yesterday's buds of tomorrow

[fflo]

From yesterday, on the way out of the office. Just about to burst with it, aren't they?


In yesterday's mail was one of those This Is Your Life in "Earnings" things the Social Security Administration sends out. You know the things I mean, right? Shows you in a little list how much money you made in every year you earned money that had Social Security taken out of it?

I used to look at the thing and think how little money I've made, through the years, and maybe feel a bit like a fuck-up, or have crop up some of those worries of it all catching up with me, having not been Responsible. Look, here's the evidence of one major version of that in digits in type in a couple of inches of a column of a sheet of paper totalling up all that I have officially earned.

This time it seemed all about ebbs and flows. My first year of income was a 3-digit figure (before the decimal). It's gone up to as many as 5, but not been steadily there through my adulthood.

Yesterday before I went in to the duck drama I sat in the car looking at the curve the changing lengths made, and noting the corresponding years, thinking about what was happening in the rest of my life (there is life apart from earnings, I maintain) as the numbers went up or down.

Don't guess I'm going to get to quit working and go driving around the country again. Those were the best of times & the worst of times.

But I might well have more best of times and worst of times.

One can hope.

Anybody have feelings about those statements? I realize I've never talked about them with anyone other than a co-habitating partner.

Comments

[kohkae.livejournal.com]

I think of what I was doing in the corresponding years and I see the recent valleys with a little shame - mainly that I felt lost...hopefully that will improve.

M's statements are kind of funny...since she has railroad retirement instead of SS, it looks like she hasn't earned anything most of her working career. The RR retirement board sends a somewhat similar statement, but doesn't really break it out the same way. When those come you kind of say "Yikes!" about all the extra money she's had to put in above and beyond SS.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Wanna say somehow that shame is a shame. That shame is shame, and shame in general is a shame. Though I do relate to feeling susceptible to that black-and-white measure of one's worth as a good wage earner.

Every year at tax time I wonder about that railroad benefits thing. I always figure there was some exception when SS was set up for railroad workers, who, what, maybe had it better? Or were getting screwed more?