Closure

[BUM]

Closure is important to me. When I "move on" I want to really move on. For example during the 80's and 90's my work required IBM type pin stripes. When I left for the healthcare industry the new wardrobe was scrubs. So one Saturday morning I hauled all my white shirts and most of my ties and an arm load of suits into the back yard. Made a nice pile, added a tiny bit of gasoline and FOOOOOOM! Thats closure!

Twelve years later I've got an even bigger pile of hospital scrubs and lab coats. So when I ER'd in Jan. it was too cold and snowy to fool around outside. But come Father's Day....heh, heh, heh.

How do "move on", dramatically or just simply turn the page?


BUM

 

[Mountain_Mike]

Bum,

I thought about the "moving on" thing, too, and how it would affect my wardrobe. I plan to throw out all suits, dress shirts, 90% of ties. I may keep one sportcoat for weddings & funerals. I plan to live in shorts, jeans, and T-shirts.

I had consiered something more prosaic like giving my old stuff to the Goodwill...but the bonfire has a certain appeal

 

[unclemick]

At 12 yrs into ER - I have one suit for the aforementioned weddings/funerals - have developed a real fondness for Dickies jumpsuits/coveralls(5 or six) and have Aloha shirts and shorts for my Jimmy Buffett dress up occasions. Don't like flip/flops though - canvas deck shoes or penny loafers.

White fisherman's boots for wet days.

 

[haha]

Closure is important to me. When I "move on" I want to really move on. For example during the 80's and 90's my work required IBM type pin stripes. When I left for the healthcare industry the new wardrobe was scrubs. So one Saturday morning I hauled all my white shirts and most of my ties and an arm load of suits into the back yard. Made a nice pile, added a tiny bit of gasoline and FOOOOOOM! Thats closure!

Twelve years later I've got an even bigger pile of hospital scrubs and lab coats. So when I ER'd in Jan.  it was too cold and snowy to fool around  outside. But come Father's Day....heh, heh, heh.

How do "move on", dramatically or just simply turn the page?BUM

I did the same when I moved from New England to Venice Beach. I decided that whatever happened in the future, it wouldn't need three piece suits. I too had a  fire.

BTW, most medical jobs that require scrub-suits are heavy technique jobs. How did you go from hands off (suits) to hands-on in medicine?

Haha

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Got cats?

Got a cat box?

Looks like several years of cat box liners to me...

 

[Nords]

Bum,

I thought about the "moving on" thing, too, and how it would affect my wardrobe.  I plan to throw out all suits, dress shirts, 90% of ties. I may keep one sportcoat for weddings & funerals.  I plan to live in shorts, jeans, and T-shirts.

I had consiered something more prosaic like giving my old stuff to the Goodwill...but the bonfire has a certain appeal

I kept one set of each uniform in plastic zipper bags. I also kept a blue blazer with gray slacks & blue pinstripe shirt and a pair of black loafers. None of it's been worn for over three years.

I also have two pairs of jeans, neither worn in over three years. The black denims & the blue slacks get worn with aloha shirts a couple times a year, sometimes even with socks...

You don't get a tax deduction for a bonfire!

 

[lets-retire]

My retirement ceremony will include a large sledge hammer and an alarm clock.

 

[BUM]

Yes a wardrobe bonfire is certainly far from prosaic. But for me its a good way to cast out the deamons. Work bad. ER good.

 

[OldAgePensioner]

I would like to do the wardrobe bonfire but building a bonfire in downtown Chicago could get me arrested. If I could only claim that a cow caused the fire! Nah, that already been used.

I retired 1-May and cannot for the life of me find closure. I need something dramatic.

 

[P.S.]

There is a women's organization that takes business clothes donations and redistributes the suits to women attempting to get off welfare who require suits to interview, etc. Maybe there is a similar organization for men?

 

[Martha]

PS--there is an organization in my town that collects work clothes that are given away to both men and women looking for jobs. Once a year my firm collects clothes and delivers them there. That is where my stuff is going to go. Kind of like passing the torch.

Pensioner--I am thinking that dramatic closure isn't what you need. It sounds like you are adjusting to too many changes all at once--retiring and moving to Chicago. How about going to a local university and asking if they have a student who wants your books on celestial mechanics? How about yoga classes or something to meet new people?

 

[OldAgePensioner]

Martha,
I think you've nailed it.  I can actually feel the stress of trying to do all this at once.


Thanks for your suggestion on the books.  The collection is priceless.  Most of the books can't be had these days but to me they are now useless and I would love for some young astrodynamicist to inherit them.  Good idea.


I'm reading Don Quixote between posts and I've been laughing so hard that my lady friend thinks I'm losing it. 

If any of you want to read a great book that will keep you on the edge of your seat wonderring what he will do next, this is it.

 

[TromboneAl]

Don Quixote

Thanks for the tip. Just put it on hold at the library.

I'm wearing an office shirt for the first time in years (my daughter's HS graduation is in a hour). Boy that tie feels weird!

 

[OldAgePensioner]

TromeboneAl, I just finished listening to "School Days, live at the Greek" with Stanley Clarke and Mr. Billy Cobham. Both of whom I've seen in person and respect as the best at what they do. Awesome.

Also, just read a chapter where the knight-errant Don Quixote ( a bit tetched in the head) stops a farmer from beating a field hand. The field hand implores Quixote to take him away from this as the farmer will beat him worse when he leaves. Quixote says something like "he will not because he knows that I will return". When Quixote moves on the farmer beats the kid senseless. But, Quixote rides off with confidence that his deed was done.

FABULOUS BOOK.

 

[brewer12345]

OAP, if you like Don Quixote, get a copy of "The Good Soldier Svejk" by Hasek. I have reread it several times, but I still nearly wet myself laughing at it. It is a classic of Czech literature written by a man who was a rapscallion and a drunk.

 

[OldAgePensioner]

brewer12345,
I love those kind of novels.  Thanks for the recommendation.  Sounds good.

I'm at the point in Don Quixote where he has his ear half cut off but prefers to ignore it.  But the goatherder puts a curative herbal poltice on it.  Sancho Panza is a real crackup.  Great sense of humor.

EDIT: The more great works that I read/view, I realize that most writers had issues. Toulouse had way too many glasses of absinthe. I drank exactly one glass from a bottle that I paid $75 for and I gave the bottle away. Cannot imagine anyone enjoying absinthe.

 

[LakeRat]

I wore a pager for 26 years. Every so often I found myself on call for a week at the time. The pager stayed on 24 hours a day during that time. The thing went off several times a night to tell me such wonderful things as there was a thunderstorm warning in an adjacent county or a wreck on a freeway 50 miles away. I actually found out how much it would cost me if I took a hammer to it when I left. I decided that it wasn't work it and gave it back with great pleasure. I also would have loved to make dust of the alarm clock that woke me every morning at 4AM. The clothes went to Goodwill.

 

[Nords]

As far as closure goes, OAP, just give it time.  Some people put great significance into the ceremonial pomp & circumstance (or at least their families do) but I couldn't see the point of having to get dressed up in uncomfortable clothes and hang out with people that I didn't care to be around.  My friends & I took care of business over a few lunches & BBQs (all on company time, of course).

I wore a pager for 26 years.  Every so often I found myself on call for a week at the time.  The pager stayed on 24 hours a day during that time. The thing went off several times a night to tell me such wonderful things as there was a thunderstorm warning in an adjacent county or a wreck on a freeway  50 miles away. I actually found out how much it would cost me if I took a hammer to it when I left. I decided that it wasn't work it and gave it back with great pleasure.  I also would have loved to make dust of the alarm clock that woke me every morning at 4AM.  The clothes went to Goodwill.

I love the Corona commercial where the guy's skipping shells into the lagoon and his pager (on vibrate) starts jumping around on the table.  I think it skipped six or seven times.

Every time my wife's pager went off I'd get this look in my eye.  But at least she stopped taking it to the beach...

 

[OldAgePensioner]

Nords,
I think leaving the N. Yorks moors has me whipped. I felt needed, the mission was important and now I have to find something to do. Tough one.

Although, come to think of it, I'm not smelling anything like the early summer sheep slurry that filled the air. Today in Chicago could not be more perfect.

 

[HFWR]

Saw Stanley Clarke, Jean-Luc Ponty, and Al DiMeola a few years back at Caravan of Dreams in Ft. Worth - God, I miss that place. Think living room...

Saw Billy Cobham in Poor David's Pub in Dallas, mid-90s. Very small room, and I had good seats. Coulda reached over and helped on drums, not that he needed any!

 

[OldAgePensioner]

Have Funds,
Man, I'd pay excellent money to have been there with ya. Billy Cobham used to come by the recording studio on Sycamore Ave in LA and he'd have drumsticks the size of small baseball bats. The guy could play.

The clubs you mention remind me of the underground scene in LA in the 70's. We'd close the doors at midnight and play till dawn.

 

[BUM]

EDIT: The more great works that I read/view, I realize that most writers had issues. Toulouse had way too many glasses of absinthe. I drank exactly one glass from a bottle that I paid $75 for and I gave the bottle away. Cannot imagine anyone enjoying absinthe.

OAP,

Your ticklin' brain cells I'd thought long dead. I had an english professor who was deep into old english verse and the absinthe. I'm guessing the $75 bottle was the commercial Logan Fils not the $200+ stuff that Hemmingway nearly killed himself with. Anyway we would drink this heady crap and of course the more you drink the better it tastes then the prof would read aloud by the fireside in the most wonderful old english style and accent:
As I was walking all alane
I heard twa corbies makin' a mane

Twa Corbies still gives me goosebumps. I went down that highway for a while. Thank god I got off at the first exit ramp



Anyway, OAP thanks for the memories.


BUM

 

[OldAgePensioner]

BUM,
No worries mate. Absinthe was banned from England since like 1890 or something. I got a bottle of HILLs in Prague and brought it home. I drank it with ice water and sugar. Quite a buzz, but it tasted like Nyquil.

I had a Middle Eastern history teacher who would invite a few of us to his office and serve us Turkish coffee and tell us stories about his travels in Syria. We would listen like children hearing a Pooh story. I enjoyed that time way more than the actual class.

 

[BUM]

Yep, me too. Just like having someone read you a bedtime story. The setting (visual) I think is as important as the words(sounds) and the coffee or whatever (tastes) all put together and POW! A feeling that lasts forever. I'd like to pass that along somehow.

 

[Kitty]

When I leave my job(in about a year) I have to turn in most of my gear my badge,gun, ammo, handcuffs, credentials, radio, bullet resistant vest, lap top, PDA ,cell phone, pepper spray and anyother gov. equipment that is on my records. My badge gets sent to be imbeded in lucite (at my cost of course) The final day I turn in my keys, passes to restricted areas, and I am dropped from the computer system, I should get a plaque and letter from the Commissioner; and if they haven't run out of them a fake gold watch with the gov. seal on it. If I am still in the good grace of the org. I will get a luncheon of fried chicken salad and cookies for dessert; oh yes I might get one of two things a framed poster of the building or six highball glasses with the building etched on them.
If things run true to course they will lose my badge, the watch won't work for more than a week and my retirement check won't get deposited on time or in the right account. Sigh  :-/

I want to take a hammer to the cell phone but they won't let me.
Kitty