Monday, August 01, 2011

My Despair

I pissed away a small fortune back in the 90's.  That's on me for being a drunk and believing a writer.  But one thing I've done for my entire life, notwithstanding a few sabbaticals along the way, was to work.  Since the week I graduated from high school, I've worked.  Hard.

I grew up believing, because this what I was told, that in America, if you're a team player, and you work, you will get a protective covering when you retire, in the form of Social Security and Medicare.

I turned 62 last year and started "doing the math".  The Social Security Administration started sending me yearly statements showing me "how much" I'd get if I retired at 62, 66 1/2 and 70 1/2.  Needless to say, the big payday for me would come when I was 70.  So I started mentally adjusting myself to the probability that I'd work until then.

But now, who knows what Congress has just given away to the far right meatheads who still fantasize that rich people create jobs.  And what will be my new "plan B" according to them?  Work until I'm 75?  80?  Dead?

I'm not feeling the love from D.C. these days.


Maybe my recurring nightmare of living in a beat-up, 1966, all aluminum Airstream trailer, somewhere in the high desert 80 miles east of L.A., where atomically mutated ants come visiting at night, and you have to shake the scorpions out of your boots every morning, will come true.

It may not be much, but at least it'll be mine!

Thank you, Ronald Reagan.

And thanks, Mom, for naming me after that bastard.