Retirement

I’ve always found it funny, how life is. The first quarter of it, you’re learning and adapting to an environment you know nothing about. In the second and third, you work for your own survival, your home, maybe even a family. Ultimately in the fourth quarter you retire and take it easy, finally getting some well deserved rest. That is, if you’ve managed to achieve all the former.

Quite frankly speaking, I think it will be extremely hard for people to retire from it all in the coming generations. I personally don’t think I will reach the age for it, or on the off chance that I will, my pension will be so laughably low that I would still need to keep working until the day I die. Pretty sure that’s waiting for all of us though.

So thus the question stands: How do you live your life?

I know of people who live extremely frugally, counting pennies, trying to scrape by in hopes of suffering now, with things possibly getting better later. Then there’s the opposite, those who live like there’s no tomorrow, enjoying every bit of time they spend on earth. No savings, no plans to own a home or anything for that matter. Of course there’s are both the extremes, but they do exist and not many live in a balanced way.

Even amongst my co-workers, it’s a constant debacle on how they see themselves in the future, despite some of them being only a few years away from retirement. Some are better off than others, they don’t have loans, own property, while other’s not so much and even have loans. But there’s one common element I’ve noticed: They’re extremely lax.

Thing is, one of the core points of my culture is simply “not giving a damn” attitude, but that’s not really true for everything and differs on a case by case basis on what it entails. Hell, I’m probably less “caring” in a way than the average person, but you still see me bitch about whatever from time to time.

However, my colleagues seem to take this to new heights. Sure, they get annoyed by whatever, but otherwise they’re as uncaring as a college kid high on weed. It reminds me of how I was once, during some extreme stress laden work times. But for me that was a survival reaction, for them it’s a natural state.

So this kept me thinking: Was I better off mentally back then, or not? There’s not a clear answer to this, as in some ways I was, but I also wasn’t. I did have times of joy, but I was nail bitingly focused on being as calm as possible. I could care less of getting run over by a car, getting mugged, shanked… the list goes on. Frankly I don’t think it was a bad decision to go down that way, but in hindsight I have problems with the execution of it. If only that was by choice, from a natural progression instead…

Which brings me finally to the point of this post: Achieving an early retirement.

Of course, I’m not talking about a financial status here, more so about my mentality towards life. I’ve been caught up with rushing too many things, always under the watchful eyes of the ticking clock. I have retained some of the qualities from the above mentioned time, but I wish to have more of it. I’d like to have the same level of laxness as the seniors at work.

I know I know, I’m nowhere near retirement. But frankly, do I need to be? I don’t think so. Now, I’m not saying I’ll become a useless couch potato, far from it. I will continue living as I had in the past half year, but with the addition of simply claiming this era of my life as part of my retirement years. Honestly, just the thought of calling even the upcoming days as part of said retirement is making me glow from excitement. Yes I need to work, yes I have loans to pay off still, but that doesn’t mean my focus should be directed towards any of those things. It’s such a simple thing really, one might say I’m just fooling myself, but really that’s fine as well. As long as I get to enjoy more and more days, it’s going to be all right.

I’m not going to change a single thing about the way I do things, I won’t change any of my plans. I will simply travel forward in time mentally, and take up the mentality that of a retired old man. This will ultimately eliminate most of the pressure weighting on my back and allow me to live more freely and happily. Maybe this doesn’t make much sense, maybe it’s a horribly misplaced idea, but I want to go through with it. I’m positive I will enjoy everything much more deeply than before. Heck, I remember I stopped wearing a wristwatch for this exact same reason as a teenager, as I did not want to be hounded by the passage of time. Just that the circumstances and my comprehension were slightly different.

This time around though, I can make it work. There’s nothing really holding me back from doing so, except for my own damned self. So from today and onwards, I claim to be Mentally Retired. (Boy that sounds too close to a pejorative expression, lmao)