Do what you love and you never work a day in your life.

Late Stage Capitalism demands constant vigilance married with extreme powerlessness. Nowhere is that more evident in how American’s deal with retirement. We have broken the social contract to such a degree that the only way to avoid starvation as a elder in our society is to enter into a Faustian bargain with the sociopaths of Wall street and hope that we are lucky enough not to lose everything in one of the busts of the boom-bust cycle. Workers call them 401(k)s and are shamed for not “investing” in them, Capitalists think of them as the ability to buy another boat.

I may be salty because I took a moment to do a little math and realized that I have been paying for the privilege not to retire for twenty years now and may need to make other plans for my twilight years. I have come up with a few options but don’t quite know which is going to work best.

Santa

When I was young and performing in Chicago every December my calendar would fill up with Holiday parties. I was usually playing some kind juggling elf or snowflake character which was super fun but was always second fiddle to Santa. I was so jealous of the guys who would walk in to a party, hang out for thirty minutes make vague promises to children and then leave. They made bank and worked very little. Once my beard turns white I will start making this a reality.

Little League Umpire

My boys have always played baseball. I am not sure why, I was terrible at baseball and have only vague memories of picking daisies in right field while my team lost year after year. However once I saw a five year old running down the third base line after hitting a ball off a tee I was hooked. Pre-pandemic my oldest was on two teams while my youngest played tee-ball. Now that I work for MLB I have friends that wonder if my suburban dad cosplay has finally started to take a deeper root because last season I coached both boy’s SFYBL teams. (By coaching I mean of course sending emails and being the scorekeeper, because I still can’t hit a ball with a bat to save my life). At our first game I met with the umpire and he was a lovely gentleman in his seventies, he would stop the game to explain the rules and make sure everyone was being safe, he talked to the people in the stands and kept saying “It’s a great day of baseball” even though it was 8am in March in San Francisco and everyone was freezing. After the game I spoke with him and he said, “Yeah my wife is happy that I do this because it is the only thing that keeps me from going to the track.” My kind of dirtbag.