In the next 10 years, assuming we haven't destroyed one another, the leaves will still change in the fall. The snow will fall (hopefully), and the seasons will change.
The one thing that will be different, from my perspective is, I will be retired. I've been teaching the hormonally schizophrenic (otherwise known as middle school students) for 34 years. I started out teaching in Buena Park, California. I taught there for one year, then took a teaching position at Cucamonga Junior High School, now known as Cucamonga Middle School.
I'm not quite ready to step down yet, but I can see that opening at the end of the tunnel, and it's no longer a train barreling down the track, but an open window on a new world. I know many people who have no desire to retire for the simple reason they feel they'd be bored. Not me.
As I noted in another post, there's a lot of things I want to do. One of them is to experience different places in the fall. Having grown up in Southern California, we don't really have fall. Leave turn colors all through our winter as it gets colder. I want to see an actual fall sometime. I haven't been able to do that, because I'm always working in the fall. I guess my first trip when I retire will be to New Hampshire. Who knows? It could happen.
The prompt for the day is an easy one from my standpoint, although I've heard that a million isn't enough and it causes more problems than it's worth. I think I could do quite well.
First off, we're going to have to assume that the million is tax free, because all this goes out the window if the government gets involved. So I'm assuming I've won some prize where the government has already gotten its share and I'm left with a million dollars.
The first thing I'd do would be to retire. I might make it to the end of the year, but I'd retire this year. The million dollars would be invested. Now, conservatively, I expect to get a return some where around 10%. I may be dreaming here, but I think I could get some good financial advice and earn 10% interest on that money. That means, coupled with my retirement income and my wife's retirement income, because trust me, she's retiring with me, I figure we'd be making somewhere about $70,000 dollars more than we do right now while working.
What this means is we could pursue things that we've always wanted to do. My wife has talked about going back to school and get a masters. I've wanted to travel more. We could do that and live comfortably for the rest of our days without ever touching the million dollars. The cool thing about this would be that we wouldn't have to worry as much about when we needed to buy a new car. I'm driving around a 15 year old automobile and it needs to be replaced. Hey, we need a new car! Great, go out and get one!
I think the one extravagant thing I'd do would be to go on a Disney trip. I think I'd like to take the train to Florida and visit Walt DisneyWorld again. Last time I was there was a long time ago in another life. EPCOT had just opened, but all of the other stuff there wasn't around. It would be fun to go back and enjoy two weeks or so of some Disney magic.
Other than that, I think my life would be relatively the same, with the exception being that I wouldn't be working for my money, my money would be working for me.
Dreams are an interesting phenomena. They can happen at any time, they can be controlled, and yet can also not be controlled. I'm at the point in my life where I dream a lot more than I used to for a variety of reasons, both literally and figuratively.
About a year and a half ago, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. I snore. Go figure. However, I'm a shallow breather, that is to say, I take such shallow breaths that my body constantly wakes me up to take a deeper breath while I'm sleeping. When I did the sleep study, I was waking up to take a deeper breath 59 times per hours. Needless to say, I wasn't getting much restful sleep and not much dreaming.
Now, I don't wake up much at all. I sleep like the proverbial log. Dreams are a nice side effect of this as well. It's like having a movie in your head and you're part of the picture, but you never know how it's going to turn out.
Other dreams however, I control. For example, because of my age and how many years I've been employed, I find myself dreaming of retirement. It sometimes gets very tough when you see co-workers leaving, because their situation makes it easier for them to retire or they're slightly older than you and it's their turn to leave. Eventually, that will happen for me too.
I'm looking forward to retirement so I can concentrate full time on my photography. Five years ago, I started a 365 project, taking a photo every day for a year. It went so well, that I completed a second year. 720 straight days where I took a photo. Then I took some time off.
This year, I decided I wanted to try it again. So far, that has fallen flat. I don't pick my camera up nearly enough right now. I know what I want to take photos of, but I can't, because work is getting in the way. That happens, so I dream about when I can go out and just take photos for a day, just to see what I can get.
It's fun to dream. P.J. even wrote about dreaming what he would do if he won the lottery. That's three quarters of the fun, because we all know we're not going to win, but it's fun to dream about what could have been, or what will be should we ever get lucky. My retirement dreams are a little bit different than that, because somewhere down that road, those dreams will come true.
