“Retirement.” A word I can hardly spell anymore, it seems so abstract and impossible – like a science-fiction concept from a tattered old novel. In the classic film Blade Runner, “retirement” is the term used to describe the brutal ritual of future cops executing rogue androids called replicants (which auto-correct just tried to turn into “Republicans” against my will, though maybe Google Docs has a Freudian slip function now).
The Blade Runner version of retirement strikes me as more feasible for modern humans – getting blasted by a jackbooted assassin with a phallic-looking blaster – than the traditional process. Actual retirement – cocktails on the beach in between golf games – is as distant as the farthest known star. As glamorous as my life must seem to you, dear reader, it is not that at all. Like most creative types who never bothered to learn to code, I scrape by every month, white-knuckling until the next heaven-sent direct deposit.
