothing else. With each trip I learn something new and try to make the next one even better. And for some reason, I remember the trips I went on, even years ago, in great detail (the exact route, what we ate, weather, etc.).
Studying languages is also an interesting and satisfying way to keep the balance — I’m fluent in Japanese (lived there 14 years) and am tackling Chinese on my commute and weekends. Makes life, and you, more interesting.