North of Sixty

Dunkirk NY – Tonight’s supermoon has risen, but I cannot see it due to cloud cover and a temperature of 16°. The region is in the grip of an extended cold spell that promises to continue for another week. I have to go to work tomorrow, driving cars around in this weather. With high winds expected, the wind chill could be quite cold, maybe -5° to -10°. I’m not looking forward to that.

The new year is supposed to bring with it a promise of an improved future, and in some way I think it’s a well-intentioned notion. But resolutions wane, and winter becomes a struggle to survive, as the cold limits one to indoor activities. You get that “hunker down” mentality, as even small activities become chores. Winter activities such as skiing, snowmobiling and snowshoeing all require expensive gear to keep you warm. You feel that by 4:00PM the day is over, darkness will arrive, and there is little left but TV or a book.

I find the wintertime to be a time, not so much of considering the future, but evaluating the past. Right at this moment, in this retirement limbo, where the past is over and the future is uncertain, I find it difficult to be still. I would like to be still and listen; winter is a great time for stillness and listening. I catch myself staring out windows, surveying a landscape that is hauntingly monochromatic and strangely desolate. I listen to the wind, the sound of which gives me the chills. I can think of many things I might want to be doing, but they all require leaving the house and getting outside. I peruse web sites with newer RVs I’d love to trade for, and I glance furtively at temperatures in Arizona. I have the time to reflect on the whole of my past, since there is at the moment no immediate future that requires preparation. The pieces, as I perceive them, do not begin to add up in the way they used to.

For the rest of this winter, I think I shall be pitting old habits that will not go easy against desired new habits that have no concrete form. Winter is young yet; while I can sense the opportunity it holds, I hope I can hold out while caught in its icy grip.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – In late September, once I had completed all my various travels, I decided to look for work as a driver. I love driving, and always thought that on retirement I’d do some part-time driving, not so much for the money, but for the love and, hopefully, the fun of it. I consider a day driving through the countryside to be relaxing and filled with the promise of seeing things I wouldn’t otherwise see if I stayed at home. Consequently, I checked out the car dealerships in the area, as well as the local Enterprise car rental branch. It turned out that Enterprise hired me first, and so I have been working for Enterprise since the end of September.

It’s a fun job – sort of. I do enjoy the driving part. Driving all around the western NY region during the fall leaf season allowed me to enjoy all the fall foliage, which went a little longer than usual. Right now, the job is not so hot, as the temperatures have fallen into the teens, and there is a good deal of snow cover on the ground, with more to come this weekend. I work Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and have a long four-day weekend. I’m actually pretty tired at the end of the three days, even though most of the day is spent driving from one place to another, either as a passenger or a driver. The usual routine is that the team (4 guys) go out to a branch office in one car, and then each guy gets a car to drive somewhere else, where the “chase” car picks you up. Some drives are long, some short. The pay is minimum wage in New York State, which is another slight downside. I could make more money working the McDonald’s counter.

I’ve also driven a lot of different types of vehicles, from Hyundai Accents to county sheriff patrol cars (complete with sirens and lights!), from Mitsubishi Mirages to Nissan Armandas. The range of vehicles is actually a bit limited, as Enterprise does not do business with every car manufacturer, but there is a great deal of variation from compact cars to SUVs to pickup trucks to cargo vans to full-size vehicles like Suburbans and Expeditions. Next time I buy a car, I won’t need to test drive any of these vehicles.

All the drivers but one are retired males, and almost all of them come from blue-collar backgrounds, which puts me in an interesting social position. Also, the majority of them are military veterans as well, as Enterprise promotes itself as a vet-friendly business (the founder was in the Navy and served on the USS Enterprise in WW2, which accounts for the company’s name). So they are all a little baffled as to why I’m working at this job, as a retired college professor doesn’t exactly fit the average profile of a part-time driver.

The more I thought about it, the more I think I’ve come to realize that I’m a white-collar worker with blue-collar tastes in life. For all my education, I really don’t go in for the “finer” things in life. I don’t do dinner parties, I don’t have a very fancy home, I don’t attend a lot of cultural events, I don’t have very fancy clothes. I think my attraction to the theatre is that it’s the most blue-collar art form of all, especially when considering the technical side. My idea of good food is a good diner, and I like dive bars better than fancy martini watering holes.

The contradiction is that I don’t share most of their blue-collar political views. I have found that these are all pretty good men, who have worked hard throughout their lives as truckers, dispatchers, loading dock workers, postmen, utility workers, construction workers, and the like. They vote Republican, but I have noticed there is not universal support for Donald Trump. In fact, there seems to be a sense of great disappointment about him that is largely unspoken. They are hunters and 2nd Amendment believers, they are by and large not college-educated, and they do not understand the value of diversity. They are not overtly racist, but they do believe that people should not be getting a “free ride” from government.

For me it’s an entry into a world with which I have little personal experience. We talk a lot about echo chambers and bubbles, and for me this is an opportunity to mix and work with people who are not in my echo chamber. It has been interesting so far, and I hope to make some further observations about this new job and experience in future posts.

Winter has arrived in western NY, and with it that feeling of being shut in. About 8″ of snow is on the ground now, with more to come. These are the hardest months of the year, as getting outside always proves a challenge. My good weather walking paths are all inaccessible due to snow. and my guess is the city does not plow them with any regularity. It looks like I will have to find some sort of strategy for getting outside.

Because of this, I am having difficulty motivating myself to get anything accomplished. Things seem either too small or too large. My office still could use some cleaning up, but I have no real place to put anything. There is no extra closet space; the attic already has stuff in it that needs to be thrown out or belongs to someone else; the basement is naturally full of things as well, and is not the best place to store items unless they are secured in some sort of storage crate. I have no plans for any of this stuff at the moment. The excess of stuff is beginning to weigh on me.

The limited options that winter provides are already beginning to get to me. I suffer from seasonal affective disorder, and while at the moment it is not too bad, I hope it remains under control. Having to get out of the house and off to work three days a week should help, but of course driving through severe weather is no fun. Thursday’s shift entailed driving through a lake effect snowband twice, with the second time being a bit more intense.

The other situation concerning me lately is getting hold of a goal, an accomplishment. I find I am beginning to define myself by what I do not want to do, but I have nothing that I do want to do firmly in mind. I find watching TV and any sort of passive viewing extremely difficult and even depressing when I engage in it. There is the sense that I don’t deserve to sit in front of my TV and watch three movies in a row (The Far Country, Woman of the Year, Jezebel) because I haven’t accomplished anything. This is unsettling. It is actually hard to adjust to the idea that being able to watch three movies in a row is the reward for a lifetime of accomplishments. I have not yet shaken the physical sensation of “having to be somewhere.” I still get the sensation that I have missed something – a meeting, a class, a rehearsal – and that sensation is physical. I wonder when it leaves.

Currently we are under another winter storm watch, and travel is predicted to be tough. I cleaned out the bird feeders and filled them up, but no birds have discovered them yet. That will take time. It will be good to see them in the morning when they realize there is seed there. -twl

So Apple now has a $999 iPhone for sale. And Google has introduced the Pixelbook, which is essentially a premium Chromebook, for $999 ($1,199 for the higher end model, another $99 if you wan the pen). Google’s Pixel 2 phone maxes out at $949, and Samsung’s Note 8 starts at $960, while the S8+ comes in at $840. It’s a party for which I have an invite, but my RSVP will be “no, thank you.” The price is too damn high.

It seems to be a curious psychological phenomenon among human beings that they are never satisfied with “enough.” Humans are constantly encouraged to succeed, to be all you can be, to maximize your life, to get everything out of life you can possibly squeeze. No one ever says to a child, “Work until you have enough. Then relax. Leave some for others.”

I can’t say I’ve ever been a proponent of this kind of thinking. I’ve lived a life of modest goals, and I was never very ambitious to do more or be more than I needed to be to have enough. The new technology offerings from Google and Apple and many other tech companies are, in my view, overkill. No one needs a $999 phone. They may want one, but they do not need  one. No doubt what they already have is quite enough.

I wish I was enough of a psychologist to know where this drive to overachieve comes from. It’s hard to know if it’s cultural or instinctive. Certainly the culture at large feeds this anxiety continuously through the advertisement of material goods. We are constantly bombarded with messages about products and services that will improve upon our current lives. Resisting these messages appears to be very difficult for the vast majority of people.

I’ve noticed that many people defend the notion of items like the iPhone X, Pixelbook, or the Pixel2 as being desirable because of their “high quality” build. Sure, ok, but…really? Shouldn’t the question revolve more around the purpose and capability of the item rather than its “premium” build?

I can appreciate quality build. I am typing this on a Google Chromebook Pixel 2013 (4GB RAM, 64GB SSD, LTE), which sold for $1499 when it first came out. I ran across a great deal on it for $300 at TechRabbit. It’s EOL is April of 2018, which is very soon, and it will not update to Android apps. But for $300, it was worth it. The premium feel is indeed quite nice, the screen is lovely, the keyboard excellent for typing, trackpad great, and the 3:2 resolution very nice for reading and writing. But would I have paid $1400 for it? Not on your life. There is nothing about it I find so superior to my Toshiba Chromebook 2 2015 (my daily driver), for which I paid about $300 with some additional cash laid out for additional RAM and upgraded storage.

And that, to me, is the point. In the USA, people are driven to obtain “the best” regardless of whether or not it can do the job any better. My TCB2/2015 is an excellent machine: it is upgradeable; the 13.3″ screen is excellent; its keyboard is backlit; the plastic case is quite rugged, cool on my lap, and shows no signs of damage; battery life is acceptable; with Linux installed via crouton it’s a full-fledged computer. Since ChromeOS runs exactly the same on this machine as it does on a $1K Pixelbook, frankly I don’t see the need to upgrade. Even the latest offerings from Samsung and Asus, while tempting, don’t really do more than the machines I currently have.

The American corporate oligarchy obtains its power over the economy and also over us by consistently and relentlessly driving us to buy more and more. It also uses as its overriding strategy making us believe that somehow “higher quality” will get a particular job done faster. There is a balance to all this. I like to buy products of good quality that will last a long time and will not break, but I also like to find products that are also reasonably priced. I was subconsciously taught this by my father, who bought Volkswagens and Volvos when his neighbors were buying Chevys and Fords. I see no reason to buy a car with a “premium” build when every car available on today’s market is limited in speed by the particular highway’s limit.

In the same way, I see no reason to hop on this bandwagon of thousand-dollar tech gadgets when my needs are quite easily met by gadgets costing around $300. I just recently upgraded my phone from a Samsung Note 4 to a Moto G5+, which cost $225. Guess what? It’s unlocked, which means I can use any carrier I want worldwide. It makes phone calls to any number in the world. It can send a text, use Google Hangouts for chatting, access my email, use mapping software, and takes decent pictures. In short, it does everything I need a smartphone to do. It is, to coin a phrase, “quite enough.” Pixel 2? iPhone X? Note 8? No, thanks.

Charles Dickens had something to say about “enough” in his seasonal short novel A Christmas Carol. In this holiday season, when people will no doubt be buying more than enough for one another, it might be wise to reflect on the Cratchits of this world (emphasis mine):

There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows!

-twl

The world these days is a depressing place. I have found myself reading less and less news. I am not naive enough to think that this particular cultural and political stew is the worst we’ve ever brewed, but I do think it’s the worst we’ve ever been so cognizant and aware of. As a consequence, I think the best strategy one can employ in this world is to become a “nobody.” I’ve set that as a new retirement goal; to become “no one.”

One of Emily Dickinson’s most famous poems has the opening line “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” While I am not a tremendous fan of Emily’s work, I do like the ideas expressed in this short work. In particular, the last line – “To an admiring bog” – has such a modern ring to it. Social media has turned society into a festering bog of recrimination, faux outrage, self-promotion, and any number of sordid ills. It’s a festering digital bog out there, and none of it is of interest to me.

I have taken a part-time job as a driver for a large rental car company, and my duties consist of moving cars from one location to another, either because they were bought or are being sold. It’s a nice job; minimum wage, no thinking at all, no stress, and when I clock out, no work to bring home. As one of my new colleagues put it, “I get paid from the neck down.” It’s a “nobody” job, perfect for someone without ambition. Occasionally the company I keep is not of my personal liking, but overall I do spend a good deal of time alone behind the wheel of a car. There is scenery to see, which, although repetitious, is never the same. I work three days a week, which I think is perhaps a bit much. Two would be better. I think I will hold this job through the winter and as far into the spring as possible, but I do not see it being long-term. It’s something to fill the time as I wait for King Lear to begin. I’m pretty sure doing both Lear and holding down this job would be pretty impossible, and then there is always the travel I’d like to do. Having a job would just get in the way of that, so probably by August 2018 I will be jobless again.

I am also in the process of collecting my haiku into a self-published book. I do not know what is motivating this other than the desire to have a hard copy of some of my haiku, something I can hold in my hand and call my own. I know I would like to write more, and at some point in time I think the time will come when writing will become my primary occupation. I sense a long interior journey in the offing, but for now, the need to reduce my personal footprint in the world is my primary goal. Less social media, less interaction with events in the world; more writing. more introspection. If retirement has any benefits, it is the benefit of having the freedom to care much, much less.  -twl

David by Michelangelo. Photo by Jörg Bittner Unna

I read an essay recently concerning the state of climate change and global warming. The first sentence was a quote: “I don’t know how to be human anymore.” The context of the quote had to do with how difficult it is these days to live a life that can make a difference; a life with purpose. The cry resonated with me, and I find myself echoing it: I don’t know how to be human anymore. Continue reading →

Officially, I don’t retire until September 1, but since I don’t work over the summer, I’ve already begun to consider myself retired. I’ve been looking forward to this moment for some time. I am relieved to be delivered of the daily stresses of a full-time career, even though I really enjoyed my work. But perhaps my first realization as I came to retire was that I am now on the outside, looking in. It is a curious position to be in.

Retirement means separation. In my institution, the term used is that specific: I will be “separated from service” on September 1. I already feel that sense of separation. My mind seems to understand intellectually that I have no more responsibilities to my former job, but my body has not yet adapted. It still gets that internal sense of anxiety, trying to remind me that there is something I need to do (there isn’t) or that tomorrow is Monday and I have to get ready to go to work (I don’t). It doesn’t understand that, at the moment at least, every day is Sunday, and there are no more Mondays. Adjustments have to be made.

But there is a larger sense of separation I am feeling, and that is separation from society, from culture. All of a sudden, free from the responsibilities of the workplace, I have the time to look at the world around me more closely. Frankly, I don’t care for much of what I see. It is, of course, one of the driving forces of retirement; no matter how much you may have liked your work, there comes a time when what you see happening around you no longer matches your own personal conceptions and priorities. I didn’t care for much of what I saw beginning to happen in higher education and in theatre (my two career focuses), and so I made the active decision to retire — to separate — rather than hang on.

Continue reading →