Well Seasoned

 

          I see my working years as the fall of my life; time spent scurrying about, dashing off in odd directions, always towards someone else’s goal.  I was helping employers with advanced degrees in thinking build empires for themselves.  I was simply a temporary necessity, running a machine, folding a shirt or assembling some widget.  I was an employee with a timecard and a lunch bag.  I was just one more face perched upon a shop stool watching the clock; unaware that it was my life ticking away.

 

          It was a time I should have used to set a direction and billow my own sails.  But it is now my winter and I am out of wind.  The waters are icy and perilous.  No longer an employee, I stand on shore with memories of gusts that had blown me off course and fast talking pirates that promised treasures and better tomorrows.

 

          As the seasons come around again I see the landscape filled with new sailors; Captains of industry, bosuns’ mates and some ships quite unworthy to set sail.  I take no comfort in knowing the journey that lies before them but only in my own horizon’s stability.  Even the slightest rocking motion has stopped. 

 

          It remains somewhat unsettling knowing there will be no treasure.  All of my possible maps are gone or written in a new technology.   Being on the sidelines is a mental adjustment I’ve yet to make.  Barnacles have affixed themselves to my outlook skewing this new beginning into some dismal creature that snaps and bites at my every step.  

 

          This log is without the ocean spray or eerie quiet nights but stands as my lighthouse, illuminating the martini that splashes over the rocks; the olive floating and bobbing like some tasty channel marker - signaling me to a safe, albeit fabricated calm.

 

          “Everything will be alright in the end.  If it isn’t alright, then it is not yet the end.”