This is not the future that I signed up for!

I am a Baby Boomer, a progeny of the Greatest Generation. They endured the privations of the Depression and World War II and as a result, our generation did not know the hardships that they faced growing up. Our generation grew up in unparalleled prosperity, thanks to the opportunities that were created for us by our parents generation. Our fathers got the G.I. Bill for their service in World War II, and as a result, the middle class expanded  to where more people enjoyed the fruits of their labor: a job for life that would pay all of the bills and have enough left over for vacations and other small luxuries, a home in the suburbs, a car in the driveway and a comfortable retirement ahead. My generation were promised that the same things were within our grasp, so long as we studied hard, got a good education and graduated from college. We were promised that a job for life lay ahead if we played by the rules, and along with that job would come the ownership of a home, a car in the driveway and smooth sailing to retirement. Well, most of us did as we were told and we played by the rules laid out to us by teachers and parents, but those promises that we expected by so doing failed to materialize.

As a result, people my age have had the discomfort of having to change jobs every few years because of downsizing or changing expectations on the job, losing homes to foreclosure when medical bills skyrocketed and health insurance was lost, having no savings for retirement because we were so busy just trying to keep our heads above water to pay bills and eat.....in short, my generation has been dealt a tough blow just trying to navigate increasingly uncertain waters. All of those promises that were made to us have evaporated. No home ownership or new car in the driveway, no job for life, no cradle to grave health insurance, nothing that we were promised has happened. As a result, only one generation of Americans will ever know prosperity and comfort, and that's our parents generation. Those who came before and those who will come after will never know the certainty of a good job and a good retirement like they did. Sadly, more privations lay ahead for my generation: looming cuts in health care benefits, more expectations of consumers paying their own way for medical bills (and who can afford thousands of dollars just to see a doctor, anyway?), huge cuts in pensions and other benefits for retirees (like we're somehow the cause of all of the financial pain being felt by this country......oh, puh-LEEZ spare me that kind of talk!) Oh, a day doesn't go by that I don't hear Republicans whining about "entitlement spending", as if somehow we Baby Boomers wanting what we paid into makes us lazy or wanton or undeserving of our pensions. I hate that word "entitlement". It implies greediness, but you know darn well that those overpaid, do-nothing Congressmen are not going to turn down their federal pensions and benefits when the time comes to draw on them. But heaven forbid that the rest of us should have something on which to live when we retire. For most of us, our pensions are going to be the only thing between us and being homeless. It is for me. I haven't been able to save one dime toward retirement because I never made much to begin with, so now that I am retired, my pension is my only income. 

If I were ever to go back to work, I'd want my commute to be from my bed to my sofa. I don't want to work for anyone else anymore. After 30 years of working for managers who mostly lacked people skills (they weren't even terribly often that good at managing things, let alone people), I have become convinced that the majority of people who work their way up into managerial positions are people who are basically insecure at heart and want to feel like they are in charge of something and don't often know how to deal with employees. At work, they used to talk about "internal customer service", as in, employees dealing with fellow employees, but it was my experience that this was sadly lacking where I worked. I got tired of feeling unappreciated and given the least challenging work and boring repetitive clerical duties when everyone else was being given the kind of work that I would have given anything to do. I also got tired of people sitting a few feet away from me e-mailing me instead of talking to me face-to-face. I get that e-mail is a more efficient way of communicating sometimes, but over reliance on it can seem so impersonal to me. It cannot express emotion or convey clues as to what the writer is feeling when they are writing it, except for perhaps the language used. It's succinct, I know, but I am not one who prefers electronic communication to interpersonal communication, particularly in an office setting where, if you're a few feet away from me, for heaven's sakes, if you've got something to say to me, come over to my desk and say it. So often, an e-mail can be easily misconstrued in tone. Something that comes off as snarky may not actually be so but for the choice of words used in an e-mail. It leaves too much open for misinterpretation and I grew weary of so much dependence on electronic communication. I'm just glad to be away from what increasingly began to feel like an ongoing episode of "The Office" or the comic strip "Dilbert". Another thing that annoyed me was the tendency of office cliques to form. Well, my take on that is, look, High School ended years ago, get over it. I'm not here to be your friend or your buddy or your pal, this is no popularity contest, I'm here to do a job, if you don't like me, tough, not why I am here. At my age, I'm just too old to put up with that kind of BS anymore and I am so glad that I do not have to cope with that ever again, at least if I can possibly help it. Time for me to write the next chapter of my life and reinvent myself to where I can make myself happy doing what I want to do, not what someone else demands that I do. So glad that I can do that now.