Epiphany 1.1

Since all of the comments on my last post seemed to indicate I was being a little vague about my epiphany, I will elaborate a bit more.

I am getting old

That's it, I am getting old. Nothing shocking or salacious, nothing exciting or intriguing. The conference call I referred to was with the financial analyst the manages the corporation's retirement plan. The call was designed to give the employees all the information they needed about the stock market downturn and to ease some fears they had. It was a productive call and helped a lot of people who were asking about withdrawing all their funds. More importantly, it provided some general observations for those employees who are close to retirement age and are seeing their plans and investments vanishing.

It got me thinking that I'm getting old. I've been contributing to retirement plans in some form for the past ten years, but didn't pay much attention to them. Sure, I would read the quarterly report and see that I made a lot, a little, broke even, or even lost. But I never thought much more about it and wasn't inclined to pay close attention or reallocate funds. It struck me that retirement, although not in the near future, was ten years closer than it was in 1998. Time's running out to save and right now my golden years look like I'm living under a bridge and dumpster diving for food. OK, it's not that bad but not as comfortable as I would hope. It is time for me to get more serious about my financial future.

It got me thinking that I'm getting old. My body seems to ache more than before, and I can't do the things I used to be able to do. I do need to take a day off to rest when I used to be able to work two weeks straight without a problem. I'm a little more tired all the time than I remember being. The nagging pains come more frequently and linger on longer. When I hurt my back picking up a freakin' laundry basket, that's a problem. I forget things a lot easier, don't have the attention span I once did, and miss many details that I never used to miss... especially grammatical and spelling errors. I need to take better care of myself. That includes actually going to a doctor to get a check-up, including the over 40 finger exam. In some respects, I'm afraid of what I may hear but it is a necessary evil I need to face... as soon as I can find that darn health insurance coverage card.

It got me thinking that I'm getting old. Even working on college campuses for over ten years, I never felt old among the students. It was a bit of a shock when I passed the "I'm old enough to be his/her father" milestone, but was still youthful. Being perpetually single, in a lot of aspects I never needed to "grow up." There was never a spouse or children that were looking to me for support or for me to care for them. It's always been just bob. I was a relatively young guy and "over the hill" was way off in the distance. If I was sick or hurt, I'd always bounce back quickly. If I had a financial setback, I had the time to recover. I didn't need anyone for help. I didn't need to constantly check my 401(k) balance or see a physician for regular check-ups. I was much too young and those kinds of things were for older people. There would always be plenty of time to worry about that later. Well, later is here... I am getting old.