Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Retirement blues

I don't know which freaks me out worse: six more weeks of working at a job that has become unchallenging, or twenty more years of not working at all. This ought to be a no-brainer, and I keep telling myself that it is.

I don't believe in karma, at least in the traditional Buddhist sense. I believe good things and bad things happen to people regardless of what kind of lives they've led, and that it's often misleading to even try to identify such things as 'good' or 'bad.' The opportunity that has been presented to me has nothing to do with what I have done or not done with my life to this point.

But something keeps nagging me about this. Something keeps telling me it isn't happening, shouldn't be happening, actually isn't happening and that I've made some huge error, or that some awful calamity will befall me to balance the scales that are now so unnaturally tilted in my favor.

This bothers me so much at times – like right this minute – that it makes me physically ill. I've been like this since yesterday, and off and on since I first realized I could stop working.

Even when life is easy, it's too damn complicated for me. How do people with real problems get by? I can't even cope with mowing the yard.

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