"The real luxuries of life:
time
health
a quiet mind
slow morning
ability to travel
rest without guilt
a good night's sleep
calm and "boring" days
meaningful conversations
home cooked meals
people you love
people who love you back"
I came across this on Reddit. It pretty much describes my life, except for perhaps the home cooked meals. Don't do a lot of cooking, but do eat at home, I guess.
More to the point, this pretty much describes being retired. Heh. At least as long as we're healthy.
It suddenly struck me yesterday how rich Central Oregon is with bookstores. Deschutes County has a little over 200K people and is fairly isolated. In this county alone, we have:
Pegasus Books
Dudleys
Roundabout
Underground
Big Story
Sunriver Books
Paulina Springs
Herringbone
B & N
(I hope I didn't miss any...)
It all kind of crept up on me. When B & N came to town, we had three indie bookstores, all of which went out of business shortly thereafter. Paulina Springs existed, I believe, and probably Sunriver Books. But this growth has been continuous ever since.
Pretty cool.
I'm seeing this sentiment quite a bit online. I understand the urge, but my experience is that once something collapses it takes a very long time to recover, if ever.
I remember having this discussion with my sportscard wholesaler circa 1990. I mentioned that the industry was so dysfunctional that maybe it needed to hit bottom before it could recover.
"Yeah, me and some of the other wholesalers have been talking about that. Maybe we need it all to collapse so that it can be rebuilt."
So it did collapse, and it's never really recovered fully. It's a full 35 years later and there are occasional surges and it never went away completely, but it's a pale shadow of what it once was.
Over the years I've seen a lot of product lines collapse--I'm watching one right now--and none of them have recovered. A few settled in at a sustainable level, but nowhere near as profitable as they were at their height.
Sure, in the long arc of history, a collapse seem like a blip. But humans don't live in the long arc of history, we live in the short arc of mortality.
Trying to relax. Ordering things at a once a week pace, and not getting ahead of myself.
Saw there was a new documentary about the composer John Williams and watched it midday, which I rarely, rarely do.
Made me realize, I am surrounded by art. Movies, books, music. Surrounded. It sustained me in my depressive twenties, especially books, but also movies. (There was a couple years where I literally went to every movie that came to Eugene. Every movie. Only walked out on one.)
There is more art available at this moment than any time in history. Art available to everyone.
My mom had tons of art books. They were black and white, sometimes out of focus. Now we can buy art books in glorious color. When I was young, I had to stay up late, or watch movies in early afternoon, to see the classics. They used to show black and white films, no problem. I'd mark the TV Guide a week in advance.
My house had tons of books and I could go to the library; even so, I felt as if I bought every mass market SF and Fantasy book I'd find in the supermarket spin racks. I still remember being drawn across a room by the first Frazetta cover I saw.
We had to buy our music in albums. In Bend, we had AM radio, tons of commercials. They rarely, if ever, played funk, or people like David Bowie or Kate Bush.
Now, it's all available any time I want it. In fact, there is so much art, I find myself seeking silence and solitude. I rarely watch great movies a second time because it seems like my older self picks apart movies I loved when I was younger.
Hard to say all this art has made us better, but it certainly has made my life more enjoyable.
I'm glad I got to express myself in stories. It doesn't really matter if
they were good or not; what counts is that they were a creative thing I
did for myself. I immersed myself in other worlds and very much enjoyed
the journey,
A pattern I've noticed. I come home from working at the store all day and I want nothing to do with the TV. I generally take a short nap. I'll turn on the fan and browse the internet or read a book.
It's occurred to me that I'm such an introvert that talking to people all day has completely worn me out and even the voices on the TV are too much. Linda doesn't have the same effect, but the jabbering on TV is just something I don't want; commercials are especially annoying.
I don't know. It's taken me until the age of 72 to figure this out.
Sometimes, after an hour or two, I can make my way to the couch, but even then, I don't seem to enjoy it as much. I turn my brain off and do coloring. Even when I'm not working, I don't want to watch TV or listen to music during the day. I just want peace and quiet.
The idea that people come home from a day of dealing with people, changing clothes, and going out on the town is beyond me. Todd comes to visit and will get antsy in a very short time, head for a local bar where he doesn't know anyone, and have a great time.
Wow.
When Linda and I went to Australia for a month, we spent at least three days just sitting in a motel room. At intervals. That's a long way to go to do nothing, but boy did I need it. I needed to shut down. I needed to recharge.
At the same time, I wouldn't switch to being an extrovert for anything. I'd be a leaf blown in the wind, without agency. Whenever I'm pushed into too much social activity, I feel myself losing my balance, my core. Being an introvert is my superpower, my center, my way of thinking and thriving. I don't get bored, even when I'm not reading. I like my own thoughts, or sometimes my own absence of thought.
I spent years in my own head, constructing my own stories out of thin air, writing 30 or 40 books, of which 25 have been published. It was utterly satisfying.
The danger for me is is letting this go too far, of being a shut-in. Isolation breeds isolation. I've always thought that Linda gives me about two thirds of what I need in connection, and the store gives me the other third. When it comes time to retire, I'm hoping we can travel, because that would serve the same purpose.
It's all about knowing yourself, you're own strengths and weaknesses, and instead of feeling bad about them, taking them in stride and maximizing the best parts.
Back from our four day trial run in the Catbus to Crescent City. Stayed at a campground in Hiouchi, about 10 miles from the coast. Working out the kinks. We didn't really use the water or stove this time; we'll try that the next trip.
Bumped my head four times, almost fell off the ladder one time, ran over a curb once--had to stop and open a curtain in order to see the traffic while people were waiting behind me. The upper extension is just canvass, so it will be cold in the winter, hot in the summer. The bottom bed has a divider which didn't make it completely comfortable.
Tight quarters, no doubt about it, which makes me wonder about all the camper vans I see around that are even smaller.
The driving was easy, but the gas is going to cost us. All in all, I think the trip cost us about half as much as staying in motels would. (But we could probably stay in motels about 600 times for the cost of the Catbus, so a money saver it probably is not.)
This is all for the cat, and Jasper took to the whole thing like a champ. Meowed a bit at the first of the drive, then settled down. Adapted instantly the leash thing. He seemed happy as a clam, which is good since he's the very reason we have the Catbus at all.
All in all, it's camping, with all the discomforts that imposes.
I do like the privacy, though...and this was probably the most remarkable thing that happened--suddenly old people were starting up conversations with us. Believe me, I'm not used to that, though it happens more often when I'm with Linda.
I think we've the joined the "Old People" tribe; specifically, the RV Old People tribe. Comparing rigs is de rigueur, apparently. I'm not sure if I like it or don't like it. heh.
We're going to try to fit in short trips at least once a month and eventually make longer trips--maybe much longer trips.
I think I like it. (I always told Linda to shoot me if I got an RV--but it was either that or never go on any trips again as long as Jasper is with us. And I couldn't quite get myself to smother the cat in his sleep.
Who I'm I kidding? He OWNS us.
You can be TOO efficient, at least when it comes to collectables.
I'm going through a collection of comics that sat in a garage for 25 years. Ironically, it's the comics that were in our mall store, which we sold, and which was then taken over by a former employee and friend. In other words, these comics had once been in my possession.
So far I've found a lot of bronze age comics that weren't worth anything 25 years ago, but are now closer to 50 years old and have gained some value. I've also found the first "Walking Dead" comic, which is worth over a grand (Theoretically. In reality, I doubt I'll ever manage to sell it.)
I've found a bunch of #1s that were just starting back then and are now long-running series.
I'd say 80% of the comics aren't really worth anything at all, but the other 20% at least have a chance of selling, given enough time and space. I'm going ahead and bagging and boarding these comics for backstock, even though only a fraction will fit.
Maybe 5% are worth anything in reality. So out of roughly 10,000 comics, 500 of them are worthy of attention.
This is what most collectors don't understand. Only a small percentage of any collection have the possibility of selling, and an even smaller percentage of those will actually sell.
So what do I mean by efficiency?
Well, I discovered years ago that I was very diligent about figuring out which comics are hot and needed to be given some space to sell. So let's say a comic series starts to catch fire. I grab the #1 issue and price it when it's five times its original price.
So far, so good.
But a significant percentage of these are going to keep increasing in value, and if I sold it for five time the value and it increases to fifty times the value, I've lost out. But someone who isn't as diligent will let it sit and suddenly discover it later.
Of course, an awful lot of of the comics I put out for five times the value actually decrease in value over time. That's why speculating is such a gamble. It so much a gamble that I realized that even a comic store owner who is up with the trends is unlikely to outsmart chance.
I stopped even upgrading the prices on comics about 20 years ago after the comics crash. Once in a while I'd grab a hot comic and increase the price after its selling period (We try to give everyone the chance to buy it at the original price.) I did this more to keep them around for people who were truly interested (after which I ascertained, I would cut the price) and out of the hands of speculators who just wanted to strip us bare and sell online.
Over the last two years I've bought two large collections, and I'm going through them box by box, and it's been kind of fun. I don't take it too seriously. I price most comics at a base price and don't try to look them all up: I'm sure I'm missing out on some key issues, but more power to anyone who finds them.
Anyway, I only bring up this "efficiency penalty" (if I may coin the term) because I've never heard it talked about elsewhere.
