You’re too young they said to me. You’ll be bored they said. You’re not gonna have enough money they said.
Not I, said I!
Day 2 –
Experience has taught us that material wants know no natural bounds, that they will expand without end unless we consciously restrain them. Capitalism rests precisely on this endless expansion of wants. That is why, for all its success, it remains so unloved. It has given us wealth beyond measure, but has taken away the chief benefit of wealth: the consciousness of having enough.
Sometime after my mom passed, my dad took his ring off and gave it to me. I think it was his gift to me for starting this very incredible job and journey.
It was fitted to my left pointer finger perfectly… I gained weight and lost weight …sometimes it would fall off sometimes I couldn’t get it off. So I put it in the safe place while I was traveling around working because I was afraid I would lose it.
That was two years ago . Since then, I have been frantically looking for this ring thinking I had in fact lost it.
Today is my birthday and I’m unpacking a random container that’s been sitting in my storage for about two years. Guess what I find? Thanks dad. I really think he gave it to me for my birthday. Ironically, it’s also my first day of retirement from this wonderful job.
So I have decided to retire. There is a lot of reasons that this came to be. The biggest, however, is the fact that my body has been getting older and I’m feeling pain more frequently.
I am laying on my bed in my hotel room. It’s 2 AM and I woke up in excruciating pain down my back. This has been happening more and more frequently.
As I lay there thinking about what I should be doing. It was like a giant epiphany… I can retire start working on my physical health, which will help my overall mental health. I then started arguing with myself about all the reasons I couldn’t retire and actually take care of myself. Then I climbed down from my bed.
Yes, this was my hotel bed. I had requested a rollaway bed because of my shoulder pain and the rollaway bed was softer. But the hotel would not give me a rollaway bed without charging me an additional €20 a night. As I looked at the bed, and realized the ridiculousness of trying to take care of my body in my current working situation, I couldn’t help but laugh. The princess and the pea.
Before deciding to retire, though I contacted some medical facilities to see if I could get some appointments in to help me deal with the pain. Due to traveling 90% of the time I had not been able to set up a general practitioner doctor, physical therapy, a standard care regimen. Everything was virtual.
I reopened my VA claim because all of my current injuries are a direct result of my past injuries while I was in the military. I could not get a set date for an appointment and it was becoming really stressful and I just decided to go through with it and put in for retirement. The ridiculous measures I was taking to try to be more comfortable and lesson the pain was becoming more and more complicated.
So I submitted for retirement. There have been ups and downs. It’s kind of scary. I’ve worked all my life. I was talking to my daughter as I was walking through target. And I found these cups with letters on them.
My idea was each letter stood for a member of my family, and when they came to visit me, they would be able to have a cup with their initial on it.
I’ve seen the cups before, but I never saw them the way my daughter saw them.
She says, What do the letters stand for? Most valuable player? Sami, the most valuable player?”
And it dawned on me that I was in fact, the most valuable player in my life. And the decision to retire to take care of the most valuable player was probably the best decision I was ever going to make.
The most important person is the one you are with in this moment. ~~ Leo Tolstoy
Lastly, I was in a different store getting groceries and the cashiers name was Epiphany. Coincidence? I think not.
rfljenksy - Practicing Simplicity 