I retired at 44 but didn't realize it until I was 46.

I've been grappling with the realization that the take-home from my career doesn't quite cover the cost of a live-in au pair. That, combined with the fact that we turn a profit on the labor of $500k a year worth of employee salary has effectively rendered my career superfluous. It's also become onerous - it's one thing to zip around via plane every ten days to play lightning-round family but quite another to quarantine for X amount of days whenever I get on a mutherfucking bus. Living expenses would also increase as I simply cannot face another summer in my LA shithole and frankly? I think COVID has pushed 30 miles a day in hundred degree weather out of feasibility for a while.

So I've been a useless bum for the past eighteen months or so. The inability to practice my career has been erosive to my self-esteem. I'm fuckin' good at my job but my job doesn't pay me enough to bother doing it... and it's endangered anyway as Hollywood framefucks their bullshit until the very last second and then subtitles everything because they can't afford to make things sound good. It's a terrible industry in a terrible place that deserves to sink into the sand but goddamn it I was fuckin' good at it. An industry where everyone pretends the Golden Globes mean something and then trumpet the bullshit films they console themselves with while paying Patrick Stewart eight million dollars to voice the poop emoji. Nomadland is an engaging book and one of the worst films I've ever seen.

There will always be an onus on "stay at home dad" and it doesn't really matter how much time and energy I put into keeping the business running because the clientele prefers to know that I don't exist. But "retired at 44?"

That's not a bad perspective.

Something few people have the privilege to understand is that any paycheck or accolade you give yourself counts so much less than one given to you by your employer. There is effectively no external validation in entrepreneurship outside VCs throwing money at you. I never called myself a writer, I will never call myself a jeweler. "I'm retired, fuck off" has a nice ring to it, though.

I'm on Day 4 of unfucking the yard. Push mower but 12HP chipper-shredder. There were 400lbs of pine needles on the roof that are no longer on the lawn, a task that exhausted me to dry heaves yesterday - pretty sure that wouldn't have happened two years ago. Fortunately I can say with authority my heart can take it, which was in question not two weeks ago. Pulse-ox still hasn't climbed above 95. There's a pulmonology report I've paid for but nobody's written yet. Go figure, there's an entire world of post-COVID heart and lung checks for the medical establishment to deal with. If you'd told me two years ago that I'd have comparison-shopped and purchased ultrasound machines and fetal heartrate monitors I'd have laughed at you.

If you'd told me I'd be thankful for the burn-unit-grade airchange system I'd be really fuckin' scared.

Retired at 44.

Needed to buy tawny port for a pot pie recipe. The supermarket now has Pabst Hard Iced Coffee but one pathetic bottle of tawny port - California tawny port, no less. I found myself standing in the wine section intellectually bemoaning the extinction of after-dinner wines and thought "who the fuck are you, Thurston Fucking Howell?" Then I got in my Porsche, pulled up in my new driveway and soldered some silver to make my wife an enamel necklace.

Retired at 44. Hey _wage - wherever you are, FUCK YOU.