Seven months into retirement I’ve discovered this endeavor demands one requirement. Discipline.

After an adult lifetime of working, I was unprepared for the lack of structure that came with being 65. It’s a childhood dream to be able to do whatever one wishes, no? There’s a fantasy which should forever remain unrealized.

Unaware of the next phase into the last third of life, I calculated that a part-time job filling the midweek would spare me idleness, keep me active as well as crease my palms with several extra dollars.

Maybe along the way I’d find something else that could interest as well as occupy me. Until then, being a flex employee at my current employer fit the nebulous bill.

For the first several months it worked. Or it satisfied me. Best thing about my new status? My satisfaction.

During the decades until retirement, when I must work, my being accountable to a boss superseded my satisfaction. He or she needed to be kept mollified. I needed to perform to his or her standards. That, and when they were wrong, I must keep my counsel, hold my tongue. And once they discovered any boners committed then refrain from the satisfaction of declaring aloud in front of them, “I knew it!”

Dissatisfying as all that was throughout all those decades, my parents had it worse. My labor conditions were paradisical to theirs. They did not perform desk jobs. Many of their bosses and co-workers purposely treated them badly.

But as I learned from people way tougher than me, my parents, one must have a goal. It must be pursued no matter how arduous the course.

Having grown up with little to nothing and nothing expected of them, they aspired to the middle class. Back when the middle class was a working person’s blessed realm.

Not so much me in this, though certainly of mother and father, when I learn of “difficulties” Generation Whatever has in its workplaces, I laugh. Their complaints are so picayune. Theirs are complaints of a generation given almost everything and are unaccustomed to the word “No.”

The same complaints would inspire incredulousness in my parents. Employment place contention in their day was much more fraught. They didn’t have the protections or advantages today’s younger workforce abuses.

During their working days, job actions could be tasking. Fair results needed fortitude, patience, and in the case of father’s automotive employer muscular shows of resolve.

American labor has advanced so far nobody alive hourly or salaried knows anything about how several rolled cars can improve negotiating stances.

Of course, mother and father and their whole bunch fought for improvements. Better pay. Better benefits. Better conditions in which to work. They won them. It’s laughable to think any boss would give these voluntarily. Out of the goodness of his or her heart.

In doing so my parents’ generation also understood reward depended on their need to produce. Something isn’t given for nothing. Growing up, one “earned.” The two-way street which let mid-20th century employees and employers especially prosper, is taking on more of the recognizable one narrow lane of the Gilded Age.

The bosses are clawing back. With impunity. Lacking any labor history background, today’s workers are patsies. In order to proceed, they need to step back into their great-grandparents’ footsteps. In them they will relearn the effectiveness behind rolling cars.

Here is an aside. A New York University administration building now occupies one of the worst industrial mishaps in American history. The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. During Gilded Age America, immigrant women performed piecework inside the 10-story structure. Management, fearing its employees could shirk out of sight in the stairwells, locked those egresses also serving as fire escapes. Of course, a fire erupted inside the premises.

Unfortunately panic being what is it and will always be, flames, fear, smoke, and confusion either trapped the seamstresses on the 8th, 9th, or 10th floors or forced them to jump onto the Manhattan pavement below.

A little over 80 years later, my former employer did business with NYU. We conducted it inside that building.

Although an exterior plaque acknowledges the tragedy, aren’t most historical markers in America fairly ignored unless one seeks them? At the time I wondered how many of then-current NYU scholars knew of this address’ importance to American history. And I ask that because without a doubt a good number of them must’ve had grand- or great-grandmothers who toiled on those shopfloors.

If those students had appointments with admin, some likely might’ve walked across where a relative had died.

The good which emerged from this disaster is fire safety laws were strengthened. And enforced. No more locked exits. No more blocked exits.

The above is a reminder that in America, as in every other industrial land, workers must improve their conditions. Management will never spare the whip. Management must be made to spare it.

For some reason schools neglect to teach that.

Anyway, resuming the thread of this post, retirement has allowed to me to work when I want. While still at the employer who enabled me to reach 65 and Medicare, once the latter was attained, really, what need existed to continue to tote the barge and lift the bale fulltime? I went on flex time, a loose compilation of 30 hours or less that breaks up the week as well as supplement retirement payments.

After all, this is Las Vegas. The notion of “too much money” does not exist.

The new life with its loose scheduling went fine for a while. Because the alternative was succumbing into a sedentary life.

For retirees here in Las Vegas who do not have family nearby, a close circle of friends from years worked here, they may be destined for lives which slip into inertia towards decrepitude. As I’ve written elsewhere earlier, to be a Las Vegas retiree it’s best to have worked here first. The superannuated who relocate from other places, after the initial excitement of living in Las Vegas fades, those people become adrift for the most part.

No way I wanted that.

I thought midweek activity would keep me vibrant. And it did. Until the obvious could no longer be denied.

Visitation has declined. The main attractions on the Strip have chucked this place being a value destination. Now, price points rule. Profits were once predicated on volume. Today, what Las Vegas Boulevard address doesn’t gouge patrons from the moment any step onto the premises?

Residents, unless they’re entertaining out-of-towners, pretty much shun the Strip these days. With what’s being charged there, one should either be a conventioneer on an expense account or a visitor who’s budgeted appropriately.

Business is fallow. Were one fortunate enough to have been in the Big Mayberry before Covid during its “act dumb, be fat, and throw fistfuls of money nights,” a k a “the heyday,” and now, the difference is clear. Fewer people in town, in hotels, on the gaming floors, means less cash circulating. Good portions of workers dependent on Strip visitors are working longer to stay even – or not get farther behind.

In March 2024 whatever worries I entertained about the above ceased. Until I felt the decline in supplemental cash in my pocket. It became acute during the summer which wouldn’t end. This year August lasted until October.

My mindset about steadily pulling several days a week changed in late September. Some bonehead manager directed at me something which ought’ve ruffled a fulltime employee. An hourly or salaried person who needed a regular check in order to live life. This being Nevada, a “right to work” state, where “cause” is enough to get sacked for nothing, such a chastisement could be heard as chilling. It certainly could control.

I’m proud to state I retained enough discipline from telling that desk jockey to go fuck himself. Instead, I recalled what I promised myself in April – earning cumulative winnings of $200 or more prior Tuesdays through Thursdays would let me skip working the next week. Unfortunately, every time I cashed two yards or more I’d already promised someone I’d be available the next week.

Drat!

Tuesdays through Thursdays? Had to create a challenge. I became quickly aware cashing winners on these days harder than the other four.

But by the end of September, I’d had enough of my time being improperly compensated. No matter what I’d promised to whoever, if sports and/or horses came through for at least a total of $200 on those tough-to-win days I was gone the next week.

Well. The betting gods must’ve heard my bettor’s prayer. A few days into October I sat on enough to already skip the whole month. Then as October continued, I piled on more.

I’d set out to avoid inactivity. I’d seen what that introduced. Blister guts and dull eyes, descents into seediness. Each derives from a common Las Vegas malady – too much pill-poppin’ day drinking while blissing out at morning through early afternoon television reruns.

Afterwards, hoping for respite from the day’s dead-ending by going to a casino, the afflicted will plant him- or herself before a video poker machine. There, pensioner dollars will be mindlessly sacrificed towards the vain hope of striking a royal flush. Some of the further lost immobilized adherents of this routine will butt-light tree-bark smokes one after another as they steadily imbibe cocktails all through the hours of the nearly futile suit’s pursuit.

For me, October’s self-reinvention and self-repurposing have educated. Until March I was obliged and needed to be accountable to an employer. By April, I was only responsible for myself.

During the decades I must work, I grudged it sometimes. Now when I really mustn’t slave away, workplace aggravations can be dismissed. Way more cavalierly than during my fulltime working decades.

There were July, August, and September days when I decided it unnecessary to contend with whatever work might possibly have presented. So, I rolled over and slept later. Sometimes when I reached work, I occasionally stopped at the threshold then decided to turn heel and return home.

None of this was imaginable or possible when I needed to fulfill the goals of The Pretender.

But a worry remains. And yes, it is a worry. What might I do henceforth? Wonder if additional idle hours make me a more astute wagerer? Then how will I occupy myself? There are only so many hours one can watch episodes of The Wild Wild West.

Or maybe TV stations featuring old-time shows will save me and start broadcasting Mannix.