Pause
I am contemplating shutting down my Substack
The only constant I’ve seen in life is change. As a Computer and Information Sciences major in the dinosaur age of keypunch cards, mainframes, FORTRAN, PASCAL, and COBOL I learned there are constants and variables, imaginary numbers, conditional statements, and basic logic.
Right now, everything has changed. My health, my body, the economy, the world spinning around on a moving axis. Nothing stays the same except human stupidity. I’ve lived through a lifetime of brutal capitalism, where the only goal was to grow every quarter, every year, all the time. Unlimited growth is impossible and damages everything. Thomas Aquinas’ ruminations on corruption (as in decay, entropy, etc) stuck with me even though I received a C+ in my first term European History class and a C- in an Honors Humanities course (I didn’t know what honors meant) I missed six years of schooling as a middle-school and high school dropout.
What am I getting at? I’m moving to Albania in a few months. I can’t afford to live in the United States on my $1,138 a month Social Security early retirement benefit. My monthly rent in a 55+ affordable housing one-bedroom 500 sq ft apartment is, ironically, $1,139. ONE DOLLAR! Irony so delicious they sell it at Dairy Queen.
WHERE’S MY TWO DOLLARS?
So, the end is near. With all my ailments (arthritis, osteopenia, hypothyroid, tachycardia, dilated aortic root, spinal stenosis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and PAIN PAIN PAIN in every part of my body, all the time) I won’t live to 88 as my mother did, or 95 as my father has (I think, we are estranged and he might have died and I wouldn’t know). I think I can make it to 68, maybe, if I don’t decide to check out earlier. All I want, right now, is to escape. Sit on a beach and gaze at the Adriatic. Warm my bones.
I enjoyed sharing my thoughts until this site became as toxic as every other fucking social media site. I started online in 1986 in the Bay Area. I was on FidoNet and a couple of BBS sites. I’ve been in too many flame wars to give a shit what anybody thinks, says, does, or posts. Nobody knows if I’m a dog, or if I have Buddha nature.
Shalom!
