I RETIRED FROM NASA (as Deputy Chief, KSC Education Office) at the end of 1996. I’ve now been retired more years than I worked for any one employer (the longest two, NASA 13, Boeing 11). And in some ways these so-called ‘Golden Years’ are indeed the best of my life. But there are also drawbacks and disappointments aplenty.

A few of the drawbacks can be attributed to the rapid pace of change in today’s world. (Ray Kurzweil, now chief developer of future programs at Google, is fond of pointing out that that not only is the world rapidly changing, the pace of change itself  has gotten faster.) Some of the disappointments, I like to think, derive from internal change, my personal maturation and growth. Books are a good example.

During my last twenty-five or so working years I accumulated a lot of books. Most went on the shelves with the expectation of reading after retirement, when I would have more time. My demanding job, a second family with two young daughters, and a driving need to devote all the spare hours I could find to free-lance writing limited my reading.

After retirement, as planned, I started pulling some of those waiting books off the shelves. And, time after time, discovered I couldn’t finish one. (I’ve become willing to abandon a book fairly quickly if it doesn’t grab me early and hold my interest.) Far too often, a novel that had looked interesting twenty years ago no longer held any appeal. This was particularly true in science fiction. I’m not going to mention names, but book after book I had anticipated enjoying, I no longer wanted to read. These varied from big names in the field to bright-future newcomers, but they shared one common characteristic. I found them boring.

The world of audio visual (AV) entertainment and information has been among the fastest changing industries in a fast-changing world. We went from LP vinyl to tape to CD to DVD to streaming AV (with of course a lot of overlaps) in just a few decades. And, as you might expect from Kurzweil’s observation, each major change happened with less time between than the one before. The amount of music, entertainment and education/information increased greatly along the way, with access to same gaining almost exponentially in so-called developing or undeveloped countries.

Today I have millions of songs instantly available from several streaming sources, a hundred-thousand movies offered by some of the same companies, and a million amateur but often quite good AV productions on YouTube and others; some free, others for relatively small monthly fees. I’ve pretty much stopped buying CDs and DVDs. Why should I, when I can reach any one I want from the streaming services to which I subscribe. The ‘Cloud’ is the new home entertainment center. And it’s cheaper by far than buying and building your own library.

From the time my father gave me my quarter allowance on Saturday, and I hitch-hiked to the only movie theater in the county, nine miles away on U.S. 90, I’ve loved movies. I paid a dime to get in, which bought me a western, a cartoon short, and usually a newsreel. The fifteen remaining cents (coke or popcorn was never even under consideration) left me with a choice. Buy a science fiction magazine from one of the stands at the two drugstores and depend on hitching a ride to get home, or ride the Greyhound bus for fifteen cents. The magazine always won, if a new one was available. And I never once walked the nine miles home. Someone always stopped for a preteen boy with his thumb out.

I wrote in an earlier blog post that most of us don’t appreciate how much our lives have improved, despite the fact the ‘middle-class’ hasn’t gotten a raise in thirty years. Today I can buy more good books than I have time to read, watch more movies (on a 60-in HD screen) than my eyes and butt can last through, and enjoy TV series where each episode is better than the movies I saw as a kid. (Not to mention a plethora of often fascinating popular science and informative documentary programs.) This richness of second-hand experience is part of makes these ‘golden years’ highly worthwhile—but also cuts into my reading time.

I don’t know how it goes with you, but I can truthfully say that preteen boy with his thumb out never dreamed that one day he would live such a rich and rewarding life. Perspective is all.

Image credit: Greenhouse Scribes © Joseph Green 2014