56. Handing Over the Baton

As of next month, I am officially retired. I haven’t really contributed towards the financial growth of our society for almost a year now. Unless you count spending a ton of money on my boat. But I have just instructed the company that holds my pension to start paying out early. To me that is a statement. I’m no longer playing. I can sit courtside and comment on how well the next generation of players do. Be the crazy uncle at the Christmas table if you like. But before that, I think that it would be fair to admit that when the rest of my generation hand over the baton in a decade or so, we are not likely to leave a table set for the next one. With the return of a cold war and an actual real one in Europe, inflation that will eat my fixed income quicker than Saoirse, soaring defence budgets, mass migration, pandemics and climate change it doesn’t feel like this place will be in better shape than when we found it. I’m not sure I will be in any position to judge the next generation. Not that that will stop me though.

But in addition to monitoring the next generation of planetary caretakers, I hope to be able to spend at least fifteen years or so sailing around the world. And in doing so, learn how to dive, explore remote islands and atolls that are still above sea level, learn more about weather patterns and get better at writing about things that interest me. I also want to leave smaller footprints and clean up after me and others as I go. For that, I will need guidance from the next generation. They seem better at that than me and my peers.