by AnnaAmie
It's been a year. It seems like nothing when you consider that the longest relationship of my life, thirty seven years to be exact, was with an entity not a person.
In 1971, more out of boredom than anything else I applied for a job with AT&T. That was the phone company back then, the only one. I figured if they hired me I'd hang around for a few months and then get a real job. I was fresh out of college, smelling myself, and thought that joining this company was just going to be a brief stop on my way to reforming education, the world, you name it.
I retired in September 2008 from something called "Verizon Business". It was not a phone company, it was something that grew out of the breakup of the Bell System back in the day. It was time to go.
Like many new retirees I felt a little adrift at first. I mean I had had a purpose, I fit somewhere in the world of work. There is a lot of talk about the American dream, a house in the burbs, 2.5 children and a couple of cars. The African American Dream was a variation on that theme. Jobs like policeman, fireman, sanitation worker were still closed to the majority of us. The way in was through the automobile industry and large utilities. The Federal government, along with local and state government were also places many flocked to to get a toe in the door. An entire generation of African Americans had "made it". We knew what the previous generation had had to do to survive. Getting a paycheck every week that wasn't going to bounce, being able to get a mortgage and send our children to better schools at every level were things we could aspire to not just dream about.
I was the first one in my family immediate family to go to college. My father didn't live to see his first born graduate but I know now that he was proud to see me overcome that hurdle. It meant that a different world was open to me, one that his generation had only been able to glimpse from the outside.
But now I was of the "idle" class. I didn't have to be anywhere anymore. I could make my own schedule. People kept encouraging me to take cruises ignoring the fact that I am terrified of open water. Others kept asking when I was going back to work ignoring the statement's that I'd made to anyone who would listen that when I retired I hoped not to have to go back to work.
So in the end I hid out from well intentioned friends and turned my focus inward, on me, on the woman who had taken the simple statement of my mother - "No matter what job you have be the best at it" and tried to be the best I was capable of. Now I had a new job and it was going to take the same attitude to reclaim myself. I want to try to be the best me I can be. It's a work in progress.
So where am I now? I've started letting my old life go. Not everything, just the things that I now see were holding me back from evolving, from creating my new existence. A lot of it had to do with work. A lot of it was personal. A lot of it it turns out was physical.
I spent a lot of this last year sleeping. It sounds stupid but it was a good thing. It felt good getting up at five in the afternoon after staying up until whatever hour I felt like. I got to spend more time with my daughter, learning her ways and appreciating the woman she has grown up to be. I missed her first words and her first steps but I still tried to establish rituals with her. I still take a picture of her on the first day of school. I know it's corny but it's our little thing. She also gets the meal of her choice for dinner but now more than likely she's meeting friends so that part may have fallen by the wayside.
But now I've stopped sleeping. I had no idea that a physical problem I had was draining me so much physically. That has been taken care of and not only my physical energy but my mental outlook has improved. I could get angry about the situation but it's not over yet. I feel more alive, more ready to face the world than I have in a long time and that is a good thing.
I don't know what this blog will be. I've been thinking about doing this for about six months now.
I have a tennis blog that I started writing a couple of years ago at the urging of a man I've never met in person. I think doing that blog saved me in more ways than one. I'm not going to stop doing that. I think that every now and then, when a particular subject catches my attention I'll talk about it here. It could be politics, religion, other sports, movies, dreams, or Astrology. It could simply be personal observation. I guess this is going to be my second year project.
As I write this I'm listening/watching a tennis match taking place in Tokyo. Some things will never change.
