TheBanyanTree: stop the presses!

[Pam James]

I am so very excited for you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On Thu, Jan 4, 2024 at 12:56 PM Teague, Julie Anna via TheBanyanTree <
thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
>
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