Ambient temperatures in the 40s have been melting snow and ice, leaving a dead landscape. No spring hope. No winter cover. Except for the lake, it’s just dead. It’s a good time to turn indoors to my writing.
I have three chapters remaining to draft in part two of my autobiography. In the story, I just concluded leaving paid work during the coronavirus pandemic. If the pandemic did one thing right, it made a clean break between the workplace and me, forcing me to live on a fixed income. The final chapters write quickly because they are so recent. Today I created three of them, and next I write about the coronavirus pandemic plus two other chapters with working titles of “Beginning of the end,” and “New beginnings.” It shouldn’t take long to finish the first draft. Then begins the process of going through the whole book for the first major rewrite. I expect there will be three or four of those before I’m ready to publish.
After the book is ready for publication, I don’t know. I’ve been focusing on this work so long, I hadn’t given much thought about what’s next. I want to revise the first book to clean up a few things identified by friends during the post-publication period. I also must see if there is continuity without repetition. Next year I should be able to declare everything finished.
The biggest predictable issue in our lives is Social Security doing nothing to avoid running out of money beginning as early as late 2032. Benefits will be cut automatically by 24 percent across the board if nothing is done to prevent going over this cliff. If anything, Republicans in charge of the federal government are going the wrong way. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the Social Security Fairness Act, accelerated Social Security insolvency alongside well-known demographic challenges to its structure. An answer to the question “How do I make up for this loss in benefits?” needs finding. Counting on the Congress to do something is not an answer.
What that says is I have to return to paid work. I have no regrets about how my working life proceeded and ended.
Physiologically I am changing. I know this because I adopted a new morning exercise regimen and my conditioning schedule is outpacing the ability of my soft tissues to recover and adapt. After a good couple of weeks on the new regimen, my shoulders started to hurt. This is self-diagnosed as inflammation, not a chronic problem. I believe I’m right about that. I have to take it easy for a while to let my body catch up with my ambition. Apparently I am no longer young.
In the meanwhile, it’s nose to the grindstone with the book. If I can finish the first draft this year, that leaves me plenty of time to publish a final text in the first half of 2026. That would clear the deck for returning to the workforce, something I am loathe to do, yet may needs do.
Journey Home 