Recent personal experience proves to you
that the real problem with being jobless is,
your sphere of influence shrinks, directly.
Out of work, no gainful employment, you
can go all day and not see a solitary soul,
so you spend the day in solitary, alone and
in the agreeable company of (what Letterman calls)
your own self. If you like who you are that's
not totally troublesome. Still, while there�s
always for some the issue of money,
the prospect of making no difference
in the end can prove hardest to take.
You remember your father�s retirement lasting
a good four years before he simply gave way
the ghost, trying to fix things round the house,
most in need of repair, and planting one tomato
plant after another. Throw in the vital moping
to the endpoint of languishing through life and
you have a fair description of his retiring days,
absent the customary references to drama. In
such a state not making a difference comes to
mean not feeling worth much, and that can be
dreadful, deadly even, as it takes the spirit right
out of a body.
