Summing Up

 Summing Up

I started writing this blog about 9 years ago. I'm not sure how much more I am going to write so I am writing this as sort of a summing up piece. However, I am thinking of possibly writing additional posts about my musical journey since music has been so important to me. We'll see, but for right now I'm thinking this will at least be the end of this portion of the “Warrin with an I” memoir. .

I will turn 77 shortly. Other than chronic back issues that I've had from time to time since my late 30's, I'm lucky to be in pretty good health. A sciatica condition kept me down this past summer and as a consequence I am a little out of shape but I have started back doing gyro and swimming so I'm working on that. Even with my back issues I managed to show up for the “No Kings” protests, one of them in New York City and one of them I mostly sat on a wall due to my aforementioned sciatica issue...

My last blog post was on my work career - “Retirement: It's a Real Thing” - I worked at Caltrans with the State of California for 11 years. That's a long time for an IT job where change is common. I was in on the beginning of a new project that replaced the department's existing Human Resources and Time and Labor systems with a customized PeopleSoft product. It was a large multi year project. The time and labor piece needed significant additional development. Much of Caltrans funding is from the Federal Government as many of our roads and bridges are part of the federal highway system and as such there is a need to track what work is done on those federal highways. The work details of what is done needs to be tracked to bill the Feds accurately. It took 2 or 3 years to complete the project. Now for those of you who are not IT professionals, once an IT system is developed and installed (completed) there is still ongoing work to run and maintain that system. Plus, things change and the system will need to be changed accordingly. So once installed, the system continues to require support and maintenance staff. I stayed on for 11 years, only leaving after there was a change in management that I often didn't see eye-to-eye with. I got a call from another state agency encouraging me to apply for a position they had open. It was the state's IT agency. I initially turned them down but then realized my butting heads with my managers at Caltrans wasn't doing anyone any good, especially me. I applied for the open position with what would become OCIO (They changed names 3 times while I was there). I am not completely sure what OCIO stood for any more, Office of Chief Information Officer? Anyway it has no doubt changed names again now. I got the position and left Caltrans.

I spent less than 2 years at the new agency before retiring. I left Caltrans about 8 months shy of my 60^th birthday planning to work until 62. The problem was that my last year at Caltrans was so frustrating that I started investigating just how much longer I needed to work before I could retire. Looking at what I had invested into my retirement program and what I had in my 401/451/IRA retirement savings I realized I could retire at 60. That knowledge affected my work as I started in my new position. I was not as motivated as I had previously been. I did all my work efficiently but the commitment was no longer there. I continued to freely offer advice/suggestions but I was passive about it. I felt an obligation to give my new agency a good 2 years but I didn't quite make it as in the end I retired three months into my 61^st year.

That was almost 16 years ago. Kris was able to retire 6 years later. The first thing I did after retiring was have hand surgery on my fingers and I followed that with dental surgery, putting bone in to support a couple of implants I was going to need. In hindsight I would not recommend having medical procedures as the first activity right after retiring. The result of that misguided scheduling was that I didn't get to enjoy that sort of euphoric feeling of being freed from the daily grind as after the two months of dealing with the surgeries and recovery the full effect of not having to go to work was diminished. However that didn't mean I didn't appreciate being able to stop working a full time job.

If you have been reading my blog you know by now that I really love music. The first major retirement task I undertook was to load all my CDs on to my computer. I had over 600 of them so this task took months to complete. I also spent a bit of time making playlists and listening to them. That part was the fun part.

I took over doing the laundry while Kris was still working. When she retired 6 years later I returned it to her saying “The next 6 years are yours.” Well that's now more than 9 years ago and I think it's fair to say that I owe her about 3 years of laundry service. As my friend George used to say. “I'd rather owe it to her than cheat her out if it.”

We have a nice routine and if you know us it will not come as a surprise that Kris is the busy one. I don't actually just lay around all day but if you were to look at our calendars you might get that impression. Kris is a planner and I'm more of a day-by-day type person. We split the cooking – I am responsible for dinner on Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday with Kris covering Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Friday is open sometimes take-out, sometimes something easy from home. Wednesdays and Saturdays are date nights assuming we don't have plans to go out for the evening. On evenings when we are both home it's standard practice to wrap up what we are doing by 5 and either meet out on the deck or in front of the fireplace for a glass of wine where we chat while listening to some music from one of my playlists. One of my activities is attending classes with the Renaissance Society at Sacramento State University. Through that I also participate as a mentor for students in Health Sciences with the Gerontology Department. I've been doing this for 9 or so years. I find engaging with young college students both interesting and uplifting.

So who am I? I started this blog with a story trying to answer that question and I think I am going to close this chapter attempting to answer it again.

I've been very fortunate. I've had a good life with many varied experiences. I've lived or spent time all over this country. I've been provided all the benefits. I'm a white cis-gender 1^st tier baby-boomer born in America. I'm the oldest of 3 and I had 2 parents who deeply loved each other, loved and supported me and who instilled in me a strong work-ethic. I was brought up in a middle-class suburban neighborhood of NYC. I am in general above average in many areas. I mean it's hard to find too many people any luckier than me. I took a class on bias a few years back. One of our exercises was to identify an area where you may be disadvantaged, like skin color, height, physical deformity, etc. I finally came up with just 2. One is I am mildly dyslexic and the other is I am left handed. When I thought about it more I am not so sure that even being left-handed is one because while it's a disadvantage in many ways it also has it's advantages. I have been described by friends and lovers as calm, empathetic, sensitive, irreverent, annoying, persistent, and both self-centered and considerate. Of course there has been a multitude of less attractive adjectives used to describe me as well. Some of them are not really suitable for print but I prefer to focus more on the positive. I have made plenty of mistakes. I've said stuff that I regretted saying, often immediately. I have many times failed to speak up when I should have. This is all part of the human experience. Many of those instances stay with me. I am an introvert, but a social one. I have a good if sometimes offensive sense of humor and that trait has been a great benefit to me. It has also allowed me to keep my distance at times, not always a good thing, and it has gotten me in trouble at times, particularly in the Air Force. While it's easy to find humor in the military, it's largely not appreciated by those who out-rank you. All in all, not to take anything away from George Bailey, but I have had a wonderful life.