Poetic License

It’s a new year and a great time for a fresh start. I’ve called this the year I finish the memoir, in the hopes that it will inspire me to move past the things that have me blocked. It isn’t that I haven’t made a lot of progress; it’s that I haven’t put all my available energy toward the project. Instead, last year saw me putting almost all my available energy toward my paid employment. There is nothing wrong with working hard at one’s job, but there is something wrong with making it your life. I am not their priority, so why should I make them mine?

In a few short years, like it or not, I will retire from my job. I’m shoving at least 10% of my salary into my 401k and more of my after-tax dollars into an IRA. Still, it will take a little while longer to even break a couple of hundred thousand. That’s because I have experienced unemployment a couple of times in my career for extended periods, as well as dealing with a seriously sick child during part of that time. This happens to so many people, including friends of mine who are still looking for work after being laid off in the past year.

Yet I persisted after my crises. I found other employment and continued leaning forward, shuffling ahead. Sometimes I had to take a pay cut to make a lateral move, which I did when I decided I no longer wanted the unyielding stress of being a network engineer. I went back to school, getting my bachelors and then my masters, which fed my career as a technical writer. When my eyes started to give me problems in that job, which I did for 17 years, I moved into being a Scrum Master for development teams. Now I’m working in product operations, while still doing Scrum Master work. Still I am low on funds for retirement.

What do people do who have nothing set aside after all their years of working? What do retail and restaurant workers do? What on earth do teachers do? My niece is an assistant principal at a high school in suburban Houston. She has a pension plan and is paid decently, but to my knowledge, she is entirely dependent on her future pension, for which she has to work for another six years. She’s one of the lucky ones who still has a pension plan. If she were to leave her job, which she would love to do because of the unbelievable stress and constant demands, she would not be eligible for Social Security. Imagine. Teachers are in a bad spot.

When we did away with most pension plans (and shuttered most factories) in the USA, making folks dependent on their own financial savvy (or lack thereof), we put everyone in a bad spot. Now that the incoming administration is talking about getting rid of government assistance (meaning any form of Social Security), we could be facing a horrific outcome. And when you’re someone like me, who has had to take money out of a 401k and pay taxes and penalties on it, you’re actually one of the lucky ones. If there is no Social Security in my old age, I won’t be able to survive for long. I’m hoping to be lucky enough to have my car and a large portion of my home paid off by then. No guarantees, though. Anything could happen, and I know that intimately.

What will our elderly and infirm do if these billionaires take away any hope they have, any income they have? All these things are on my mind lately, but I cannot let fear rule me. Before my eyes completely give up, I have to finish at least this book, and then the novel that is also in progress. I have other stories and bits of stories in folders, ready for me to work on when I have the time. I have to make the time.

Already this year, I have started to pull back from some of my volunteerism at work. Being a member of two employee resource groups is a lot. For one of them, I participated in the book club, which meant more than just reading and discussing the book. Now we have a call to action and are going to present some of the findings to our executives. Guess what this means? Like most every team project I’ve ever been involved in, I have taken on the brunt of the work for this. In November, I created a document for us to write up our notes about each chapter and then create a list of things that are applicable to our workplace for discussion with our executive team. Only two of us have added notes to that. We met again this past week to talk more about this. We were supposed to rank our findings and choose the top five, meeting again next week to finalize. No one has put anything in that document since we met on Tuesday. I decided before the holidays that this group is not serving me, and I don’t have the desire to serve it. After this effort is complete, I’ll be pulling way back from them. I’ll instead focus the energy I want to put forth on the one ERG for which I’m vice-chair. And if, after our elections, I’m no longer vice-chair, I’ll pull back to only attending the general meetings there.

In other words, my goal for 2025 is to do things that serve me, at work and in my private life. In my long career, I have always been a person who puts forth sometimes Herculean efforts to know all the things to help all the people in my orbit. I’m known and liked at work. But I cannot continue to sustain the level of effort I have applied henceforth for a company that will likely not even notice when I leave. I want to have more energy left at the end of the day to spend with friends, family, and pets. I want to have energy to put toward my own work, to enjoy my continued career as a writer.

Given that I now have glaucoma, in addition to some other eye problems, it is imperative that I work toward my private goals for as long as I can. And I will be exploring ways to dictate my writing in order to preserve my energy and to get the words on paper faster. Yes, that means I’ll spend more time in editing, which I do anyway, to clean up the language, but it also means sparing my eyesight. I have to rest my eyes when I can, which has been more lately.Honestly, I can’t think of anything worse for a writer than losing one’s vision. Maybe dementia would be worse, but in that case, I’d no longer be so concerned with writing. In fact I might not be aware of having been a writer at all. But please, all the gods and goddesses above, spare me that.

It is rare that I even give voice to new year’s resolutions, but this year feels different. I will be 63 in May. I am rapidly approaching a big life change. It’s time to turn the corner and to stop being everything to everyone at work. Time to be everything to me.

Namaste,

Jude