The third act of a life

To my followers and friends, virtual, intimate and otherwise:

I am providing a statement regard my intentions over the next few years. This is important to me and is not something I intend to explain repeatedly. Especially considering there isn’t much to tell at present, so much is in the air.

Those of you who have read more carefully then I intended are almost certainly aware that I’ve been miserable living in the Austin Texas region for about 10 years. The fundamental plan is to leave Austin and to make something of a life for myself elsewhere.

The major complicating factor is that the only thing anyone has consistently paid me to do over the last 30 years is a business which quickly becoming obsolete. Due to the quality of medical care available, wholly differentiated from medical insurance, my health is deteriorating quickly and I must prepare to be retired whether I like it or not, and on Social Security for which I will be eligible in a mere 15 years. If my heart, the metaphorical one, holds out.

I may or may not have access to a still largely mysterious piece of property in eastern Kentucky under which I may build or perhaps move a home. In this event I would resettle there and attempt to take several months or perhaps even a year away from most human activity. To be honest it would not be that different from my experience of life today, only much further from the Interstate and with fewer people for me to get in the way.

Other options include property outside my native Commonwealth, perhaps buying a run-down house in a certain manically gentrifying neighborhood back home, or doing the thing I was apparently born and raised to do. The true objective is to procure property outright and build or have something of an especially modest habitable structure upon it. If I do this with caution, I may have a couple of years, if you will forgive this coining of a phrase, to Walden. This must be done at a literal financial cost which many would say is implausible, but I know differently. I am simply willing to be more remote than most people.

This strategy has evolved from a mere fantasy, to something I chat about in the abstract to something I must pursue all in about three years. Please understand this is my alternative to suicide. I can be brash as I have no more to lose except my own heart.

For those of you keeping score I will miss the extraordinary convenience stores of Texas and I will miss H-E-B. There is nothing else which survives of any particular interest to me, save a few precious hardy souls. I will miss my present workplace, perhaps the only shop of its kind left where people care about the product and one another. This old-fashioned attitude will be adjusted in time.

To the extent I have deadlines I wish to be fully situated in the new thing by June 2018. This is the month which includes my 50th birthday. If anyone has excellent tips on very low price, high volume wireless internet I would be pleased to entertain your offer. I am entertaining options along these lines. I shall be dependant upon the expertise of several of you as I have been all of these years.

Stan W. Baker,

Georgetown Texas