After almost sixty years of getting up and going to work in the morning, every morning. Or every night, because I didn’t always work during daylight hours. But what I did do, was go to work. With rarely a day off other than a holiday, I went to work. And after sixty years – it stopped.

When I was young, high schooler or slightly before, I was proud to have a job. A job that produced income, and a job that gave me status. My first job came when I was thirteen years old. My first real paycheck job. I cleaned windows, scrubbed floors, washed dishes and did all the chores required of a drive-thru fried chicken restaurant. I did it with the kitchen doors closed and without much fanfare because I didn’t have a work permit.

My next big step was to ‘fib’ about my age and get hired to unload semi-trailers and box cars on a loading dock. I was fifteen-years-old and they expected, and got, a man’s work for a man’s pay. The men were hard and rough and they took me in. I strained my back with them, I sweat with them and I learned to drink with them during the breaks. I set my value system by the respect that one man had for the other. I learned the honor and decency that you could feel because you measured up to your goals. That you mattered.

I carried that work ethic with me throughout my life. Oh I’ve had lots of other jobs. As contiguous as I could manage. I’ve worn a work shirt and swung a hammer, I’ve worn a tie and taken phone calls. I’ve flown on jets to attend meetings, and I’ve mopped floors in the wee hours of mornings long gone. But always, I worked for more than just the money. I worked for self-respect.

Now, due to reasons beyond my control, I’m retired. Perhaps the time for it to be under my control existed at one time, but the window closed long ago. Instead, I was plunged into the deep pool known as retirement. Retirement is an unusual place where the external structures in your life disappear. The need to get up in the morning, is no longer set by an alarm, or an obligation. Daily ablutions, cooking, cleaning and even dressing become optional endeavors governed only by self-motivation and not driven by timelines or socio-economic considerations. It casts one adrift. Hobbies even those well developed ones now have unlimited time to be devoted to. But become limited by the enthusiasm formerly given in short time-constrained bursts.

So new occupations emerge, and new endeavors, no matter how obverse to previous interests, arise, and I find myself a writer. I writer who writes novels and poetry. And when I am blocked I do wood working, for myself and very few others. I suddenly find that I still have a job, and like all the others, one that I love.