From your year-at-a-glance calendar, what “appointment time” are your eagerly anticipating? Which scheduled appointment are you dreading? Are you good at waiting? How so? (Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 1310).
After
approximately 33 years of working for the City of Saint Petersburg or
its facilities, I retire on February 7, 2014—the close of the first
pay-period after my 70th birthday on January 27, 2014.
Retirement!!!! Certainly a new chapter! In many ways I anticipate
feeling like a kid again, no longer burdened with the daily
responsibility of working to earn income. I imagine what that first
Monday after retirement will be like. No alarm in the morning; no
job responsibilities waiting for me at the start of a new week; no
expectation of meeting and greeting my fellow employees—and the
promised luxury of being able to take naps after lunch. In a sense I
have already experienced some of the freedom awaiting those for which
retirement is imminent; for example, the abeyance of the fire in the
belly to in some perhaps undefined way prepare for the next
promotion—the freedom that comes with setting aside ambition—the
freedom quite frankly in an unadulterated sense to wish the very best
in the way of advancement to my co-workers who might otherwise come
to symbolize my competition.
There
is also a little dread about it. After all, retirement is one of
life’s closing chapters. Contemplating this, immense gratitude for
the myriad blessings I have consistently enjoyed throughout my life
pour over me. There is no way that I can begin to repay those people
and institutions that have enriched my life—I defer to receive the
blessings as offered—as gifts unencumbered with detailed payback
expectations, rather, given me as broad entree into greater happiness
and productivity.
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