LAKE MACBRIDE— Let’s face it, we’re not like the Kennedys. We have no progenitor who leveraged a rising mass society in a way that both produced wealth and enabled new generations to focus on life free from financial concerns. That such a family existed, was well known, and equally well documented, influenced my generation in ways that continue to be revealed. There may have been others like them, but the Kennedys were it when it comes to a lifestyle free from financial worry, an algorithm built into the software of the lives of sixty-somethings.
It is not that there haven’t been brief periods of financial independence. While serving in the U.S. Army, there was no time to spend money, and I had almost an entire year’s salary in my savings account upon discharge. This created the financial freedom to attend graduate school full time and receive my masters in 17 months without worry. There have been a few other times like that, and I felt free to enter and exit the work force as it met my short term needs. I still feel that way, but as I aged, options changed.
It is one thing to talk about creating a sustainable life on the prairie, and another to actually do it. The comfort of regular pay, on a predictable schedule, can be addictive, even when it is not sustainable. Sometimes we become crack-heads of routine inside a career, with all the problems addiction brings.
When one breaks from the cocoon of a long career, it is a world of light and uncertainty— part was expected, but everything is brand new in its unique iteration. The hounds are let loose from their leashes.
Part of the breakup with a career is living and working with much younger people than relationships built over decades. It is refreshing. It is scary. There is risk. There are sore feet and chapped hands from doing new things.
We can find income to live. It is not even a question. When a friend first suggested temp jobs as an option for extra cash, it took me a month to decide to pursue the idea. Once I did, it took exactly six days from decision to working the new job.
Making money is not the problem. The challenge is creating a process for living focused on something other than our job. We are not the thirty second elevator story about who we are and what we hope to be. When we recognize all work has merit, we have a chance of breaking from the enslavement of careers.
We may work to pay for food, shelter, clothing, communications technology, transportation, insurance, interest and taxes, but until we experience the epiphany that working is living, and such living is fine compensation, a happy life may elude us. We could go on hoping to build a nest egg for retirement, get money ahead so we can take a break, win the lottery— such notions a malware embedded in the stories of Camelot and of summers in Hyannis Port playing touch football.
What else can we do but go on working?
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