I'm Retired

The past six months have been full of change in my life. The arthritis in my joints had gotten so bad that I could no longer do my job without a lot of pain - and a lot of mistakes - so, at the end of February, I quit working. I've been in the process of filing for Social Security Disability since then. You wouldn't believe the forms, and the redundancy. Hopefully, though, the end is in sight and I'll get a positive adjudication. If not, I'll have to hire an attorney, or just get along on my savings until I can file for early SS in November (I turn 62 in December). In the meantime, I have made some pretty big changes in my life.

I just finished moving down to Clifton, Illinois, the home village of my family. My sisters and brother live in Chebanse, just to the north, but I have nephews and nieces who live in Clifton. For the first time, I didn't have to do it all by myself, or hire movers. And that is evidently thanks to my mother.

Mom passed away in September of 2007, after a valiant five year battle with breast cancer. Unbeknownst to me, she made my siblings promise to help me when the time came. You see, Mom is the only one who ever really understood just how much pain I've been in for the past eleven years. It seems that one of my doctors told her something after one of my knee replacement surgeries in 2000 that made her worry. I have no idea what he told her, but it was enough to cause Mom to exact promises from my siblings before she died. My sisters, by the way, don't think I'm as disabled as all that, primarily because I still do my crafts. What they fail to understand is that I've been able to adapt my crafts so that I can continue to do them. I could not do the same for my work skills.

I was a legal secretary who used to type at 80 wpm with no errors, and could sustain that speed for extended periods of time (extremely helpful when preparing large court documents on a deadline). At the end, I was pushing myself as hard as I could, but my speed had slowed to less than 65 wpm and I was having to spend more and more time making corrections due to my growing inability to control my finger movement. Also, I had to keep taking breaks to stand up and move around. I used to be able to sit for 4-5 hours straight without stopping. Just before I retired, I was having to get up every 40 minutes or so to walk around and to shake out my hands and fingers in order to continue. The pain in my wrists and fingers was also reflected in the loss of strength in my hands. I was having trouble lifting file folders of any size (and in litigation, file folders can get to be six or seven inches thick). I dropped a folder one day which resulted in my spending about 20 minutes reorganizing the file, which put me even further behind.

The skills I need for crafting are different from those I used for working. When I'm sewing, I can keep my hands flat and fairly immobile. I'm not causing too much stress on my joints that way and I'm not lifting any weight. I don't do as much creative work on my jewelry as I used to because of the loss of dexterity in my much stiffened fingers. Most of my work now is simple stringing - and even that is beyond me on certain days. And at this point, however, it is my crafts that have been keeping me afloat financially. During this past spring, I was doing at least two craft shows a month, which resulted in my not having to dip so much into my savings, and which is why I didn't have to move from my old apartment until now.

As I said earlier, my sisters helped me with my move. Of course, I'm not as neat a housekeeper as they are, so I have been having to put up with a barrage of disparaging remarks about my lifestyle for the past three weeks. One sister told me that I had too many clothes and that I should get rid of everything but two weeks worth of outfits for summer and two weeks of outfits for winter. I don't know about you, but I like to have choice in what I wear. My friends think her idea is absurd. But that's just the way she is - a material minimalist when it comes to other people. She and her husband, daughter and son-in-law helped me move my things from my old apartment down to the new one (it cost me less to do it that way ($160) than it would have to hire movers ($180/hr with a 7 hr minimum)), and I am extremely grateful for their help. However, I am glad that she is letting me put my new apartment together myself. She has offered to come help me finish unpacking and organizing next week. Hopefully, I'll have most of that finished before she comes down.

It's getting late now and it's taken me a lot longer to get this post prepared than usual. My fingers and hands are really beginning to ache, so I guess it's time to stop for now. (Time was when I could have sat writing for hours without a problem.) More later.