I have worked part-time essentially my entire life, but now that I’m sixty-nine years old, I like to say that my status has switched from underemployed to semiretired. Over the years my working hours have gradually decreased from twenty, to fifteen, to roughly twelve a week.
You might be asking: What can I, a disoriented, semiretired, semi-unknown poet, tell you about business? You’d be surprised.
In life you must choose: Do you want money, or do you want time? As you can tell from the opening of this piece, I have chosen time. When I flunked out of Cornell University in 1973, I had very few desires. Rent was cheap in Gainesville, Florida. The highest I paid was fifty dollars a month. I cooked my own food, mostly grains and beans, which were also cheap: a pound of brown rice cost thirty-nine cents. I never bought clothes. I didn’t have a car. In fact, I didn’t know how to drive.
