It’s time for me to retire.
Actually, officially, I retired a while ago (it’s obligatory in Luxembourg at 65), but I kept working. I had stopped working for a couple of months when some very nice Germans offered me rather a lot of money to start again. But I’ve had enough.
I remember my mother complaining that when she retired, she was busier than when she was working. That’s a risk for me. I’ve built up a poetry library over the years, specifically for when I retire, so I have a lot of little books to read and review.
I also have my old record collection to revive and re–enjoy, which means reviving a mechanism to play the dratted things. Although a lot of my music is digitised, not all is, and that which is digitised suffers from been digitised on Apple music, a platform written by people who don’t like music collectors, in that it’s obviously designed for people with no more than about three albums / records / CDs / 78s / whatever–today’s–format–is, because that’s pretty much all the albums that can fit on a full screen. They pretend to love sleeve designs, but if they really loved sleeve designs, they’d have noticed sleeves have a third dimension, the dimension which genuine collectors of records/CDs/etc. make visible when filing their collection. I did a search a while ago for some alternative software that could not just play but also actually properly display my digitised collection, but found none … other apps can’t read the apple music files, which, to me, stinks of monopoly abuse (plus ça change).
I want to get back into making my own food, for both financial and quality reasons. I know how to make British food, mostly mine and my mother’s. (My wife’s cooking is fine, it’s just not the stuff I once made myself.) I need to make my own: much British food here is horribly expensive imported foreign muck, and most of that is crap in packets. There is some stuff I’d love to explore but can’t: certain shops here are full of lovely whiskies, but I’m not about to start knocking back a bottle a day.
I would like to reconnect with my friends from my politically active youth, which means getting along to some conferences. That means getting involved in the sister party here, with a view to acting as a liaison between the two parties. That’ll take time to get in place: there is the little detail of building trust, and right now I know neither the current arrangements nor, in terms of policies, what I’m talking about.
We will also travel, probably to various other parts of Europe, along with visits to family. I’m not talking months in billionaires’ paradises, but simple city visits: the retired are not famous for ridiculous wealth. There’s a lot of glorious culture in the EU that I want to absorb. Mind you, there’s a lot of glorious culture across the world, and we will of course have to visit family in China and America as and when.
So I have new projects, but I’m not giving up on my existing projects, such as arts & ego, SSC, photography, poetry, languages, ….
I see what my mother was on about.
Another thing about getting old is … well, I remember my grandfather complaining that the only time he met his family was at funerals. That’s started. I’ll travel to go to other people’s funerals, then one day some will come to mine. Life’s a bitch and then you die (which I thought was a Mae West quote, but apparently it was actually coined by Tony Daniels in 1982).
Retirement means less money. I’ve already set myself up with sufficient kit for the next decade, so I won’t, or at least shouldn’t, be stuck for technical stuff doing the things I love. I will need to reduce expenditure, of course, and that means cutting down on repeat expenses, among other things. There are many things impacted, including this site: for example, I’m cutting back on domains, which require regular payments, so I’ve wrapped up corrupt press, and am rehoming SSC here on arts & ego.
I have every intention of enjoying this phase of my life.