Tag: blog

retirement plans? what retirement plans?

Seems as though some people plan their retirement as meticulously as they plan their weddings or their families. For years, they’ve envisioned what retirement would be like: whether there will be travel plans and to where, whether they want to make time for the grandkids, for volunteering, or for having a newfound social life. They know how much money will be coming in from retirement benefits, pensions, and other sources of nonworking income, and they will have it earmarked: so much for this and so much for that.

Then there are the rest of us. We don’t have a clue what retirement will look like, how much money we will be bringing in to live on, or, really, how much we will need. We also may not realize what we will be doing day to day.

I am planning my retirement much like I did having kids, which means I’m basically winging it.

I planned to work till I couldn’t any longer. I had a half-time to three-quarters-time remote job that I enjoyed and that paid a decent hourly wage. I was able to fit it into my life very well, even when also watching my grandkids a couple days a week and amid other numerous obligations.

Then down came the boom, and I was let go, most likely a victim of the artificial intelligence (AI) movement. I’m collecting unemployment benefits while applying for work, but so far, no luck. At my age, despite my extensive experience, remarkable work ethic (I never took a single week off in the past four years), and excellent performance, I am very likely to not be hired anywhere.

In other words, I may have fallen into retirement by no choice of my own.

Since I consider myself still looking for work, I am not calling myself retired, though. There is always the prospect of getting freelance work if a steady job does not come through. Most of my life, I have worked on a freelance basis, so I’m no stranger to this platform. Still, it doesn’t offer benefits of any sort, not even unemployment benefits when a company suddenly (or not so suddenly) stops calling on you. If you get sick, you work through it. You don’t like the assignment? You take it anyway. In fact, you take everything that comes your way, whether you have the time or not. If you get into the habit of saying no (or do it even one time), you run the risk of being pushed aside by the 30 other freelancer who are an email away who will be happy to jump on assignments and whom the company will come to rely on.

With my newfound free time, I have been able to get around to little jobs around the house: putting in baseboards, wallpapering (I’m getting there next week, most likely), cleaning closets, cleaning drawers, decluttering, shredding old paperwork . . . in other words, all the things I couldn’t get to when I was working 30 hours a week.

I also have time to read, and read I have. I just finished my 38th book of the year today.

But to be honest, I’m getting a little bored. If I had my druthers, I’d still be working. And I’m learning that free time isn’t all that freeing: If you’re a person who likes routine, and I’m one of them, you need to stick to a fairly regular daily schedule, working or not. I do sleep in about 30 to 45 minutes longer than I used to when I was working, but I get up no later than 7:30 every day. I follow a breakfast and lunchtime schedule, I walk the dog one or two times a day, and I start making dinner starting around 5 p.m.

What I’m having trouble with, though, is feeling guilty about postponing or not getting around to certain chores or errands that I know I need to do. For example, I have procrastinated booking an appointment with a mechanic because, I swear, I have PTSD from having had so many repairs in the past go wrong or cost much more than the vehicle is worth. It’s a horrible feeling to shell out what often amounts to a lot of money; and many of us are at the mercy of our mechanics.

But I have found that the only way to get an unpleasant job out of the way is to do it. I promise to make an appointment next week.

I’ve been out of work for a month already, so having free time is still pretty fresh for me. By the time I actually do retire, I hope to have it planned out a bit better.

does rose have rosacea?

So, as I like to say, the hits just keep on coming.

I get used to a certain amount of pummeling on my body and, bam, here comes a left hook that sends my head spinning.

About four months ago, I started experiencing pimples on my brows and forehead. I had thought I wasn’t washing my brows well enough. Since they are getting sparse and gray, when they have no pencil on them, I look a sight. So, I would sometimes not wash all of my brow pencil off. at night before bed. Well, after I stepped up my hygiene routine, I saw some improvement, of course, and felt like needing to wash more thoroughly was all that it was.

But the pimples were also along my hairline. Then they started on my nose, and from there, I developed what I thought were psoriasis plaques below the corners of my mouth, followed by the right side of my mouth. The skin on my nose would sometimes peel because at times I would put acne treatment on it. So, I stopped that. But even without the acne care, I still was noticing some peeling.

I notified the pharmacy that dispenses my biosimilar for my RA so they can put this in their files. I was pretty certain this biosimilar, a drug that is similar to but not the exact same as the brand-name drug I was taking, was the cause.

I also informed my rheumatologist at last week’s appointment. She did a quick glance and said it looks like rosacea. I told her I’d never had that before, just acne in my teens and twenties (and thirties . . . ).

I had an appointment with my dermatologist for today, but yesterday, I had canceled it, thinking I needed to get some work done and that my skin was actually clearing up. Then just this afternoon, I started noticing red skin, not just pimples, but flushed skin, on the right side of my mouth, starting just under my nose. This is definitely something new.

I did a little research on it, and it most definitely could be rosacea. I learned today that the autoimmune pathways that trigger RA also trigger rosacea. My niece has a bad case of it, so I will let her know. Her uncle on her mother’s side has RA, and her aunt on her father’s side (yep, that’s me) also has it. Her younger sister is starting to get aches and pains, migraines, too, and I warned her to get tested when it gets bad.

Back to the rash: Since it is similar to a malar rash, I’m now wondering if it could be lupus. If you have one autoimmune condition, you’re very likely to get another. I was recently (maybe within the past year or just before that) retested for some of the blood markers for other autoimmune diseases, and lupus did not come up. But I still wonder . . .

I just went onto the web portal for my medical group and reinstated my appointment. It’s now for August, but so was my last one; the group has a very active wait list, and I will be informed when an opening pops up. I will take the very next appointment.

I’m finding that when you have a disorder like RA, you are never in the clear. There are so many new symptoms that can arise that you never would have thought had a connection to the disease, like rosacea and the spinal stenosis and hypertrophy I just learned I had in my cervical spine.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another.