I once thought that when I reached my mid-sixties, life would slow down, I'd have a lakeside cabin in a forest somewhere, and I'd write all the novels for which I'd scribbled notes and rough outlines and character sketches.
Thanks to having lost several retirement funds due to the machinations of the companies providing them, I've embarked on yet another career and yet another effort to build up a retirement fund. This is much, much harder to do when you're past your mid 50's than you would expect.
Having lost those previous pensions to mergers and business failures and a stock market crash, I am not going to rely on this particular pension being there when I do get to retire in my mid-70's. I am hedging my bet by starting my own business.
Some of you who may have been reading my diaries from the early days know I formed an LLC in order to run a steampunk convention. What you, and definitely I, never expected was that it would prove so popular that a convention that hasn't even happened yet is rapidly trying to become a full time business. I am doing my best to restrain it and keep it from exploding too fast and beyond my ability to control.
The first weekend of November, I and my executive ConCom went to the Emerald City Steampunk Exposition (ECSE) because we are building relations with other steampunk groups across the country (at least as far as my funds and vacation time allow). We met with some good people, made some lasting connections, had a few lessons reinforced on con-running, and the cost was worth eating off my pantry (yay for being a survivalist, at least I have enough stored food) for the rest of the month. Plus, I have the satisfaction of knowing this trip was a business expense and will count on my taxes.
Last weekend, we went to the Peace Festivaland to IzumiCon, an anime convention. In addition to those, I also attended a NaNoWriMo Write-in and the local costumer's guild meeting, both of which were in the same location, and connected with several potential vendors for OctopodiCon.
I took off half a day to mow the lawn (much rejoicing from my neighbors and the zoning code enforcers), do laundry, wash dishes, paint one wall of my workshop, move a bookshelf cabinet full of my cookbooks and set them up in what I hope will become their permanent (such permanence as exists in my house, anyway) location, do some research for OctopodiCon, work on the website which was moved from it's former host (who kept ramping up the ram on it, charging us for denial of service attacks on their servers, and shutting our site down for days at a time - we have a new webhost and have to rebuild the site.)
Then I spent some time with Occupy and working on designing a yard sign to put outside. I can't spend a lot of time at the local Occupy because I have so much work to do that pulls me away that I will do what I can in remoter locations. A yard sign is just the beginning.
I finished up in time to get to the OctopodiCon Open Planning Meeting to meet with all my volunteer officers and then with all of the interested people who would show up to offer suggestions and advice and maybe even volunteer. That meeting ended at 8:00 pm, just in time to attend a trunk show by another potential vendor for OctopodiCon.
Honestly, I think I go to my day job to rest. Busy as work is, it's not as hectic as my home life. Can I call it home life if I'm really not home very much? Anyway, work is predictable. I know what I have to do and how to do it and when, which is very different from juggling this LLC monster I created.
We connected with a local Maker's group and will be attending their open meeting tomorrow evening to work together with them various designs. Our Registrar frequently needs to use a power chair, so we're getting it steampunked out for her, plus they've offered to build a steampunk photo wall, and I'd like to ask them to help build a mock-up of an airship for both educational purposes and for photo ops.
Itzl was a champ through all of this. He's gotten so good at dealing with the transitions and the huge number of people we encounter. A great many of those people are also getting acclimated to having Itzl around. At ECSE, he dozed during the panels I was on. The hotel was very good, accepting his presence without a question or a challenge. The same was true at the Peace Festival and IzumiCon. Except for one restaurant, everywhere we have had to go has been just the way it ought to be.
I don't think my retirement is going to be a little lakeside cabin after all.