Retirement

A little over ten years ago, I got pink eye. Or so I thought. My right eye was bloodshot and painful, so I went to the doc, and the doc told me I had pink eye, and gave me antibiotics. I took the antibiotics for a little while, and my eye didn’t get any better. Then I went to another doc and he told me I had a scratched cornea and gave me this goop to put on my eyeball. That didn’t work, either. Then I went to the ER and they told me that I had pink eye again, and offered me antibiotics and Vicodin. This was before the opioid backlash. By this point, my eye was an angry purple throbber that was about to explode like a blood sausage in my skull, and I had been dealing with agonizing pain for about three weeks, so I was at the end of my rope.

Made an appointment with an ophthalmologist. He sticks this scope-thing up to my eyeball and tells me that I have herpes. What? Yes, ocular herpes. There are three different kinds of herpes: oral, genital, and ocular. Ocular herpes is pretty rare. And before you pass judgment, that is not how you get ocular herpes. I probably just grabbed a subway pole and rubbed my eye. Remember when Bob Costas was broadcasting the Sochi Olympics with bloodshot eyes? Well, we never found out what it was, but I would bet one of my cats that it was not pink eye, and that he had ocular herpes. And the thing about ocular herpes is that it is almost always misdiagnosed as pink eye, so by the time people figure it out, they have permanent scar tissue on their eyeball and experience a loss of vision. And the thing about herpes is that it comes back over and over again, as you know. So I have a stash of acyclovir in the bathroom for whenever it flares up. Also, ocular herpes is transmissible to the oral and genital regions, so there is no punching the clown when my eye flares up.

Anyway, that is not the point of this essay. The point of this essay was that when I went to the ophthalmologist and walked in the waiting room, it was packed. With senior citizens. There were about 50 people over the age of 70 in there, drinking coffee, socializing, and playing checkers. What were they doing? Well, they all had appointments, Medicare being free and all, and they were spending the day in the waiting room hanging out with the other oldsters. This is what you do when you retire, I guess? Hang out at the eye doctor?

I have very strong opinions about retirement. First of all, I still haven’t decided if I will retire or not. I like working, working is fun, so what is the point of stopping, as long as I am sharp? I don’t golf. I have no desire to chase a white ball around. Maybe I could DJ when I retire? A 70-year-old DJ playing in clubs? That seems ludicrous. Traveling doesn’t really do it for me. I don’t have any kids or grandkids. I mean, if I had 16 hours of unstructured free time a day, I would probably just write books. I could do that in my retirement. And maybe that is the plan.

I think that if you are going to retire, you should have a plan. Maybe you like chasing a white ball around. Maybe you go to the beach. Maybe you visit the grandkids. Maybe you go to Greece. I know lots of people who have plans for retirement. Then they retire, and the plans go out the window, and it’s 16 hours of cable news a day. I’m sure you’re aware of the demographics of Fox News viewers. Which kind of makes me wonder where FOX, CNN, MSNBC, et al are going to be in ten years. The only business with worse demographics is Tommy Bahama. And maybe Harley Davidson. Retired people sit around and watch the idiot box and get all riled up. Then they drop some boomer memes on Facebook. I can tell you that if I retire, there are a lot of things I want to do, but being politically active is not one of them, especially if it takes the form of posting boomer memes on Facebook. My generation is on its way there already. They don’t go to the beach, they don’t go to Greece, they don’t visit the grandkids—they just sit on the couch with lichens growing under their armpits, and get angry about politics.

I am not making any of this up, as usual. If you are middle-aged, like me, you probably have parents who have failed miserably at retirement. Like, failing worse than anyone has ever failed in history. I have heard stories of boomer grandparents living a quarter mile away from their grandkids and seeing them once in three years. I am not making this up. It’s Fox News turned up to eleven, 16 hours a day. Ok, so this is the thing: I don’t mind watching Fox News. Not the opinion programs, mind you, but the news. I’m not naïve enough to say that Fox News news is straight down the middle, but I find it to be a lot more palatable than Lester Holt, who is to the left of Al-Jazeera. But Fox News doesn’t cast a spell on me. I’ll watch it for 20 minutes, and turn it off. For people in their 70s and 80s, it is hypnosis. And I don’t understand how this works. I like having the TV on at night, really for background noise more than anything else. Six months out of the year, I’m watching baseball. Three months out of the year, I’m watching American Idol. And the other three months of the year, I’m watching the Charlotte Hornets. I’ll turn on Fox News on a goof, and turn it off when I get tired of it. That shit doesn’t work on me.

I like the idea of writing during retirement. First of all, there are only so many hours out of the day you can write. If you write 1,000 words a day, you will have a book in three months. But it’s not so much the writing that’s the writing. Part of writing is getting out in the world and mixing it up. Even something as simple as sitting down at a Starbucks and people-watching is enough to give you some ideas. I got the idea for my story “200 Hours” by going out to lunch at my local spot, Quigley’s, in Pawleys Island. I got the idea for my story “Night Moves” by visiting a friend in Miami. I got the idea for my story “Amanda” by going to Las Vegas with my brother. Etc. In order to be good at writing, you have to be good at living. Alice Munro won a Nobel Prize for writing short stories about the Canadian side of Lake Ontario in the early 20^th century. I think Alice Munro is a terrific writer, but there is only so much I can read about the Canadian side of Lake Ontario in the early 20^th century. I’m not specifically referring to the surroundings—I’m referring to the people. I just spent a weekend in New Orleans, in Marigny. If you’ve never been there, the best way I can describe it is French Hoboken. Such an incredible neighborhood, with bars and 5-star restaurants on every corner. Also pretty common to see a guy with copious face tattoos walking his dog down the street. I can now write about New Orleans capably. It’s like I always say, nothing good happens to you in your apartment. If you’re going to write about love and life and tragedy, you need to experience love and life and tragedy. Which means: turn off Bret Baier and go outside.

And now, for some personal finance. My retirement advice to you: postpone taking Social Security as long as possible. First of all, if you take it at age 70 instead of age 62, you will get twice as much money. 50% of people take it at age 62. 1% of people take it at age 70. I know uncountably infinite people who were in a big hurry to retire and take Social Security and consequently, are poor as shit in retirement. And if you are poor as shit in retirement, you really won’t have the resources to do anything but watch Fox News. Work until age 70. Working is good! I’m 50. 62 is twelve years away. I can’t even imagine the idea of retiring in 12 years. 62 is young. Bill Belichick is 72 and has a 24-year-old girlfriend. People are still running Ironmans at age 62. Work as long as possible, and get a huge Social Security check, and keep saving in the last eight years of your career, and don’t put it all in stocks. I can’t give you any better advice than that. I find that the main reason retire so young is that they are very pessimistic about how long they are going to live. “I’ll be dead by the time I’m 70.” And then they live until 92 and run out of money. Happens all the time.

The other reason people retire early is because they hate their job. But as we’ve said before, it’s probably not the job. It’s you.