six more years

old people on a bench

We got the process started a couple of days ago to get a passport for Sparrow.

When you’re little, your passport is good for 5 years.

Your passport is good for 5 years, but they charge you for 10 years.

I think that it’s because the passports they give to babies are twice as good….so they last half as long.

That must be the reason.

I work for the Post Office…..so I’m always curious how things are going for the other clerks or carriers.

When I asked the clerk who was helping us process the application for the passport how long he’d been with the PO, he told me “24 years…..”

“I’ve got 6 more years to go….and then I can do what I want to do….

Oh, man.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, mannnnnnnnnn.

“Then….I can do what I want to do….”

Maybe I’m thinking the same thing….but it’s rough to hear it.

How many of us are on that same schedule…..spending the bulk of our lives doing something mildly distasteful so that, when we’re older and less able to really run in the sunshine, we can finally do “what we want to do”?

There’s the “quiet desperation” that I hear so much about.

That’s the thing that we think we can “wait out”…that if we just suck it all up and go on with our lives….and do the thing that we picked to support ourselves and our families (or that “picked us” if we really didn’t plan very well) for as long as it takes to get to the marker that says, “you can go now…” ….well….then we “can go now”….and do something that we want to do with our lives.

I guess that you do what you do….and figure out the way to enjoy it and the people around you….no matter what you’re spending your life on.

I know that’s the way I handle any of it.

I work with great people.

I have FUN where I can find it.

But…I settle for things that maybe are less than ideal.

Ahhhhh, what the heck? You’ve gotta do somethin’.

It’s that expectation that gets me, though.

It’s the waiting for the right time….or the right place…or the right person, even (if you’re single….single)…or any of the right conditions that would allow you to “do the thing that you want to do”….that bugs me to think about.

The dress rehearsal parts of our life….the wade through dress rehearsal parts…..those parts KILL.

And what if you waste your whole life thinking that if you just stick it out and wait for the good stuff to come….that if you just have enough endurance to stand some more of that job that pays well enough to keep you hanging around….that someday, you’ll get to GO…..if you waste your life….that would really stink.

Waiting for the good times is no way to live a life.

Man….all these questions made the “passport getting” process take about 5 times as long as it should have.

I’M ONLY KIDDING….I DIDN’T ASK THAT DUDE ANY OF THIS STUFF.

That would have been crazy.

No crazier,though, than the building excitement of only having 6 more years of your life to go before you get to do the good stuff.

Why do we do that to ourselves?

(It’s the MONEY, isn’t it? We needs the MONEY…..)

 

“been on the job too long” Lonely Eagles, Wilmer Watts

 

 

 

About Peter Rorvig

I'm a non-practicing artist, a mailman, a husband, a father...not listed in order of importance. I believe that things can always get better....and that things are usually better than we think.

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