A brief overview would look like this:
- Born in the late 1950s
- Raised in the 1960s
- Adolescence and nascent adulthood in the 1970s
- Created my own family in the 1980s
- Battled partner’s mental illness in the 1990s
- Re-educated but marooned from the workforce in the 2000s
- Chasing the ever-shifting goal of retirement in the 2010s
- Keeping it real in the 2020s
As an individual of my time, other unrelated people with Dickensian world views decided what I could or could not study limiting my lifelong career path. Parental Leave, or any kind of deviation from a continuous uninterrupted career path, was not an option in even in the permanent public service position I held.
As an individual of my time, I became a sole parent and primary income earner for my family when violence threatened my life and the lives of my children.
As an individual of my time, I have no superannuation, no life savings, and my retirement age continues to move further away. Too old to be employable at 40 because most men my age could retire at 55, not likely to catch up to retirement until 70 or 75 years of age, I will have spent 55 years of my working life too young to be taken seriously and 35 years too old to be worth investing in.
I am a crafter, crofter, writer, family historian, feminazi, technophile, agitator, and a harbinger. I was born to challenge.
Fortunately, I have a sense of humour and don’t take myself too seriously.
CJ …