In retrospect at the age of 66, I believe in all seriousness that the only life I was ever suited for is that of a professional loafer, with handyman jobs on the side. How the hell I maintained the façade of a professional anything for all those years is a mystery to me.
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In retrospect at the age of 69, I believe in all seriousness that the only life I was ever suited for is that of an obsessive-compulsive reader/thinker with a folk music teaching business on the side; the teaching emerged from music’s potent ability to divert mind and emotions from existential anxiety. So I never had a career, a wife or offspring because they were profoundly incompatible with what was most suitable to my interests.
In retrospect, I suspect that I never accepted the permanence and commitment and responsibility of marriage or a family is because I knew, intuitively if not consciously, that I was not suited for it. I suspect your choices were conscious, but mine were not. Mine were most likely driven by an unconscious fear of sacrificing the self…either that, or fear of the intimacy required to allow someone to see and know the vulnerable and needy self I am at core. Or maybe, those are the same fears.
My job and career was a bit different. I mostly used it to support my wanderlust and curiosity, because it subsidized my living and travel over a large part of the earth…and continues to do so even now via the retirement benefits that it offered. But for sure, the facade and dissembling, and even self-deception I managed to maintain over two decades began crumbling during the last ten years…and were pretty much in ruins by the last 12 to 18 months. But it’s taken me almost eight years since retiring to really recognize and admit that.