Something critical happened to me in the mid-1990s. My job at the Department of the Interior was “reinvented” away. The result was several years of family poverty because I insisted on searching for “professional” employment. That ended in 1997 when I walked into a United Parcel Service hub and began loading packages and freight for a living. For several weeks, my fifty-year-old body twinged with muscle aches. At fifty-one, I glanced in a mirror and realized I had definition in my upper body and torso – I had to wait a half-century to get “ripped”.
The changes were not only in my body. The unemployment had not been kind to my retirement funds. Those funds were tapped to provide healthcare for my wife and four children. At UPS, I joined the retirement plan, invested, and saved for my retirement. I decided I liked working for UPS – I worked part-time but basically received a full-time benefits package. The company was in business to make money and was not run by politicians with short-term goals and ephemeral expectations.
I soon found out that many of us in the hub were part-time and worked at UPS because of the benefits and because it allowed them time for their own business interests. A large number of my peers were successful business people; it was explained to me by more than a few that a small business could not afford the sort of benefits they could get at UPS.
Very soon I followed the example of my colleagues and started my own business. I had been getting the odd commission from friends and boatyards to do quarterboards, transom banners, and the like for a while. At the urging of my boatbuilding friends, I began renting booths at boat shows and selling. I was not exactly a globetrotter, but weekends could find me traveling to many locations on the East Coast. The family learned to double up these expeditions with camping excursions, so I spent lots of family time with my wife and kids. Who can resist a ten-year-old hustling hand-carved spoons at the woodcarver’s booth?
Through this time my father’s example always came back to me. He always had ten side hustles going on, and soon I was doing it too. I eventually added a business as a videographer. I guess necessity made the son like the father.
So I now had two small businesses and a job at UPS. I wasn’t getting rich, but I was rebuilding my retirement, saving, and paying bills. I had also developed a distaste for government employment – I never sought it out again and refused it when it was offered to me.
Where did this all lead? Well, I am eighty years old, still working part-time in video, still have the odd carving commissions, still investing in my retirement accounts, and I like the structure that my working life gives to my daily existence. The loss of the government job changed my mindset from a rather passive fiscal model to an active one. I check my accounts daily, calculate how much I can save, invest, and spend.
There is a concept in martial arts called Tanden. Call it balance or center. Among the things that resumed after the end of my government job was an affection for Japanese martial arts, specifically Iaido, the art of the sword. Your center is crucial in this art, but as I deepened my understanding of Iaido, I also began to realize that the concept of center was a big part of other parts of my life. Right now, my life is well balanced.
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Sometimes the things we find annoying are actually the things we will miss the most. A mother’s reminders, a family member checking in, a simple message asking if you ate, these are not just words. They are small pieces of love from someone saying, “You are always on my mind.” We often understand the value of these moments only when they become less frequent. Appreciate the people who love you in ordinary ways, because one day, those ordinary messages may become the ones you wish you could receive again.
#FamilyLove #MotherLove #LifeLessons #Gratitude #CherishMoments