I’ll be 36 in 4 months.
I think I did well. I did fairly decent job at this thing called life.
I didn’t cause any harm to my loved ones’ lives. physically, mentally, emotionally I think I have taken good care of these of those I love and care for.
I had some glory, nice highlights, key lowlights, moments I’m proud of, memories I cherish fondly. managed a calm and stable life.
I’ve found more ways to calm my frantic mind down. more ways to be a friend to myself.
in 36 years I’ll be 72. what would my life look like then? will I still be around? I think so.
rocking the hermit life? life of an author? a recluse? a secretly wealthy, low key, friendly, independent woman? a nomad? author-famous? teacher? researcher? mother? lover? creator? exec? speaker? thinker? a friend? people watcher? world observer?
interesting how out of all the above, exec is the odd one out. where you’d be expected to have retired at 72. is it because no 70 year old would have the capacity or drive to hold an exec position? is it because it’s stupid, soul sucking role? cog in the capitalism machine? is it not worth doing, not worth trading your finite remaining time you have left in this world doing, unless you’re the owner of the enterprise / org / system?
by that logic, then why is it considered worth doing at all? to save up for retirement? sacrificing a chunk of your time in the present time, for a projected future.
why not skip to the endgame? lack of saving? how much do we need?
why do we need / it’s acceptable to go through the stage of abdicating a huge part of our lives, productive part of our lives, serving other people’s mission, vision, and agenda, before earning the right to / afford the endgame portion of our lives, to “finally” live off our savings and get to spend our time doing things that don’t necessarily earn us living? to “slave off” before “retiring”.
to find ways where we can create value? to get inspired? to experience the real world?
alt ways to retirement
- make do with current savings
- do the things you’d love to be doing full time by the time you’ve “retired”, right away. inject retirement. go partially retired
- care less about doing your very best for your job. accept that there’s diminishing returns to doing above and beyond and giving more than you will be rewarded for. give and do proportionately, appropriately.
- find ways to monetise your endgame, in the mean time. the retirement activities, the stuff you do even when no one is paying you to do them. find ways to transform them into value creating activities. be careful of poisoning the well of bliss, though. demanding your passion to feed you, instead of you assuming the responsibility to provide for both of you
an exec in a corporate world has clear shelf life? expiry date. of relevance? of drive? of ROI?
same with any other forms of employment I suppose? and the rest of the titles, roles, and activities I mentioned aren’t formal employment are they? they’re evergreen. fully independent. stuff I can do on my own. my endgame
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