Sandy Evoy Musings

Hello loyal "Class of 63" blog fans, no matter how small your numbers. Please accept my apologies for being so lax in my committment to blogging but I hit a wall a couple of weeks ago. It was mostly precipitated by the stories and pictures of the suffering in Haiti. Somehow my whining about relevance seemed very self absorbed when people were literally pulling themselves up out of horrific situations. Although there is certainly much to do, I think I have done anything that is in my power so I'm going to try to return to my committment to writing in this forum.

After over 30 years in the software industry I have been tearing my hair out trying to set up a wireless network in my house, consequently (although I promised myself to write everyday) no posts since Sunday. I once had to scrawl I SURRENDER across an IRS demand for money that I was sure I didn't owe (as it turned out I didn't owe it but the note got their attention and ultimately resolved the issue). Now my response the Belkin router company and all of the Indian cutomer service agents that they employ is again I SURRENDER. It works and then it stops and their customer service people have had me update all my systems software (because of course it couldn't be them). So, I SURRENDER, and tomorrow the device goes back to Staples. Believe or not that rant goes to the issue at hand, I feel as if I should be able to solve this problem, I'm not technologically stupid but I have been left behind in my field. Obviously this will become more and more of an issue to me as I...

On a lighter note, I don't want to complain when some of you are facing single digit wind chill but it is very cold in FL also.....before you sneer at me we are facing the possibility of a FREEZE tonight. Anyway, the weather sent us running inside today. We chose to go to the movies and saw "it's complicated". We both were thoroughly pleased. Alec Baldwin was very good in the madcap comedic role, Meryl Streep was wonderful as always and believe or not Steve Martin played the straight man. Last week, when it was cold, we saw Invictus. It's hard to imagine so much forgiveness in one person. Again we were satisfied. "Up in the Air" however left us cold. We were thoroughly enjoying the movie and then the end hit as cold as the blast of air outside. It wasn't the kind of emptiness that causes discussion, it was just emptiness, as if they forgot something. Perhaps that was what they were going for.

2010, 65, our traditional retirement age. What next? For those of us who were always running to finish the next degree, find the next job, get the next promotion, make more money, the prospect is very frightening. What will we do? Play golf? Volunteer? Participate in the activities we never had time to? Travel? Enjoy/help the family? Most of all, how do we remain relevant and feel relevant? Recently I watched an interview Syrius XM CEO, Mel Karmazin who said that he didn't know how to "not work". Exactly... but now what? As a middle class, middle manager my options are not as exciting as Mel's. In watching my peers, my observation is that retired civil service, teachers, state workers, police officers etc seem to be the most content in retirement. Is this true? If so, can anyone explain this?

Almost 47 years, how is that possible? We led the boomers and are taking the heat for the excesses but how many other generations have seen and led the way to the changes we have. We lost our youthful optimism on Novemeber 22, cried when our friends were killed in Viet Nam and students were beaten by Chicago police, were proud when men stepped on the moon and cheered when Nixon resigned. We fought long and hard to upend norms concerning our roles as women, worked long hours to achieve in the corporate world and now worry that we cheated our children by the time we spent on that fight. I was born the day Hiroshima was decimated and like most things in my memory the arguments continue as to whether that saved lives or was a massacre. I guess that reflects the biggest difference between that person on graduation day and me today, then everything was black and white, wrong or right, now I see grays everywhere. Almost nothing is as it seemed on graduation day when it seemed as if we h...