Maintaining a lifestyle in retirement is trickier than it looks. Basic expenses are covered. But some of the luxuries start to downgrade if you don’t do something real, and I’m watching that clock.
Too many things on my plate, and not all of them are mine. Clouds of things to fix and finish fog over the windshield. I refuse to fail – that’s not in my vocabulary – but I don’t like having too many pressing obligations and not enough runway.
Mentally it’s all small tornadoes passing just north of my center of gravity. Too much pressure from things that matter to me, compassion chief among them. Others have needs. I slip off my mark trying to help. Too many interests, not enough hours, easy to mis-prioritize.
I want to be useful. Sometimes I just feel like a delusional retiree. I don’t like being there.
Here’s the honest version: I’ve been carrying loads for other people my entire life. I was the only functioning adult in a family of four from age thirteen until I left for college. Then there were no adults, including my parents. That pattern doesn’t just stop because you retire.
Runaway compassion. The obligation to make the world right even when it requires punching kilotons above your weight. I’m ready to let someone else take it, but through my impending-disaster-colored binoculars, that isn’t happening anytime soon. I think I need a new pair.
The energy is there. I flinch anyway. Laziness and lounging consume too many mornings because the slate ahead feels like a pulsar at zero deflection angle. Truth is I’m actually balancing the load reasonably well. I just want to put it down sometimes, and I berate myself too often for moving organically through my day.
That’s on me. Complex problem, and I’m not guilt-free in it.
But here’s what I know: I’m a problem-solving engine. Always have been. It has to be genuinely fun or I wouldn’t get so caught up. The question isn’t whether to solve problems – that’s just what I do – the question is which problems, and whether they pay well enough to matter.
Stale chewing gum was the first problem I ever really solved. Why does it go stale? Why does it lose flavor? Why does it harden on the table but turn pliable again when you work it? I was eight years old and nearly became a chemist because of it. That curiosity never left.
My favorite college experience was Intro to Engineering – decision-making, ballpark calculations, reversed design. I got straight A-pluses and spent long nights at the drawing board without once resenting it. The instructor became my first professional friend. Didn’t realize until after he died that he was Von Braun’s countdown man. The ultimate planner. My first real mentor.
All that detailed analysis I used to do, when I felt I was doing my very best work? That was real. That was me. I can get back there.
The quest is refining itself. Didn’t see that coming, but here it is.
I think I’m done throwing art into the void. Time to show my work – compact, clear, every time. Reveal the thinking. Show the flow. Post the mind map. Teach people to use basic engineering to help themselves navigate a complex day.
Which, now that I say it out loud, might be exactly what I’ve been doing all along without realizing it.
Principle fifteen: release early, release often. Otherwise you’re just hoarding half-baked ideas, and there’s no market for those.