There is a lock and key party in Ft. Lauderdale in January which I’d consider. But today, I’m waiting for the rain to let up long enough to go buy some Fender thin guitar picks. Ladies, is that professional enough for you? Really? Tell me more.I read some of their advertising and reviews. Let me tell you, those clubs are one of the next things to be investigated. They make wild claims they cannot possibly deliver on. There may be an exception. The speed-dating outfits. I know that every long term relationship I ever had in this life was sparked in the first ten seconds, often significantly faster. Let me choose one club and look into it.
I joined up, but won’t say which outfit. The curiosity got me, what kind of woman would respond to my ad, or are the women waiting to be responded to? I know the code to get around too many advertising restrictions, but it isn’t really a code because only Caucasians have blue eyes. I’ve already done enough searches to see all dating clubs are monopolized by people who would never get a date no matter what they do. And average means 40 pounds overweight.
What an amazing profusion of single women with bachelor degrees earning $50-75K. They exist on paper, at least. It is also clear there are not enough tall men to go around, but what exactly does a woman who is 4 foot 9 mean by “tall”? Another thing that’s changed is the intense, what’s the word, “carefulness” with which women write their blurbs with these days. There must have been a seminar on the topic. Example, the restrained difference between looking for a man “like me” and a man “to like me”. Read twice, be disappointed once.
One thing that I will never change is my belief that if there is something wrong, such people have a moral onus to tell other people before they make major decisions based on the assumption nothing is wrong. Remaining silent on a point is not good enough. If you never promised a rose garden, spell it out early, not later, Loretta. My idea of things that are wrong: Drug dependence, psychotic personality, contact with former lovers, over-strong family ties, history of bad choices, TV addiction, lack of life accomplishment, Mafia connections, genetic defects, generally anything negative that she feels is somebody else’s fault.
I openly admit my major defect. The bottom line, toots, is nobody is going to last with me unless she is a total babe. I’d put that in my ad if they’d allow it. Another thing there is no excuse for these days is a poor education. The government will send you to school for friggin’ free, lady. The courses are pretty tough because you already know it all, but still, there is no reason to not have a specialty these days.
Back to real life, I have a question. How come when you are carrying two bags of garbage across the living room and one breaks, it is the one containing coffee grounds and banana peels? Is it me? Is it Florida? I know these things never happened when I had the right woman. They happened to her. Ha-ha, I didn’t mean that. Or did I?
Addendum
Having spare time isn’t such a bad thing if you always have something to do. Like write. Today, I finished my year-end a month ahead of schedule. Things are looking up, particularly since this is first year after my “post-retirement”. I’ll elaborate, but it is no good to do certain experiments unless you have a control, a way to gauge their results a long time after they are complete.
My practice retirement lasted from November 2005 to November 2010, you can look it up earlier in this blog, but that’s a lot of reading. I stress, I did not want the facts of retirement, including the strong possibility of having to continue working in some form, to take me by surprise. While almost anyone could tell you retirement is a shock, they are just talking. Advice comes easy when watching an experiment from a safe and comfortable distance.
Nobody’s ever ready, but that doesn't mean don't prepare. I needed the entire year after 2010 to compare against the recent past. Right there's an opportunity most people will never have. I rate the trial a qualified success, and I’ll state some of those qualifications in a moment. The most serious downfall for the majority will be (future tense) their built-in beliefs that they deserve a good life just because they worked hard and obeyed every imaginable rule. They actually thought their middle-class behavior meritted them a job, a wife, a mortgage, etc. and now think that extends to a retirement. Wrong. Look around you.
Don’t underestimate this significant factor. These people are crazy but there are millions of them. You can see then on TV, marching down Wall Street. On a smaller scale, they behaved just as irresponsibly as the banks they are protesting. All their nothing lives they naively trusted the system that is now arresting them by the busload. And just wait until they find their arrest records posted on the Internet when the next time they’re needing a job. Or when their credit score drops 300 points. Let’s hear them say then that they have nothing to hide.
What are the factors that kept my practice retirement from getting an A+? First of all, I worked the entire five years at a successful business, a business that was remarkably like a part-time job without fixed hours. (I had to create that business, something 99% of people fail to do in a lifetime.) Also, I rode a bicycle 7,000 miles during that stretch, so my health gradually improved (to 45% normal). You will not be so lucky. It takes discipline, a word most North Americans wouldn’t know if it kicked down their door with a search warrant over their grand-kid’s “most recent” history.
Conclusion. As far as my Five Year Plan:
A) I would not do it again unless there was no other choice. Do not rely on a working retirement. You won’t make it. Every last thing you could do is taken by the illegal immigrants you turned a blind eye on for the past forty years.
B) The business income was never steady. I had to survive five (intermittent) months of losses over those 60 months and another five of breaking even. Most people cannot survive a single lost paycheck without cash help.
C) FACT: Part-time, whether a job or business, ties you down full-time. Now what did I just say? Repeat that back to me. I never did get away even once, except a working trip to the Carolinas. This isn't 1995. Take one holiday and your clientele will be gone when you return.
