Crossing Emotional borders

Change is often painful and fearful for me. Maybe for you too? All the planning for this change at 55 in my life did not prepare me for the actual loss I would feel when leaving my workplace and my co-workers and friends there. I think I understand why people who retire have such a hard time, or least I can feel and edge of what it is. It is not that leaving the drudgery of work, the mind numbing sameness is bad, it is that the work experience so dominates life, my life, for so long, that I have forgotten the true cost of a life of work. The true cost is that afterwards I realized that my world had shrunk to only work and TV. Subtract work and there is really nothing at all.
I don't think that these emotional borders need to be so devasting for me and others, that preparation, and the simple maintenance of friendships, interests, hobbies and work outside of the work mainstream would have been crucial for me. I did not prepare for that. Instead I have 4 T-105 batteries and a solar system instead of a lover. I have an Engel cool refrigerator instead of hobbies. I have a continous instant hot water heater instead of friends, and I have absolutely nothing because I did not do the most minor of efforts to maintain the many loves and friends in my life.

I'm a lazy person. At a party, I end up laying horizontal at some point, I feel gravity all around me. I do what I must to have time to think my thoughts and be quiet. Maybe because hearing is so hard for me, that constant radio, tv, or music is an irritant to me. I seek the quiet moments. This laziness has led me to do put my eye on the wrong ball in the wrong game.

There have been so many emotional transitions in my life, that I didn't even know where there - they were just nameless points in time. However they had immense impact on the direction of my life. Being 8th in the first draft lottery in 1968. Marrying at 21 to a woman I admire and loved as a friend, but for whom I had no passion. Not finishing college and leaving to become a motorcycle nut.

. Work steals your time, time is your life. Doesn't matter that you have a big house when you are dragging in the door, mentally exhausted. Work is necessary to sustain crushing debt. Debt is accrued through desparate cravings for unfullfilled need to stop doing one thing until you die. The society needs you to work. Debt controls you. So you have your toys, your debt and a never ending job. Or you don't.