Word count 970

                                                         

My philosophy from an early age was that there were two reasons to hold a normal paying job:  1.You liked it, or 2.You needed the money.

I never had a job that I liked.  After getting advanced degrees in math, there were few options.  At the time the two that I knew were working for the war machine or teaching math.  I taught for four years before someone mentioned actuarial work.  Did that for three insurance companies from 1973 to 1983, then became a free lancer until 1997 when I thought we had enough money to bridge to IRAs and Social Security.  Before retirement, I had started volunteering – I was the greeter at the Marine Mammal Center in the Marin Headlands and a docent at China Camp.  Wife Sharon was a model for volunteering because she had become a nature guide using her knowledge of plants and animals.  At the time we lived in Corte Madera California where we had moved from my last job in Los Angeles.  She was employed as a pension actuary in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

My work as an independent actuary was ragged.  For a while I commuted half time back to Los Angeles where I worked every other week.  The four hundred miles trip was intensely painful on my knee from holding down on the accelerator – no cruise control.  It brought it a little money, but being a bachelor in Los Angeles half time was no fun.  A few times the ride was scary – the tule fog on US 99 which I took sometimes cut vision to about ten feet.  I thought that I would be hit from behind, or hit a car in front of me.

After two years of that, and no idea what I would be doing in Los Angeles.  I stayed at home and flogged software I had programmed.  The joke was that I was no programmer or salesman.  We did some sales trips and conferences.  This went on from around 1984 to 1997.  There were months I made no money and one month I made $16,000.

Business dried up.  By then neither of my conditions for working were met.  I never liked any of my jobs and I thought we had enough money.  We did, but health costs before we got to Medicare were scary.  Coincidentally, my widowed mother in my hometown Portland Oregon was on her own, and I thought I could help her.  Even before total retirement, work had become part time.

November 1997 Sharon and I were officially retired in Lake Oswego, Oregon south of Portland.  I think there was one more job for someone I knew in New Jersey and I checked to see if there was any employment locally.  There was none.  My plan was to be idle for six months and then see what I wanted to do.

We started hiking with a local hiking group which we stuck with.  Many of our closest friends are hikers.  Later we began snow shoeing.

After the six months, I started three volunteer jobs.  My long time park stewardship began with ivy removal in local Tryon State Park.  I was a pusher / unpaid escort (wheelchair jockey) at what I called the hospital with too many names, the short version is Legacy Meridian.   At Bookique, a used bookstore which supports our local Lake Oswego library, I’ve priced and shelved books and run the cash register.

The hospital service ended after ten years when a conflict led to a “her way or the highway”.  I chose highway.  It had been fun because I had a few jokes which I could use with people I’d never see again.  When asked if it was hard work I’d explain that it had been easy since the invention of the wheel.

Both Booktique and park stewardship have lasted to this day – twenty-six years so far.

After some wrangling over things to do at Booktique, I’ve ended up in purgatory.  I pull books that haven’t sold for a year.  Said books have three possible fates.  They could end up at Amazon or a place called Better Books Worldwide if either of those places want them. If not, they are recycled. 

Most of my work at parks has been removing invasive plants, primarily ivy, but also Himalayan blackberry, holly trees and more.  In the earlier years there were some jobs at special events like parking patrol.  Both Sharon and I got awards for our contributions to state parks.  I just passed 5678.9 volunteer hours there.  More recently I started doing similar work at Iron Mountain, a Lake Oswego park, and former location of an iron ore mine.

In 2014 two events started me writing.  I read local author Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild”, and had painful knee and feet problems making me wonder if I should have a non-physical activity.  I’d done some writing in the 1990s, and started writing again as a fallback position if I became crippled.  I didn’t become crippled and I (blush) have hundreds of things published in four continents and all of the usual genres.  Last year “Weird Science” and “Vernonia Trilogy” were published.  The former is a collection of mostly scienceless fiction stories, and the latter is (obviously), three stories about famous people from a small Oregon town whose name rhymes with Caledonia.

As I write this hiking (five miles is the new seven miles), writing, and volunteering take up most of my time not sleeping, eating or drinking.  We have not been on snowshoes for a while, but thinking about a possible few more.  We might like to cruise again, but one time I got the flu and few interest us.  Travel sounds good until we get to the details.  We have been on a few Road Scholar trips.

Summary – Work bad, retirement good.

Appears in Pure Slush Lifespan Retirement