I may have retired… Part II

Originally, 12 years ago,  I thought I had a dream job… running a historic house… a really good dream job…  I was wrong…

Things have turned ugly… It’s (the problem) is not the house, or the job, or employer… it is the others… the “Them”

Then the rules changed… When the crap hit the rotary oscillator at work (the site where I work, not the City) a few years ago, I thought I was playing a game, a game of survivor…  Just like on TV…  with The Farm in place of an island and the game being “who can outlast the back side of the donkey…” aka… “the Them”… the game came with alliances, some obvious, some false, some of opportunity… Some of who I will support in the final vote at tribal council…

I was wrong… again… (not about the people I would vote for, about the game...)

In reality the game is who has the best life boat…  Our ship (the park, not the house which is my cabin on this ill fated ship)  is sinking… metaphorically… water is rising… you (as in me) the passengers need to get off eventually… it isn’t about the ship… that is the straw-man in the game… the false idol…  the real game is getting off without getting wet…  You want to avoid tribal council…

We have a captain, who much like that Italian guy in charge of the Costa Concordia is playing his own games…  There is a band… playing lovely music… while the ship sinks…  All distractions… Its about the life boat…

Now that I understand, I have a strategy…  

The ship is not important… my survival is… so, I need to abandon the ship to survive…  (and the captain who has driven the ship onto the rocks… I don’t care about him… I thought once that he was  a likable bastard, but times have changed, and his actions have led me to believe that I don't have the capacity to care anymore...)

It turns out that I have a life boat waiting… a pretty damn good life boat…  I have a retirement… from the City, my employer of choice, and other retirement funds… some saved by me (and the wife, never forget the wife… women and children get first dibs at the life boats… this is the rule of the sea… a bit chauvinistic… but still the rule…) plus more funds inherited from my parents, which due to IRS rules I must draw upon… so there is city money, planned money, and money thrust upon me by the IRS…   Recently there have been a few consultant gigs, with more in the wings…   

Thanks to the lovely Tina and her job at the god being which is Google  I have health insurance…  In this reality play the lovely Tina is my Molly Brown…  (the real Molly Brown was a passenger on the Titanic, and was a hero, keeping the passengers moral up, singing songs as the ship sank… and so many were lost)

So, the lifeboat is stocked with provisions… this is not a study in starvation…  

I have put out the SOS call… while it is unlikely help may come, at least the call is out…  It didn’t help Titanic, the first ship to use “SOS” either…  (Random historic fact… the last use of SOS was the Holland America Prisindam in 1982, off Alaska… she sank, with no loss of life…  Tina and I like Holland America… I am credited with some 110 days aboard… none of the HAL ships we have sailed on have sunk…)

With a lifeboat waiting, I can take my time, and help friends stranded on the ship… you know who you are… 

Randy

PS… I have a favorite book… one of the 3 or 4 of which I keep extra copies to give away…  ( wrote of this proclivity in a past blog post) One is a work of fiction, “The Iron Trail” written by Rex Beach in 1912… a fictionalize history of the construction of the Copper River and Northwestern Railroad in Alaska… in 1975, a real history, “The Copper Spike” by Laren Jenson connected the fictional names with the real names…  maybe after I leave the city there will be an equivalent post on this blog… the" and the "him"...