Today is my birthday. I am 75 years old. I am not retired, I really don't even think about it anymore. Years ago I thought that retirement was something to look forward too. Spending my days sitting with friends and relatives and playing golf and cards and what have you. That was a long time ago, when I worked my ass off and tried to save money and accumulate wealth because that's what we Americans strove for.
Now I am still working. 75 years old and still working. I do not have to worry about my retirement because there is no such thing. It must have been 15 years ago that PONY abolished the status 'Retired' from her citizens. I was only 60 then and still in good shape. I was happy that the Council had created not only a clever way to support people who could no longer physically contribute, but also that it separated us further from the defunct practices of the United States.
So I will celebrate with my wife tonight with my favorite thing, birthday cake. New York has been my home since 2004, I met and married Shana here in 2005 and lived with her through the secession and formation of our new homeland. It was an unbelieveable time. It makes me, the history buff, think of the Revolution in 1776. How those people walked the streets of New York every day as so much was changing.
I do understand now that even though the map has been redrawn and peace reigns for the last 18 years, things did move much slower that we all thought. Now I research the details of the formation of the Principality of New York. I was there, every day, watching and reading, but I need to study it now in my old age, for it is intertwined with my very existance.
As I have grown older, it has become clear that is what make a life worth living, to review and revel in the past. The present is so wrought with indecisiveness and hasty emotional angst or bliss. I have to think about things like how the United States crumbled under its own weight in 2013. How Pacifica was the first to take matters into their own hands. How the international community said nothing when California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington and Las Vegas seceded from the Union. How the federal government could do nothing and how Pacifica joined the world community with rapid acceptance and forethinking ideals. I lived through that too.
They were first, and then New York City took the plunge 2 years later when the depression hit. I remember being in risk of losing the apartment and everything. Then the council stepped in and asked "Why are we letting the state and federal governments throw us an anchor when we are drowning?"
My father, before he passed away, asked me why I live in PONY. He still lived in the US, Boston to be exact. My answer to him was always the same. "Because I am part of its founding generation. I was here at the beginning, during the riots, during the second terrorist attacks of 2009. I choked on the radiation, I feared for my life and I made my pact with the Council. I do not live in New York, it lives in me!"