The Interview

The interview went beautifully.

I am an excellent interviewer (translated: bullshitter.) I am personable, reasonably intelligent and can talk a good game.

Although this time around no bullshit was required.

Quick aside: Only one person in my entire life had the guts to call me out on my interview performance. Good old Ken McGuckin. Trust me, I am Al Pacino in an interview situation.

Ken interviewed me and hired me for an accounting position at Chubb Life. Then I went ahead and turned in my usual half-assed effort because I hated accounting so very deeply.

I was in his office one day and he said to me: "You know, you are much better at interviewing than you are at being an accountant."

I loved it. He was dead on right.

Anyway, the job is with OutFITters, a store that sells thrift clothes, used furniture and other stuff. It is a cashier/retail associate job.

I know, I know - you are asking "What the hell are you doing? I thought you hated retail? I thought you said you would never wait on another person again? Are you soft in the head?"

Hear me out.

I have to work part time to supplement my social security checks. I got no problem with that. Part time is much better than full time, baby.

A few things are important to me in retirement. I do not want to work nights or weekends anymore. I don't want to work more than 20 hours per week. And I decided the company I work for has to be meaningful to me, instead of the money grubbing, employee screwing corporations I have worked for all my life.

There are two OutFITters stores - one in Concord, one in Manchester. Their sales revenues help to subsidize the parent organization, called Families in Transition.

FIT provides assistance to homeless families and families who are about to become homeless. They set them up with temporary quarters, they find them temporary, affordable housing and they work towards finding them permanent affordable housing.

That is something I can get behind. Big time.

The job is four afternoons a week, five hours a pop - Tuesday through Friday. It pays exactly what we need to supplement social security. I get three day weekends and no nights.

The only draw back is I get out at 6:45, so I won't get home until 7:15 four nights a week.

Want to know what I have learned in life? The only iron clad rule that cannot be disputed?

Nothing ever goes exactly the way you want it to.

I can live with 7:15. Everything else is gravy.

They liked me. I am going back for a second interview on Friday at 11:00.

I got this job. I feel it in my bones.

This whole retirement thing feels so right. Things are clicking along smoothly; no stress, no fuss, no muss.

It feels to me like Carol and I are being rewarded for a lifetime of struggling and fighting and sacrificing.

That is how life should work.

I have been free for 3 weeks now. And things just keep on rolling along like magic. I feel so good inside, so confident and so happy that my mind and my heart and my soul are beginning to mend.

Who the hell knew I would ever get here?