Rolling Away
OH, GOD, IS THIS ANOTHER MONDAY?
I’m retired and I don’t have to get up and go to work anywhere, but my body and soul are reacting like I do. It’s not fair.
I should relate to Mondays like I do to Wednesdays or Saturdays – I think I’ll just roll over and catch a few more winks.
What’s the point of being retired if I respond to Monday mornings by having my stomach clench up like a fist and my brain trying to come up with some good excuses to stay home? Something needs to be done about this – something short of going out, getting a job, and then quitting the job all over again.
My working life went on for 47 years. For most of that time I fell into the category of “Disgruntled Employee.” Few were the days when I could say that I was “Gruntled” on the job.
When I made that final decision to really retire I was seriously Disgruntled and tired of having to share my workday with a Management largely composed of people who would fail the aptitude test to become a doorstop.
When I turned in the paperwork making my retirement official I looked around saw some younger employees whose eyes cried out, “Take me with you!” That was a day when being 65 was a blessing. I had put in my time, made some good decisions along the way, and I could tell that, if I’d stayed on the job there that things would only have gotten worse.
But that was then – seven years in the past.
I don’t miss being part of the “Daily Grind” and I think I got out in time before I was ground up like a pound of coffee.
This is Monday morning. I don’t have to get up, dress appropriately, and go to any meetings. I am getting up – when I darned well feel like it. I will dress to avoid prosecution and sunburn. The only meeting I will take a part in will be my lips meeting with the edge of my coffee cup.
I’ll second that motion!
Maybe even third it!
As I am approaching full consciousness this morning my mood is improving. I have plopped my carcass in a corner pew at St. Arbucks and I can see the constant flow of people coming and going on their way to work. The looks on most of the faces I see are not happy or even accepting of reality. They are desperate and sad. Some of these younger folks look as if they could get back in their cars and drive off until they run into the ocean. They won’t do that, of course. It wouldn’t be the adult, responsible thing to do.
I do know that, eventually, when the weariness and the daily nonsense at work reaches a “critical mass” that some, very few, will pull out of the Drive-Thru lane, turn left instead of right and vanish like a smoke ring in the wind.
There is no other explanation for California.
Down the Hall on Your Left 