What the Hell, Dude?!

Well...I've been busy being retired. I don't work for anyone anymore. Not one hour, not one bit.

Weirdly, I'll often find myself worrying about something. And when I sit to pinpoint the source of my worry, I realize that it's a stubborn and persistent form of guilt that I'm not working. At such moments I'll wonder what the Hell is wrong with me.

I worked for decades. I worked constantly for my parents as a kid and never skipped a beat as I entered adulthood and continued to do so. Unlike so many lazy bastards I have met over the years I never shirked the opportunity to engage in labor of any type that would keep a roof over my head and food in the pantry. There have been so many losers I've encountered who would do anything at all to avoid working.

That said, being at the beck and call of a petty supervisor or a sadistic manager was often difficult for me. I suffered for quite a lot of my years as a worker from having a white-hot temper and enough physical strength to hurt people with my bare hands. Some days it was a close call to resist the need to lash out and find myself arrested (again) for giving in and beating someone.

I don't have to worry about that anymore, because I'm retired. Facing down abusive employers and willing to go to violence over it is no longer a possibility. And, yet, these nagging feelings of guilt keep cropping up at the weirdest times. Sometimes they'll linger in my subconscious to the point where I'll dream I'm working again: as a letter carrier, on a loading dock, clerking in a grocery store, running a bookshop, cutting and assembling pool covers...whatever.

What the Hell?!

And each time this pointless guilt gnaws at me I will realize that it's from the effects of more than five decades of being conditioned to work for slave wages and to obey orders. They drill that into you from the day you are grabbed up and sent to school, and throughout the years you toil as a servant. It's something you're just supposed to do.

These days, I take that guilt and bludgeon it, or choke it until it expires, or stab it in the face, or pour gasoline over it and light a match. But like some kind of rotten ghoul it pulls itself together and comes creeping up on me again and again. Repeat, kill, repeat.

So, what I try to do is stay busy doing fun stuff. I read a lot. I hike and camp. Spending time researching places where we can vacation is a big pastime for me.

But what I really want to do is find that silver bullet, that wooden stake. Because feeling guilty for not working after five decades of that shit is unfathomable. Maybe the knockout punch for that asshole will come the next time I climb a high mountain or kayak a wild river or hike a wilderness trail or return to Yellowstone or take that trip to Florence, Italy.

We'll see.

In the meantime...to Hell with work.

Some things I've done this year because I have no nagging job, no reason to hear an alarm clock, no desire to so much as recall what it's like to commit labor under orders: