Today’s topic is a bit more personal and introspective. Feel free to scroll for the pictures and move about your day. If you are staying, however, a new, large, exciting, and unknown chapter is unfolding before me. Life is changing as it never has before. I officially retire from full time, normal societal employment today. No more boss, no more schedule, no more IT based career for this man.
I grew up poor, dirt poor. My first manual labor job left me sitting in a field crying at eight years old, not wanting to do such things. Left alone, a half mile from the house, told not to return until the job was done. (For some reason, eight was the magical year we children were old enough to start buying our own clothes and shoes.) When you top this off with a mother that secretly stole her children’s earnings? There is a darkness there we shall leave for her own judge and jury.
It has been a repetition of working, scrapping and fighting to make ends meet and build security. As children we gathered the firewood, chopped and stacked it, weeded the garden, harvested the garden, did the laundry, the dishes and the yard work. The word ‘allowance’ was a pipe dream for television kids. I left for college with a pat on the back from my father, who placed a twenty dollar bill in my hand; not enough for gas to get to campus. With such a powerful send off, and already laden with a student loan for semester one, I was quite aware just how on my own I was long before my young mind hit campus.
I quit college after two financially draining years. I am an autodidact and managed to carve out a small slice of life for myself. I borrowed books I could not afford to buy. I fixed computers for people so that I could also use them, I took any job that let me learn. I eventually became a leader in my niche of the software field. It took much sacrifice. It took much time, often stuck, building things childhood should have provided as a basis for life – security of spirit, safety to trust oneself, optimism to dream, learning to invest, using your wealth to grow your portfolio, be it financial, educational or emotional. Teaching yourself the simplest of life skills (things others readily knew) in regards to happiness, freedom to express, how to be your authentic self. Skills that would have been proffered by any parent of merit.
I no longer need to work for anyone. I have no heirs to leave a package for, so I shall unwind from this relentless, life sucking pursuit to achieve, ‘make it’, succeed, insert your own term here. There is nothing to prove on my resume. There is nothing to prove to long disappeared parents. There is nothing to prove to society. There is nothing to prove to myself…. I can just…. be.
It is freedom I know little of. Cannot yet grasp the power of. For a man who has worked seasonally since eight years old, for the family since the same, for an employer since fifteen, and sacrificing pleasures for security for the forty years since?
It will take some time. Some adjusting. Some realizing that all is really okay. The struggle, the ignorance, the deception and the abuse that drove the child to push so hard into manhood? He can relax now. All is well. All is provided for. He can explore life on this fabulous mountain, life with his newly freed being, and provide himself the childhood never allowed.
