After surviving 7 rounds of layoffs, the evil layoff elves found my hiding place and I was given the boot. We had all seen it coming. As each shielding layer of management was lined up and shot, my human shields were becoming non-existent. We hunkered down, hoping to stay long enough to vest the rest of our worthless shares of stock -- hoping against the impossibility that the stock price would rise above our options price.
Afterwards, I enjoyed 1-1/2 years of vacation. Lazing about, traveling, goofing off, watching movies at the local 2nd run theater for $1.50.
When I started working again I found something odd had happened. My brain seemed to have sloooowed down. Was I getting old? Is this what happens when you get old and become fossilized like Ronald Reagan? Alzheimer’s. Parkinson’s. For a person who prides himself in being an intellectual, this is one of my greatest fears – turning into a human vegetable. Mad Cow disease scares the hell out of me. It turns your brain into Swiss cheese – ten years after you’ve eaten some bad beef.
After working a year on building cutting edge software, I’ve gotten the edge back. Things come back to me in a flash. The slowness is gone. My mind cuts quickly like a monofilament whip. I just have to stare at a bug and it just rolls over with its legs twitching in a death dance.
So, what happened?
Use it or lose it. The brain is an intellectual muscle. You’ve gotta exercise it or it atrophies. Retirement is slow death. They’re right, Old age is a mental state. If you act young, you stay young. If you sit on the couch and ossify, your bones fuse together, your muscles weaken, and you get old and tired. Your nerves and neurons slow down and you die a slow and horrible death.
I’ve had my taste of retirement. It’s like a drug, lulling you into a slow death. We all have a dream of retiring on a beach with no cares, but do we really want that? How long could you stand it?
Me? I’ve learned my lesson. I’m going to keep busy until they issue that death certificate.
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