Retirement gave me permission to be interested in things that had no professional value whatsoever. The relief of that permissio...

-
Retirement gave me permission to be interested in things that had no professional value whatsoever. The relief of that permission was enormous. theoldgreythinker.substack.com


https://threads.net/@theoldgreythinker/post/DaYRM60Fray?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm 67, I Worked for Forty-Six Years, and Apparently Workers' Day Has Nothing to Do With Me Anymore

-
 Today is International Workers' Day. The streets will fill with banners, the internet will bristle with solidarity posts, and someone will play The Red Flag in a town square somewhere while a local councillor tries to look moved. I have worked for forty-six years. I am not invited. Not officially uninvited, you understand. Nobody sends you a letter. There's no formal ceremony where someone takes your lanyard and says thank you for your service, off you go. It just becomes apparent, gradually and then all at once, that once you retire you cease to be a Worker — capital W — and become something else. A Former Worker. A Used-To-Be. A person who did their time and now, quite reasonably, should step aside so the real workers can get on with it. I captained ships for thirty years. I was responsible for crew, cargo, passengers, and the occasional mechanical catastrophe three hundred miles from the nearest port. I worked nights, weekends, Christmases, Bank Holidays. I worked May Days ...
Read more

I Spent Forty Minutes Proving to a Machine That I Was Still Alive

-
Image
A machine asked me to prove I was alive. Not in the grand philosophical sense. It wanted a code. I stood there with my reading glasses in one hand and a document in the other, trying to convince a screen that I existed. The screen did not care. Screens rarely do. That is the bit older people recognise. Not the technology, exactly. The assumption built into it. If you are slower, cautious, or unwilling to surrender every private detail to a portal designed by someone who thinks contrast is optional, you become the problem. The full piece is on Substack: I Spent Forty Minutes Proving to a Machine That I Was Still Alive . The wider library is here: The Old Grey Thinker Library .
Read more

I've Become That Person Who Talks to Strangers—And It's Brilliant

-
Image
  I was standing in the queue at Sainsbury’s last Tuesday when I did something so profoundly out of character that I briefly considered abandoning my shopping and starting a new life under a different name. The woman in front of me had chosen the exact same ready meal I’d just put in my basket. Chicken tikka masala. Green label. The one you can trust not to ruin your evening. Without thinking — without even a rehearsal run in my head — I said out loud: “Good choice. That’s the best one.” I did not whisper.  I did not mutter it into my sleeve.  I did not pretend I was talking to the chicken. I said it to her . This is the sort of thing that, historically, should trigger a national emergency. A sharp intake of breath. Possibly a letter to the council. She turned slowly, as people do when they’re deciding whether this interaction will end in a mild apology or a police statement. Then she smiled. Not a polite smile. Not the tight, apologetic British half-smile. A full one. Th...
Read more