often to out of the way places where nary a tourist was to be found.

I liked it for a while. After the first 12-15 years it got increasingly tedious.
One of my primary motivations to retire (after, of course, having enough savings) was to quit traveling.
I'm "traveled out".

I liked having summers off and a long break at Christmas. I say "liked" because this spring semester will be my last before retirement. I have also been fortunate to have made many friends at work through the years.

do creative things. Best of luck , artielib. You will miss it. But after 43 years. I remember the fun, the kids, and the classroom

Retired mortician

I was a Medical Materiel (yes, that is spelled correctly) specialist during my 28-year AF career. The thing I liked was it was the different sections and jobs. Our job was to purchase, receive, store, issue, inventory the medical, nonmedical, and pharmaceutical supplies and equipment to Air Force hospitals and clinics. In addition, we built, maintained, and deployed air transportable field hospitals (think M*A*S*H) and clinics. It was also our job to interact with just about every flight on the base by providing first aid kit support, coordinate with aerospace ground equipment for generator support for the field hospitals and clinics, base supply, base contracting, base finance, etc.. One day I could be ordering supplies and the next day I'd be outside operating a 10K forklift positioning air craft pallets so we could set up our field hospital for an exercise. I could be issuing controlled substances (narcotics) to the pharmacy, inventorying medical equipment throughout the hospital/clinic, determining what our stock levels for each item in our warehouse should be, or running our computer processing for an end-of-the-day reconciliation and distributing computer printouts to their users.

I've been retired for 20 years and I while I enjoyed my work I don't miss it.

of our soldiers. I thank you for the lives your saved by being on top of everything. You were a part of the medical team. Thank you

I'm always learning something or sometimes learning new "tricks".

One time I had a dementia client and I couldn't get this client up and moving to stay active. I discovered that this particular client was food motivated. I ended up using food to get them up and moving. My current client believes that people get shingles by not showering and that trickery was planted from the other caregiver but I still use it.


I like knowing that that my client has ate a meal that I prepped, that they have clean laundry or clean dishes available, that I've sanitized high touch areas in their home, or whatever else needs to be done or that they need that day.


An extra bonus: I have flexibility with work hours and I generally don't work weekends. I am working tomorrow but the pay will be extra but normally I don't work weekends.

that.

I just think of myself in their situation frequently.

You must also encounter dementia patients who are aggressive/violent at times, no? Or maybe individuals at that level are screened out due to risk?

That would be extremely difficult to deal with!

I was visiting a care home one time and one of the residents made it into the lobby. One of the care workers was trying to persuade the client to return to his room upstairs. The man slapped the care worker across the face. The situation eventually got resolved without any further harm, fortunately.

I approached the care worker and told him that I admired how he kept his cool despite the assault.

He said, "I blame his condition, I don't blame the person."

Very understanding, but still a tough environment at times.

So far my dementia clients have been extremely sweet and generous. Sometimes I think the ones that are aggressive or violent tend to be in facilities.

I don't believe that the company that I work for would tolerate aggression or violence with either clients or caregivers.


I do encounter bowel issues, a long list of grievances, looking for items repeatedly and objects that they believe are to be person who isn't there.

One day it got to be intolerable for me about the grievances that I ended up leaving a little early. I let my boss know why and when I left. It was amplified that day and I couldn't take it anymore.

I wouldn't wish dementia on anyone. It's awful.

It hasn't affected many relatives, but my wife's step-father (her mom remarried almost 25 years ago) has been in steady decline for close to a decade. He's been unable to communicate for about a year and a half. Recently, he stopped eating and the doctor said his liver is shutting down. He's not expected to have much time left.

My wife's mom and step-father are both in the same facility but in different sections (he's in the dementia wing, of course). Despite being so close, they only get to see each other for less than an hour a few days a week, but Covid outbreaks or the spreading of the flu or other illnesses can limit that.

It's been a rough time for them.

she was 97 so she had a long good life.


I certainly hope that your wife's step-father crosses gently when that moment arrives.


It's a rough time for those family members that have to watch them have a rough time for sure.

...university faculty enjoy, although that was already eroding by my time.

I reported directly to big shots. (one at a time over the years), who didn't really know how we did what we did, and didn't care that they didn't understand. They just knew we made or saved around 12x what we cost the company year after year.
So, I reported to someone but we planned our own work & did things our way. (Admittedly, it was mostly my way, since I ran the department. )
Being that independent in a corporate environment is pretty cool.

to be able to do that within a corporation

I loved teaching! I always felt so fortunate that I spent my days among children. There was so much joy in each day. It really was the ideal job for raising my kids having the same holidays and breaks as they did. I live in the same small town where I taught, so it is delightful when I get to see some of my students, grown now, with families of their own.

...with first time parents and newborn and young babies.

There's so much to learn when you are a new parent, and I love to teach about babies - normal variations in appearance, in behavior, when to worry and when not to, etc, etc, etc. Most first time parents don't know much about new babies, and are scared about everything - hiccups, sneezing, the pulsating of the soft spot, puke that comes out the nose as well as the mouth, the umbilical cord stump - so they are very eager learners.

I retired in on March 31st, 2021. I've kept in touch with one mom with whom I developed a real friendship above and beyond our professional relationship. She has 3 daughters and one son (her youngest). The oldest daughter is now a college junior. In our most recent text exchange, this mom thanked me, yet again, for all the ways she felt I had supported her during her travels thru motherhood and said, "I carry you with me always."

That single sentence validates my whole career, and I cherish this statement.

I especially liked the research, the reading, the reasoning, the writing, the persuading, the winning.

and have forgotten more than I ever knew as a practitioner.

I worked in mortgages for 12 years before making a change to civil service with the city of Philadelphia a year and a half ago. The mortgage industry was pretty thankless, soul sucking work in my opinion, with very little stability.

As rates began to climb, there were mass layoffs and after 6 months I received an offer from the city as well as Habitat For Humanity. It was a very difficult choice, but, I took the city job and I love it. The pay is definitely lower, but, stress level is drastically reduced which has really enhanced my quality of life. I get great health benefits, educational benefits, a pension that I can hopefully rely on with my private retirement savings in the future, and generous time off. I should have switched to civil service a long time ago. For me, the private sector money was just no longer worth it.

have gotten better pay. But there was less stress and the bennies were better. Good luck on your current job. Having less stress is a great benefit,

Kudos to your amazing husband.

The farm always felt like the center of the universe. People came to you and there was little need to go anywhere else. There were so many things I loved about it. Working outdoors, constantly changing challenges, the sense of being part of something larger than yourself, the cooperative community...

My walk to work took me through a block of apricot trees, a dozen or so varieties. That's my idea of breakfast, right off of the tree. One part of my job was walking the orchard checking for ripeness; tart cherries (Montmorency), a dozen varieties of dark sweet cherries, a few light sweet cherry varieties, the apricots, Red Haven peaches, Bosc and Bartlett pears, a few plum varieties, nectarines, berries, a couple dozen apple varieties (Northern Spy and Mutsu especially). What a feast. Sweet corn, all kinds of squash, various greens, too.

To get tomatoes, melons, and potatoes, which don't do well this far north, we traded fruit with a grower a couple hundred miles to the south. I loved that run. Leave at dawn with a truck loaded down with cherries, get back at dusk with a truck loaded down with tomatoes. Each grower tried to out do the other with the best quality and quantity and no money changed hands. Capitalism? What's that?

There were a couple of brothers from Georgia who ran back and north bringing us Vidalia onions and taking back cherries. There were a couple of Italian grocery guys from New York who bought container loads of cherries for markets in NYC. One of the brothers would drive all night (800 miles) to inspect the load and pay for it with a stack of one hundred dollar bills.

Then there is the harvest bonfire with growers from far and wide, an ancient tradition; listening to the stories from the old timers over coffee around the stove in the winter. I remember one of them, long gone now, talking about driving apples to the rail head in a mule drawn wagon. The mules are gone now, and so is the railroad line. "They paved paradise, and they put up a parking lot." (Actually, a WalMart.)

It was great to see the whole cycle. Picking up lugs of fruit in the orchard in the afternoon, cooling them down and then loading the truck, leaving at dusk to get to the distribution center by midnight. There, trucks would be coming from farms all over the state and transferring produce to the semis for delivery to supermarkets. We'd get back at dawn and set the lugs back out in the orchard. Sometimes I would call one of the supermarkets in Chicago, pose as a customer and ask for the produce department. "Do you have fresh cherries from Michigan?" and "how do they look?" It was great to hear "they look great and they're flying out of here. Don't wait if you want to get some." Tree to table in less than 24 hours.

I like the ethics of the farm I worked for. "No one in this county goes hungry so long as we are farming" was one. "We are the employer of last resort, for those who need a fresh start or a second chance" was another.

The down side? $16,000 a year and 60% of your neighbors vote Republican.

are wonderful

I was a receptionist for several years; I had great coworkers who made the day bearable.