Retired & Unaccompanied

Born in Indiana USA, I retired on August 18 2017 from my information technology job.  I was 62 and a couple of months.

Over the years I have been a:

• Started life as a hayseed Indiana kid raised on a diet of god and country
• In school I was a mediocre athlete at a small school (tennis, gymnastics, golf, baseball, football)
• A college student: From ages 32 – 36, graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with distinction degree
• Politically I began as a Republican and later switched to Democrat as it fits my world view better (for now anyway)
• I had careers as a missionary (1 yr), custom van painter (10 yrs.) and information technology architect (25 yrs.)
• My income over my working life ranged from 6k to 300k
• I proudly have 2 gay sons and a transgender son who is married to a transgender woman. partner.  All college grads (so proud)
• I have three awesome grand children
• Unlucky in love I have been married and divorced 3 times
• I have lived in 7 states – Indiana, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Virginia, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arizona
• I have traveled to 49 US states plus visited France, England, Italy, Japan, Costa Rica, China, South Korea and Mexico
• I worked at 8 companies since college ranging from small to very large (IBM)
• I have skydived 3 times
• I once got lost and almost died in the Grand Staircase Escalade national park

I bask in the diversity I have experienced.  It has been an interesting road to say the least and I look forward to more adventures.  I have been changed in ways I never would have expected.  Many times with my heart in my throat the whole time.

The down side to all the exciting diversity is leaving a trail of people behind, both family and friends. Separate paths grow further apart over time, the Road not Taken and all that.

In most cases it has been my decision to depart from the friendships or at least not to encourage them to continue, except on Facebook of course.

People are also leaving me.  My mom passed away in 2016.  She went suddenly and I am only now really coming to grips with the fact that she is gone and not coming back.  Dad is hanging in there at 95.  We have grown closer in some ways.  We actually took a trip to Tennessee together.  The first one since I was 18 or so.  It is a great thing to have parents live a long life so you can really get to know them as fellow adults. All of my grandparents lived long lives too except my paternal grandfather he died at 76

(this paragraph is from 2017 – 18 before I moved to Arizona) So here I am.  Retired and living in a town where I only know people from my former work.  I didn’t really bond with any of them enough in three years to call any of them close friends and we don’t get together since I retired.  I don’t attend church or belong to any groups.  I really don’t enjoy group activities.

I am close to my kids but they have their own lives to lead and are busy.  They also live all over the place, in one case outside the US.

I have learned what the caution not to drink alone really means. Right now drinking leads to dark thoughts and despair.  So I put the cork back in the bottle and left it there for now because I really don’t enjoy despair.

So what is my beef?  I don’t have one.  I have my personality and it landed me where I am.  I have to deal with it, case closed.

Life lives in one direction, forward.  I think I will be ok.  The statistics I read all over the place claim that people who live alone don’t live as long as those with large social networks. Do they worry me, absolutely, I like statistics.  But should I jump into relationships to put myself into the correct statistical bracket?  Will that keep the ole ticker going for more years?  Of course not.  Parts of my marriages were exponentially more stressful than my life is now.  That can’t be life extending.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that freaking out about being alone is caused, for me, mostly by ingesting media and experts that say it is not ok.  When I just decide that this is my life and don’t focus on the aloneness I feel fine.  Most of the time I really enjoy being alone.  I do what I want, when I want.  My money and possessions are my own. My whole house is a man cave for Christ’s sake.  There are many upsides to this lifestyle.

In the end we all end up in the same place so why worry over much.