Lughnasa\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Artemis Moon<\/p>\n
While it’s fresh.\u00a0 A meeting this morning with our financial manager where we went over, again, the various moving parts of our investments.\u00a0 It resulted in a down feeling, almost defensive.\u00a0 What was this?\u00a0 He said we’d be fine financially and I believed him.\u00a0 We overhauled our whole approach to money now over ten years ago and have a great track record since then.\u00a0 When I mentioned my feelings to Kate, she said she trusted in our ability to adapt.\u00a0 Again, I believed her.\u00a0 We have and will adapt to changed circumstances.<\/p>\n
It took a while to delayer my feelings.\u00a0 First, I noticed anxiety (my unfortunately favorite response to the unknown), as if a vast pit were about to open ahead of us.\u00a0 A pit of this and then a possible that and more stuff we didn’t know, or have impact on.\u00a0 A little deeper I recognized a fear about being dependent on a bag of gold held in some financial dragon’s lair and only won back by dint of great effort.\u00a0 Silly.\u00a0 Obtuse.\u00a0 Still, the case.<\/p>\n
Pushing a little further, a different layer.\u00a0 Retirement.\u00a0 When Kate retires, my long tenuous connection to the world of work would fray, then vanish.\u00a0 It’s as if she’s retiring for both of us.\u00a0 Or, rather, that I feel the imminence of retirement perhaps in a manner similar to the couvade, a strange situation in some cultures where a husband takes on the characteristics of his wife’s pregnancy, often placing a heavy rock on the belly near the birth moment and heaving it off.\u00a0 So, there’s the unknown, the strange sense of money coming in from a pot somewhere far away, a feeling of retiring that is sympathetic or empathetic rather than actual.\u00a0 But, that wasn’t the end.<\/p>\n
What finally came to me was a mixture of shame, guilt and fear, all related to no longer having a viable connection to the world of work.\u00a0 This is my middle class roots talking.\u00a0 As long as Kate practices, I have a tangible though fragile link to work and the income it produces.\u00a0 After she retires, all semblance of that relationship vanishes.\u00a0 In the central Indiana world where I grew up not to work was shameful, weak, irresponsible.\u00a0 Kate responded with, “Well, I’m upper middle class and I don’t care! (about the abandoning work)”<\/p>\n
All of our life comes along for the ride and we never knew when one part or another will express itself, rise up and claim attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lughnasa\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Artemis Moon While it’s fresh.\u00a0 A meeting this morning with our financial manager where we went over, again, the various moving parts of our investments.\u00a0 It resulted in a down feeling, almost defensive.\u00a0 What was this?\u00a0 He said we’d be fine financially and I believed him.\u00a0 We overhauled our whole approach to money … Continue reading Shame, Guilt, Fear<\/span>