An unexpected retirement

Well, then! I always wanted to start a blog… but I never had time.

Now I do.

A week ago today, I was unexpectedly retired. All right. I was laid off. Fired. Canned. While I flattered myself into thinking I’d been redefined as an unaffordable luxury, part of me knew the truth… I’d become an unsustainable expense… a drag on the budget. A waste to be cut.

I was magnanimously awarded two weeks’ pay as severance, copiously thanked for ten years’ faithful labor, and tearfully escorted by my bosses into my thankfully paid-for car. God bless their sweet souls, they were crying much harder than I was.

Then I drove home. Sixty one years old. Broke. Morbidly obese. Achy as hell, and forced to walk with a cane. Suddenly unemployed.

Free.

My mind belongs to me now. For the past forty-one years, I’ve written and spoken for corporate entities. They limited the thoughts I could think…the words I could use… the clothes I could wear…the very hours when I could rise and go to sleep.

They OWNED me. But now,  I can think and say anything I like, for I AM the brand. My time is mine. I set the rules.

I could use their money, of course… but I’m done with prostituting my brain for a pittance.

So what am I going to do?

Who knows?

I’d like to write a dirty book about old people. No one seems to have ever done that. I’d like to adopt an ugly old dog to shake up my houseful of cats. I’d like to restore the popularity that Dubonnet and gin enjoyed in the 1920’s. I’d like to see more theater and opera. Hell, I’d like to DO some theater…something I haven’t done for thirty five years, even though acting was once the focus of my life!

I’d like to take care of my husband, who has spent too many years living with a businesswoman who was too tired to cook his meals, wash his clothes, or clean his house as diligently as she would have liked. I’d like to hang out with my kids, who are now delightful adults with a fiendishly wicked sense of humor.

I’d like to go back to my church. It’s too late to pursue the dream of studying for the clergy, but I’d like to return to the pews, and hear what the Lord had to say on a weekly basis. I miss that.

I’d like the occasional glass of wine in the middle of the afternoon… and on those rare occasions when my husband has an afternoon free, I’d like to prove that two old people can get it on with a joy and abandon undreamt of by shy, inhibited lovelies in their twenties and thirties.

I suspect this blog will be an embarrassment to my children, and although I’m sorry, I don’t care. I’m too old to rein in my thoughts and my words. Who knows how long I’ll have to let them out? I don’t want to be remembered as the prim and proper bastion of socially acceptable mores. I want to be remembered as one truly crazy old broad. A nutcase, yes, but a funny old bitch. And a nice one.

I want to be remembered as myself.

And so, I begin this journey of SELF expression.

Like a dog with a raised leg, I hereby begin to leave my mark.