It’s Those Dreary Decisions That Wear You Out
I recall somebody once saying that life is a series of one damned decision after another. I don’t remember who it was. Maybe I said it. I don’t know. That’s the trouble with growing old. A lifetime of too damned many decisions erodes the brain’s synapses, I think, and you find yourself limping mentally into your autumnal years, much to your dismay.
My 13-year-old pickup truck, which threatens to groan to a halt because of carrying me and one too many old printing presses over far too many miles for its ancient wheels, needs to be replaced. It dismays me to have to do it. It’s just one more tiresome decision as to which manufacturer and model will serve best my needs and pocketbook.
And I’ve been agonizing for several months over the purchase of a computer that will do word processing. My old Remington typewriter is beginning to look better and better, lots slower as a writing tool, to be sure, but vastly cheaper and simpler. After all, I haven’t forgotten how to cut and paste a manuscript in work.
As you see, I derive small joy from new replacements. They never turn out to be quite what they’re cracked up to be. But maybe I expect too much, or maybe it’s true that things aren’t really as good as they used to be once the shine of newness wears off.
Lord knows, my newness has.
And this brings me to a string of decisions I never dreamed I’d have to make. For nearly a decade I’ve been happily anticipating my 65th birthday in March of 1986 when I could retire and blissfully do my own things full bore--writing that book, fine letterpress printing, making and performing magic, cruising among the Channel Islands without regard to clock or days.
In my innocence, I believed I’d automatically be able enjoy all of these wonderful things without financial worry. Alas, reality dawned bleakly in a session with Bob Williams, certified public accountant and financial adviser. Williams had had me make an involved spread sheet listing all of my wife’s and my 1985 expenses according to various categories, along with items of net worth, projected retirement income and income from investments.
This resulted in a shocking annual budget that meant we’d have to make drastic reductions in our present life styles, or make--here it comes!--many hard decisions regarding reinvestments and selling certain treasured things, possibly our home that fortunately has appreciated solidly, and reinvesting the capital prudently in conservatively profitable instruments. Williams listed more alternatives than I dreamed possible, and if we decided to pursue certain alternatives, we could live pretty much as we desired. Our decisions , if followed steadily to their end results, would take about a year to bear fruit.
Of course I was grateful to learn that a relatively comfortable retirement was possible in a year from now. But all those damned decisions ! I was mentally fatigued just thinking about them. In that mental condition, on Williams’ advice, I visited the local government office to sign up for Medicare and Social Security, the latter to be activated when I retired.
As evidence of my eroded synapses, it’s sufficient to relate that when the pleasant woman there asked me a series of questions about my years of service in the Coast Guard during World War II, the amount of money I earned in 1985, my Social Security number, my wife’s birth date, the date of our marriage--I drew blanks! I had to fumble, red-faced, through my wallet for the information.
Then she asked me what I did for a living at The Times. I remembered that, saying I was a writer.
“I thought so, she said. “I thought you were either a writer or a physicist.” It seems that members of those professions, she said, frequently suffer severe memory lapses when preparing for retirement at the Social Security office.
As I say, it’s a lifetime of one damned decision after another that erodes the synapses, culminating in all those unexpected retirement decisions. My worry now is: After I’m retired and somebody with a form confronts me, will I be able to remember that I’m retired?
