Retirement to me is ...

My Definition of Retirement

Retirement for me is not sitting on a beach, sipping martinis all day long. I know a lot of people think of retirement as that time in your mid-sixties after working a lifetime, finally, the system is supposed to allow you to time to enjoy your life and live it for the first time. At least, that's the story I was sold when I was a kid.

First things first, I disagree that one should wait until their sixties before they can live for the first time of their lives. So, respectfully, I will not be arranging my life as such and will continue to enjoy the things that help get me along in this world of MDK, mayhem and chaos.

Secondly, I know I will not stop when I finally have enough money. By that time, I want the option to continue working because I will continue to produce great things. If I got to choose what kind of work I would do with my life, I would do something that is actually beneficial and meaningful to society, humanity and the greater good. I don't fancy working exclusively to make some old white billionaire more millions so he can enjoy his early retirement in between constant vacations and barking orders.

If I had the choice of what kind of work I would be doing that would apply my skillset, I would rather apply my skillset towards something geared towards helping humanity out in a pragmatic and objectively beneficial fashion. I want this backed by research and data that includes the missing human element in our scientific studies. I want to find a way to measure subjective things like happiness, emotional stability, and everyone reaching their form of self-actualization for the benefit of their best expression of themselves that is collectively aggregate to society.

Let's look at an example: Traffic.
This is coming from a completely ignorant perspective, so my first action is to learn more about it. Understand how the light system works, what the current city plans and layout is, what terrain is available and how can one leverage what is available. I would also be able to take my knowledge of other systems and apply them here. One thing I have noticed is a city functions a lot like a motherboard, which also functions a lot like a cell, or an organic body. You have the nervous system if biological or the system bus if silicon and copper. You have the circulatory and cardiac systems in the body and the system clock with the silicon system. I would say a city functions very similar to these other shapes I find in life. Why not leverage what works in those systems? When inflamtion is ongoing from the immune system (first-responders), how do we keep the swelling down? You ice it and slow activity around the ouchie. Our traffic apps already advise of this by indicating the street is red rather than green on our route. We can opt to take a different route to where we need to go or we can continue on the current route knowing it will be a mess and just re-align our expectations on our navigations.

I also don't like how driving and traffic seems to be something that angers a lot of people on the road. Driving should come from the mindset of this is a very dangerous action that can kill us if we are not careful and we need to take that responsibility seriously. As such, the mentality needs to change from being first and fastest to getting there safe and in one piece. How do you change people's behaviours on this? I wouldn't know the answer, but I would call out for solutions, evaluate them, and start to collect data on what works, why and here's how you reproduce it.

Another example would be in healthcare: Why do I need to fill out a form every single time I visit the doctor's office when the office may already have my information or the medical system itself has my information and I can just sign a waiver granting them access to my information for the purposes of my treatment. One-touch auth for those that want it in the medical system. If we know you better, we can care for you better. More metrics means more accuracy in measurements.

Another example: I want to produce an open library of code a nation or nation state can leverage for their systems so governance can be rules-based system rather than an emperical and largely tribal knowledge system. We are running on a lot of outdated systems that do not leverage our technology to its best form. It's like the websites to the government resources (at least in the US) are all just reference documents to law, but who can realistically enforce every single word in every document? I believe there are projects in the digital asset space, but I am not smart enough to know which ones to point out. I just know I would like to see open websites supported by the community that help support nation state governance and anyone can learn what they need to do in order to help support the system we have all created to sustain ourselves.

One time, during one of the storms that passed through Dallas, Texas over the last year or so, it was a mess here and there was all kinds of disaster. I thought to myself how nice it would be to go read a few documents and get myself certified within an hour or so (because I know my own capacity for learning), and I could go out to the nearest intersection was and help direct traffic along and reduce chaos in the streets while the lights were out. This would keep frustrations and panic down on the roads. I also thought to myself if people could take photos of the before and after images of cleaning up the shrubbery that had fallen. In this way, payments could be directly distributed to the men and women who helped clean the mess up. This would be funded by the disaster relief recovery funds that were supposed to come to the state from the govenor in his declaration of a state of emergency. Imagine being able to fill out a form, take a picture of yourself, take a few pictures of what you did and get paid for helping your local community a few weeks later after someone (or a few) else goes through and verifies it all?

This blog post would get to be too long to reasonably read if I kept going on about the examples because there are a plethora of things I could do and ways in which I could apply myself. I want to leave you with a general sentiment that I desire something better than the nonsense we see in the world today.

When I retire, I want to tinker with the system and change it in ways where the incentives and benefits are not the sole pursuit of money, but the possibility of what it can do for us. I want to inspire minds to think about how helping us collectively is better than fancy cars, clothes and shoes. There's nothing wrong with treating yourself every once in a while, but that kind of glamourous life is not necessary for ultimate happiness, satisfaction or general decency in life. So you worked really had and made boat loads of money, you are the ruler and dictator of things in some seat of governmental power -- now what? What are you going to do with all that money and or power? I know I don't have all the answers and don't claim to have all the answers, but I know I was meant to build this structure. I also know the structure is incomplete and will be incomplete by the time I'm done, because it was meant to be passed down from generation to generation. I also know I cannot do this all by myself nor have I been doing this by myself. I've just been trying to find my note to resonate so I can play the song I was meant to sing.