just got to town! |
on top of my hotel - love the Pod! |
walking across Manhattan bridge with Kat00n! |
Just got back from 5 days in NYC and my legs still want to walk non-stop every minute of the day except for about an hour of sitting for meals. It's not just that I love the city and the energy and the bolt of joy I feel every morning when I exit my hotel in the uber excitement of mid-town, it's that something happens there that is beyond and bigger than just joy or happiness or excitement. My reptilian brain, my deep limbic system that attaches me to the collective unconscious feels electrified and online...like a broken refrigerator that gets a shiny new plug and then is plugged into the wall and hums and glows and all is right with that refrigerator. It's not doing anything special or doing a dance or trying to stand out from all the other refrigerators...it just comes alive and starts functioning perfectly. That is what is going on underneath my excitement and joy and happiness when I am there. And I'm not really doing a whole lot of different stuff when I'm in the city...I'm basically just walking. Walking and walking and walking. Averaging about 10 miles a day. I usually don't do any sort of New Yorky stuff (except this time I did go to two broadway plays) because all I want to do is walk around. I do midtown for the first day...then I take the train down to NYU area and walk that part, and this time I went to my friend's house in Clinton Hill in Brooklyn and we waked from there to Chinatown over the Manhattan bridge (where I got that beautiful bottom photo). I've said this many times since I've been staying in a hotel in the city the last few years: "I have to move back here." And I will. Probably not this year as I just signed a lease, but I will start planning for it during the year, and hopefully my cabin in Oregon will sell this summer and I can forget about that. A part of me thinks it's crazy to move to NY in the same year I turn 60, but I seem to still have that restless spirit that gets bored living in the same place too long. I have been in Austin two years and it has been good to me. I have a pretty good social life, have worked almost the whole time I've been here, and belong to a lively film society so life is good...I just feel like I need to give NY another shot and live there when I'm mature and sober. The one thing I know that I have proved to myself for 40 years is that I can always come back to Austin.
As soon as I got back from NY I did two days of serious adulting. I went to my investment guy and we did a big plan to convert all my funds into a safer, more annuity type product planning for my full retirement at age 65 (only 7 years away!). I have been investing for almost 20 years, have my UT pension that will kick in when I retire, and hopefully a tiny little social security check (which kind of burns me how small it is after working 42 years in a row). So I left his office feeling very clear and clean about my financial life, and loving the fact that I can still work as much or as little as I want and take time off to do trips as well.
The second adulting thing I did was go visit a doctor with my new ACA health insurance. When I worked at UT I had health insurance and used it maybe once a year for my lady parts check up. When I started going to the Ice I had to have a comprehensive physical every year that was paid for so I felt really taken care of then. I have never gone to a doctor at any other time except for birth control reasons (I've always paid for my therapists and bodyworkers out of pocket) so health insurance is not something I really ever thought about. Now that I'm older I was getting concerned about having catastrophic insurance. I could always go to the cheap clinic here and just pay cash if I really needed to, but I wanted some sort of security in case of a major medical expense. I have such a negative attitude about health care in this country that I just decided I'd ignore it until I went on Medicare, but then this free organization here in Austin that helps people get on ACA insurance helped me get a really cheap plan. I was thrilled to be paying a low monthly fee that what seemed like a really good plan. I thought it would be super lame but called a phone number and got an appt. the next day with a gyno and after one hour had done all my bloodwork, had my full lady parts exam, had my IUD yanked (that had been floating around up there for 20 years) and have 5 more appts. for all that stuff one is suppose do now that I'm old. And I LOVED my doctor. She was awesome and sweet and I felt so taken care of. Now I felt like I was on an assembly line as the doctors and nurses were talking so fast and the doc was typing into a screen the whole time she was talking to me and hadn't really looked at me. She asked "are you periods nice and regular with good flow" and I realized she had not even looked at the form I filled out that had my age on it and I said "lady, I haven't had one of those in 8 years" and she paused and looked around the screen, and saw how old I was. I guess I could be flattered that she thought I looked younger. But all in all it was a great experience and I can't wait to go back to all my other appts.
In the midst of all this order a bit of chaos happened. I am still feeling conflicted and angry/hurt/sad about it but have already starting to see that it is really no big deal in the grand scheme of things. I called UT, where I have been temping for two years, to get in the pool to get another assignment. My temp contact who knows me pretty well called me and told me I'd been terminated from UT. After two years and many assignments with glowing reviews I had one dud review from the last assignment and I was fired permanently for being "uncooperative" and "not giving notice". I went into full injustice warrior mode and made phone calls and dashed off e-mails and researched who to write for grievance stuff and called a lot of people and then found myself driving to the store to buy a deep red lipstick and went to a fantastic movie and and hung out with a good friend at the film society and people watched. His notion is why the hell would I want to work at this chump-y place when I don't have to! I told him that I had had associations with UT for 40 years now (entering as a college student in 1979) and that the University was part of my DNA (my father was a student there as I was coming down the birth canal), and that is just seemed so unfair to fire me to be canned after one bad review. I could understand if this was my first assignment but I have had so many "excellent" reviews and many of my supervisors call the temp office asking for me specifically because I am such a superstar worker. It seems to me that my whole temp performance could be weighed in with this awful, terrible, suckola job that I hated so much that I left giving one day notice. It was a temp job so I thought that was not so terrible a way to exit. I feel I'm being punished as if I did something truly terrible (stealing, inappropriate behavior.) Anyway, I've spent almost 72 hours throwing a lot of energy into this and I'm done. I'm ready to move into a bigger and better space around work, life, moving to NYC, world travel, and laughing and having fun for the next 30 years.
I don't take for granted for one moment how lucky I am to be able to live the life I have right now. It is magnificent. I am truly, truly grateful.