TheBanyanTree: stop the presses!

[Teague, Julie Anna]

Thanks, Pammie!  I'm excited, too.  I should probably work until I'm 65 or 67 or whatever, but I'm jumping ship anyway.

Julie

-----Original Message-----
From: TheBanyanTree <thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com> On Behalf Of Pam James via TheBanyanTree
Sent: Thursday, January 4, 2024 1:12 PM
To: A comfortable place to meet other people and exchange your own *original* writings. <thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com>
Cc: Pam James <pamjamesagain at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: stop the presses!

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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