Semi-Retirement Is A Lifestyle, Not A Work Arrangement (Part One)
'Here comes the story of the Hurricane'
Today’s post is the first in what will be an ongoing series focused on lifestyle.
What is it exactly? And how do you go about securing the one you want at a reasonable price?
Over the weekend, it rained a lot in Spain. Particularly around Madrid and Valencia.
The weekend before last it rained a lot in California. Particularly around Los Angeles, which is where I live.
Of course, these are serious events. In Spain, at least three people died in flooding over the weekend. We sometimes see fatalities and other dangerous situations when it rains here in California.
In America, we tend to respond to inclement weather in two extreme ways:
We overreact.
We jokingly turn it into a social media hash tag or meme.
The “hurricane” that hit LA on that Sunday wasn’t actually a hurricane when it got here. We—the media, local/state government and, in lockstep, the people—decided to refer to it as a hurricane just to be dramatic. Because that’s what we have become. A bunch of overprotective, follow the crowd drama queens.
On the 75 and sunny Monday that followed the hurricane (which was actually 2-to-4 inches of rain and light wind across most of LA County), LA Unified closed schools. All of them. Like every single one. Not on a case-by-case basis. Across the board, let’s err on the side of caution type stuff. It appears, based on the one across the street from where I live, that private schools—as they typically do—took LA Unified’s cue and also closed.
Is this what we have become? We closed schools because it rained the day before. On the day of, the grocery store was packed. It reminded me of the pandemic’s early days. People stocking up on water, paper products, chips and beer. I mean people literally stop doing stuff around here simply because it’s raining. I don’t recall this ever being the case. Definitely not when I was a kid. And even in much more recent times.
Maybe the pandemic has something to do with it? While I despise conspiracy theorists and such, err on the side of caution and listen—in unison—to pointless and empty government directives wasn’t as much of a thing prior to 2020. I guess we just enjoy sitting inside, scrolling social media and reading the same post from 14,000 different people taking something that wasn’t bad at all (for 99.9% of people) and making it appear worse than it actually was.
While I don’t know precisely how the people responded in Spain—on the ground—from what I gather they took things in stride. It wasn’t top of the fold front page news (politics and the Women’s Soccer controversy still dominates). Instead, the rain made headlines in a much more mellow and less dramatic way. In other words, it wasn’t a melodramatic shitshow.
This quote, from a 42-year old Madrileño—in response to the Madrid Mayor asking people to “stay at home today”—sums this conversation up for me and provides a nice segue to our initial discussion on lifestyle.