TheBanyanTree: stop the presses!

[Teague, Julie Anna]

Dear Tree Folk, some of you have known me forever and a day, and during the whole time you've known me, I've been here at a computer screen, pressing my silly little keys and keeping my silly little life afloat by writing computer programs which ostensibly provide those-in-charge with the information they need to keep charging.  Well, I did some calculations this morning.  Or, rather, I opened the handy-dandy Excel spreadsheet in which I had previously coded and saved the calculations almost three years ago (when the numbers seemed impossibly high and nearly insurmountable).  And what these calculations told me, in the form of a single number with a lot of backstory, is this--

Ahem.

Little Julie Anna Teague,

who was born into a dirt poor family in Nowheresville, Indiana (population 500),
who has worked her entire life at jobs with varying degrees of meaningfulness, including almost 41 years for Indiana University,
who has written a story or two, climbed a mountain or ten, and been owned by a cat or twenty (and currently one very spoiled dog),
who has done yoga, breathwork, meditation, acupuncture, reiki, vision-boarding, primal screaming, long distance running, art therapy, sound therapy, talk therapy, and several things that were self-destructive but felt good at the time,
who has loved and lost and loved again, ad nauseam, etc., and so forth,
who has tried always to be kind and giving to her friends and family and animals and the environment and other good causes,
who has scraped and saved, made do and paid off, re-used and re-grouped, eaten all the leftovers and composted all the scraps,
and raised two damn good kids,

has FORTY-NINE actual working days left in her working life at Indiana University.

Forty-nine.  LESS THAN FIFTY DAYS, FOLKS, and, to paraphrase the great MLK, I am free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty, I am free at last to live my life no longer beholden to a forty hour work week or shackled to my computer with the proverbial golden handcuffs.

I get the key to the handcuffs in forty-nine days, and guess what, they aren't real gold anyway.  I've mostly stopped worrying that I'll end up eating cat food, but getting my teeth cleaned twice a year will become my budget luxury item.

And before anyone responds with, "You'll need a PLAN to get through your retired days."  I think every person I've told has said that to me.  No worries, I have plans.  I have grandkids to nurture and am gaining two more in the Spring.  I have reading, classes, art, and volunteering I want to do.  And my big plan, already in the works for many months now, is that I'm starting a micro-sized flower farm in my urban back yard and will be selling at the Farmer's market.  It is hard work, but it's the work of my heart and never feels like work.  I can be in my garden all day every day, doing the crappiest of garden tasks, and come in exhausted and filthy and with my back aching, and it still feels more like joy than work.

So, that's where I'm at.   Let the countdown commence.

Julie