Luck, Faith and Will in Everyday Ramblings

All I really want to do is read and write, practice yoga and teach a bit, take photos, hang out with the cats, go for long walks and the occasional run, eat good food and spend time with folks that make me laugh and stimulate me intellectually.

The interesting thing about looking at this how do I want my life to be exercise is that I am, in fact, already doing everything I want to do.

It would be nice to share it with someone, that has come up in terms of practicality as well as emotionally over the last few weeks and S. was encouraging me to date while we were taking the lovely energetic Frieda for a long walk on Friday.

She strongly believes I should keep working full time until I can retire with full Social Security benefits in five years and she made a very compelling case for it.

Over the next few weeks I will be asking all the powers that be out there, and myself more questions. I am uncertain about the pricing on the health insurance package for retirees but from what I gathered on Friday I will run out of funding for health insurance 16 months before I and eligible for Medicare. And that is if I don’t have any significant health events that require copays like I have this last year.

Over the life of this 3 and ½ years here we are talking an additional $500 a month.

If, and this is a big if, I could get a part time job that is oh say half time with no benefits but pays $20 and hour I could do it. It would have to be somewhere else.

But as S. said, I live remarkably close to the bone as it is. And cutting back on the little luxuries like Netflix and my Sunday paper copy of the New York Times and buying books now and then seems like a hard call.

I could make it work though. And I could walk away from my current employer “Scott free”, which is pretty funny to me because Nimrod’s name in the real world is Scott.

This is all a question of luck and faith and will.

I suppose I could start buying lottery tickets. :)

I am so close, so close to escape velocity. I have another pool of money that is enough to cover the health insurance shortfall I believe. The question is how much do I really want to leave my job?

It is a pretty sweet deal. Except when I am training folks, which I do a fair amount of, I work from home 29 hours per week, in my bedroom, with the cats. Even though I won’t get a raise or bonuses or other incentives in the next five years I get paid a decent salary and have for this culture and time pretty good benefits.

If I can stay healthy and sane over the next five years the increase in my retirement savings pool will be more than the $20,000 they are offering now (it is not a rich offer by any means, if it were $35,000 and would cover my benefits for the whole period this decision would be a no brainer).

I will be able to start my retirement at basically the same standard of living I have now, which is something I didn’t know two weeks ago. I have been fretting about having to cut back as a trade off looking at the future.

And I need to replace my bed and my computer before I fully retire.

And on Friday I got an offer to sub two sessions a week with a private yoga client, a doctor for a few months. That just sent me off into a sleep deprived mind spin!

If I take the offer I would free up time after the first of the year. This sub gig starts in three weeks. I could do it and I would enjoy it but I would have to work my chores into a very tight window and I don’t think it would help with the weariness I am slowly, ever so slowly recovering from.

Still, complicated as this all is, it is a useful exercise in both appreciating the wonderful life I have built and the enjoyment ahead.

Now, if I could just do something about the transitional low-income housing project with 8 units for mentally ill folks they are planning to build on the site of the old gas station that that been a toxic cleanup area for 15 years two blocks away…

I am glad I am doing this history project now. The times they are a’changing.

Last updated August 09, 2015