magnetic_pole | Another week, another Five....

Another week, another Five....

Pulling up another Five from the

thefridayfive archives this week...

1. What is something amazing that has happened in the last five years? I'm going to keep this light, personal, and mundane: my couch. We'd had a futon for years (twenty, to be precise), and while it served us well, I'm a lounger, and futons are for more upright and virtuous people. Two years ago we got this one in coffee brown with a large matching ottoman. Couldn't be more comfy. It looks crisper in the photo than in real life, where it's a bit smushy.

2. What is something you would love to happen in the next five years? On the macro scale? Open doors and social support for immigrants and refugees everywhere. Universal heath care here in the US. On the micro? Yikes, now everything micro seems petty. Peace, love and good health, all around!

3. Do you make "life plans" or do you live spontaneously? Life is what happens while you're busy making plans. Unfortunately. If I had my way it would be all life plans, all the time, but experience proves me wrong over and over on this point.

4. Do you think about what you might do when you retire? All the time! More or less what I do in the summers and on weekends right now but with no student papers to grade, *ever.* I hope I'm in good enough health to appreciate it. (And I hope we actually have enough money to quit working at some point; I really worry about this.)

5. Is your lifestyle similar to your parents, grandparents, or something utterly different? Similar in certain ways--I went into the same profession my father did, after all, and I inherited (or acquired) his bookishness and introversion and slight obsessiveness and my mom's love of detective stories and baked goods and chatting. But very different in the sense that I don't have kids, or a car, or house in the suburbs. Both my grandparents and parents led very child-centered lives and were never very interested in venturing far from home even once the kids left the nest, and I'm happy not having kids and want to travel the world and get to know folks who are different from myself. Growing up, I would have said my brother was the black sheep in the family--he seemed most different from the three of us temperamentally--but he's gotten more and more like my father over the years and created a family life very similar to theirs, and I've drifted away from the three of them in all sorts of ways, large and small.

Added bonus this week: Animals! Two videos that made me laugh out loud: happy dog with happy soundtrack and a cat watching a particularly stressful scene in a horror movie. Click though--you won't regret it.

Want to play along? Text box below!

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Fooey, the link for your couch photos goes to a page showing many different couches. I have been thwarted!

I don't anticipate ever being able to retire from paid work, but I don't mind because freelance editing is generally pleasant and low-stress. But I worry about Spouse, whose paid work is much more demanding. I hope we're in a good enough position a decade from now for her to call it a day.

Lifestyle, that's an interesting question! My life is sort of like my parents', in that I own a house and live with someone I'm married to. And very unlike, in that it's a same-sex marriage and we are not immigrant/refugees working three jobs between us while trying to learn a new language. As for my grandparents, one set were middle-class Eastern European urbanites, husband a government bureaucrat, wife owning a clothing store, while the other set were farmers who in their spare time I presume persecuted any Jews who happened to be in the vicinity. So not so much with the similar lifestyles, there.

So with you on #2, and would put a word in for a miracle to happen in the world response to climate change.

Those videos are great.

Gah! I never understand how to get the permalink. I've tried to fix it...but then the first time around it looked right at this end, so what do I know?

The retirement situation worries me in all sorts of ways. Both the better half and I have white collar work, so there's a bit a leeway there (if people are willing to continue to employ older folks) but how about folks who need to be on their feet? Especially those who lost homes in 2008-2009 and won't have much money in the bank?

True: ultimately, my life is similar to my parents and grandparents in that we've been lucky, healthy, middle-class, white, native-born, and never so broke we couldn't last it out one way or another. Everything else is a minor difference. My partner's parents are immigrants who survived war, two rounds of emigration, poverty, a grueling job, violence in the neighborhood, and two new languages--so when my partner says her life is different from her parents, she's both very grateful and understating the case.

Aren't those videos wonderful? I must have watched the Psycho one a dozen times. M.

Interesting questions, and very interesting answers! #5 is particularly chewy food for thought for me right now. My father just retired (and talk about intergenerational lifestyle differences, given that I think he'll be the last in the family to stop working at 65), and we've been having a fair few conversations about what life outside of work looks like to us. We've managed to find common ground on the whole "living on Earth, converting oxygen to carbon dioxide" front, but that's about it so far.

Lovely to see your name in my box again, D.

We've managed to find common ground on the whole "living on Earth, converting oxygen to carbon dioxide" front, but that's about it so far.

:)

I can't imagine how this next generation is going to retire. My grandfather worked in a grocery store, raised a family, sent three daughters to college, retired in his early fifties, and got a pension for life; I'm in a relatively decently paying professional job and have been lucky enough to avoid illness or other catastrophe, and can't see myself retiring at all. *sigh*

Thanks for commenting! Would love to see your replies, if you're in the mood.

It's been so good to read my f-list again. I really missed your posts. I may just have to borrow these questions for a Sunday Sfive, now that my brain is percolating.

Regarding retirement...yeah, I'm trying to make peace with the idea that it may prove to be a brief post-WWII historical anomaly. I doubt many people in my family tree even made it to sixty let alone retired - up until my grandparents, who were miners and cleaners who left the workforce in the 1980s on fixed but manageable small-town budgets. My parents, a nurse and an electrician, made quite a bit more money than I'm ever likely to and both recently retired very comfortably with their current partners - houses paid off, buying cottages and new cars - but I do worry they're not set up for the decades they may have ahead of them.

As for me, I don't think my pension's ever going to support me willingly leaving the workforce unless there are some big changes to the economy or social benefits here. I'm thinking the best thing to do may be to find a job with a good enough work/life balance that I wouldn't mind so much doing it until I'm unable to work any more. *echoes your sigh*

It's fun to read the flist, isn't it? I've set up on Tumblr and AO3, but I really like the chatting part of fandom, and so I'm going to try posting here more often and being more honest with myself about content--I'm just not reading and writing as much right now, and that's fine. I will again one day when the stars align again. And it's fine to post here with non-fannish content in the meantime.

I hear you on the post-WWII anomaly. I'm not usually one for pop sociology, but the books out lately about the upper 20% separating from the rest of us seem to be onto something. I've had enough of a privileged background (fancy colleges, mostly) to notice how important family money is in the lives of upper middle class people who appear to be making it on their own, as professionals of one kind or another, and to wonder if that extra buffer is keeping a politically powerful part of the electorate from revolting against current policies. (Here in the US, at least.) Because clearly the current system isn't working for most of us but isn't in crisis to the point that anything looks likely to happen to change it.

Anyways, enough of my own pop sociology. And hear! hear! for work/life balance even at this stage in our lives, so we're still able to keep working later on. :) Thanks for reading, I'll keep an eye out for your answers to these questions! M.

I was watching that cat video in bed this morning and my cat was so freaked out!

I think I'm basically working (hah! I crack myself up!) on the basis that I will never actually get to retire. Sure, I'm paying into my state pension and my workplace one, but I really don't believe that state pensions will actually exist when I get to the fictional age I might get mine, and I don't think there is a cat in hell's chance (this phrase has always baffled me, cats would kill it in hell) that my workplace pension will be enough to live on. Really should have tried to marry rich.

I know, L. *sigh* The numbers don't really add up, do they? How is this going to work on a generation scale? *frets*

Ah! So was your cat freaked out by the suspenseful music? I've never see Psycho (I'm way too much of a scaredy cat), but R has, and she kept saying that scene was all suspense, so what was the cat responding to, exactly?

Wasn't that the most delightful little cat? M.

The idea of retirement freaks me out. Basically, I want to find something that gives me income but also doesn't require me to "work." It's the dream anyway.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And while everyone our age (I think we're about the same age? maybe?) is planning to work indefinitely, it's a scary prospect--already at forty, people I know are having a hard time finding jobs for age-related reasons. Is anyone going to want to hire us if we're on the market twenty years on?

Ugh. On another note, how's your Sunday? :) M.

Is anyone going to want to hire us if we're on the market twenty years on? That's the scary thing. Here, too, retirement age gets higher and higher. There's a government site to calculate your retirement age so that you can be a responsible citizen and take care of yourself, but when I go there (and I'm a fifty-something) the reply is 'basically we're clueless, but it'll be at least ...' and the at least date gets higher by the year.

While on the other hand people over forty, leave alone fifty, find it nearly impossible to get a job. It's seriously worrying.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. And yes once more. M.

Life is what happens while you're busy making plans. Unfortunately. If I had my way it would be all life plans, all the time, but experience proves me wrong over and over on this point.

Ugh, I'm so with you on this. It actually leads into the retirement discussion for me; I think we're on track to retire at a decent age, but I worry about what could happen in the meantime, particularly health-wise. And not just our health, but our parents' health -- will we need to pay for their care and demolish our own savings? D:

The cat watching the horror movie was hysterical. Poor thing, I'd probably respond the same way to a scary movie. (I don't watch 'em.)

Oh my word, that cat was so funny, wasn't she? i couldn't figure out what she was responding to, exactly--I haven't seen the movie (like you, I've got zero tolerance for scary movies), but given what I know it seems like it's probably all suspense and music? Anyways, I laughed and sympathized *hard.*

That's it exactly on the retirement front--a single catastrophe in the family can really change the game even if you've been lucky to earn enough to save. (And I can see how many people can't.) My brother's been through a catastrophic period this past year (which actually I don't think I've talked about here much--maybe I should) and the whole situation makes me sick with worry.

Ugh. Didn't mean to get so bleak there so quickly. Anyways, *hugs.* M.

I remember when you got that couch and how happy it made you!

As for #2- yes to all of it.

I am also with you on #3. Sigh.

What a great set of questions. I do believe I will copy you and make a post with my own answers.

Ha! I recognize a fellow planner when I see one, W. It pains my heart that life never goes the way our carefully organized plans suggest. Although sometimes I don't dream big enough, and life surprises me in the other direction, with big and glorious things. So there's that, too, I keep reminding myself.

Aw, you remember me buying this couch? I've loved this couch from the beginning. I'm lounging on it right now, actually. There's a little shiny patch where my butt settles in happily. :)

Looking forward to seeing your responses! M.

Great questions, great answers. And you're so right about the chatty aspect of dreamwidth/lj. I love that interaction.

It's what frustrates me most about Tumblr--it's almost impossible to have a conversation over there. And while I love reading and writing fanfic (and reading meta, and looking at art), I'm not always very actively, and mostly I love meeting folks and learning about them. I haven't figure out how to do that via Tumblr yet.

In other words, I'll be the one to turn out the lights over here. :) Feel free to stay at this party as long as you'd like.

Thanks for stopping by! M.

I'll be the one to turn out the lights over here. :) Since I'll be there as well, we can keep the lights on and have something like a slumber party together

Ooooo! Popcorn and strange 60s Japanese Mothra movies!

That's a fascinating set of Qs there.

I'm late boomer, so I lucked out re: retirement. (I retired on disability in 1993, when rocks were soft.) MyGuy spent his last five years working as a State employee. State employee unions & civil service were invented here, and they had damn fine contracts. Between his pension plan from the private sector and the rock-star health insurance from State employment, we're actually free to not plan for the rest of our lives.

(Until it's time to light out for the border at midnight because the fascists are coming.)

Your point up-thread about wealth is right on. My folks were first-generation--their parents immigrated around 1905, when pogroms made leave-Russia-now a priority. My folks managed to catch a couple brass rings--full boat scholarships to an Ivy from their public schools. They swung those rings right up into the ruling class.

Their wealth made it possible for me to not go to college, but futz around creatively, and buy a house. That investment has saved me from the terrors of so many of my disabled aquaintances.

State employees are among the few to have kept a decent pension in this grim century. Glad to hear you've been able to benefit from it!

I keep running into early- and mid-20th century predictions about labor saving devices and the abundance of leisure time we were going to have in the future, and it's all so sadly utopian in hindsight. :(

Sorry I missed this last week, J. M.

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Another week, another Five....

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