Embrace Joy and Fight Like Hell

So it’s official I am retiring after 33 years of federal service. I want to be able to announce this with joy but I’m sad and angry.

Before I met Tennessee I had plans that started with me retiring right about now and I couldn’t wait. But meeting the love of my life changed everything and we were building a life together and decided that working a few more years would help make retirement much better for us both.

Now thanks to the chaos happening in D. C. I will have no choice but to retire.

Don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful that I have the option as many of my compatriots do not. I could fight this but one of the silver linings is that by retiring I am saving the job of one of my co-workers.

Another positive is that I have enough leave so that I can have about a month off before my pay significantly drops. I will use some of that time to secure some form of income but I’m going to spend most of it with my wife out in the garden since the growing season starts just after Easter here and start on getting the house ready for when my mom comes to live with us.

I am trying to see this as a good thing but in truth, I am grieving the loss. I’ve done enough therapy to know that I have to let myself feel these feelings, to process them, but it sucks.

That being said I decided to take a break while writing this entry and do a Tarot reading.  So I did a six-card spread (inverted pyramid) where the top cards are where I came from, the middle cards are where I’m at now, and the bottom one is where I am going.  

I asked the universe, “What I should focus on post-retirement?”

The three cards for the Past read that I was generous, practical, sensible, reliable, etc. but that there was a lack of reward for who I was. This rang true for me.

The two cards for the Present read as me being guarded, materially unstable, recklessly spending, as well as scatterbrained, cynical, insulting, and rude.

Harsh.

I thought about denying it and drawing new cards. However, there was something in those cards. I am angry. I am swearing a lot. I am totally super judgmental about the idiots in D.C. and those who voted for that joker. As for scatterbrained, I am very much struggling to focus on anything. We will not be addressing the reckless spending at this time.

Anyway, the Future card was an inverted Eight of Pentacles which basically said my future was leading to mediocrity, lack of motivation, laziness, and a low-skill dead-end job.

Yikes!

Granted I will need additional income, and I have only been looking at “easy, low-skilled options” but being mediocre and unmotivated sounds dreadful.

So I reshuffled the cards and asked another question. “How do I change my present to change that future?” I pulled the Six of Pentacles for the “new” present which indicates that I need to be generous, community-minded, supportive, full of gratitude, and willing to both give and receive.  

According to the cards, if I create this present, my new future will be (as represented by the Ace of Cups I pulled) filled with love, creativity, intuition, and spirituality.

I said earlier that I was grateful that I could retire and that by retiring I was saving someone else’s job, but I wasn’t truly feeling that. I have been resentful. I have been getting angrier every day with each new hit this administration keeps throwing at us and it wasn’t until just now that I realized how bitter I had become.

I do not think I have the gift of divination, nor will I ever be a fortune teller. Yet, it never ceases to amaze me how spot-on the cards can be. And it doesn’t take a genius to understand cause and effect. If I don’t let go of this resentment and anger my future can’t be creative or spiritual or loving.

If I want this future I need to rekindle my generosity of spirit and gratitude and start embracing joy once again. At one point in my life, I fully lived this and it manifested the love of my life. I want and need to find this again.

Who knows, maybe this brighter outlook might lead me to actually publish something. Maybe I might even make some money doing it. Wouldn’t that be splendid? Even if it’s not in the cards for me to be a published author, I still want a creative, intuitive, spiritual, and loving future.

I can still be angry because what is happening is wrong and unjust, but I need to focus my outrage correctly. Let it impel me to live defiantly as my authentic self and to protest against this fascism in all the ways that I am capable. I can do that without becoming bitter or losing my compassion or my joy.

So my friends, let’s embrace joy, be grateful for all we have, be generous in spirit and deed, and fight like hell.