Are You Subject Matter for This Book and Retirement?

I recently came across the Amazon listing for "Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America" because the Amazon page for The Joy of Not Working gives a list of the books that cite it.

Here is the publisher's description for the book:

"Couch potatoes, goof-offs, freeloaders, good-for-nothings, loafers, and loungers: ever since the Industrial Revolution, when the work ethic as we know it was formed, there has been a chorus of slackers ridiculing and lampooning the pretensions of hardworking respectability. Reviled by many, heroes to others, these layabouts stretch and yawn while the rest of society worries and sweats. Whenever the world of labor changes in significant ways, the pulpits, politicians, and pedagogues ring with exhortations of the value of work, and the slackers answer with a strenuous call of their own: “To do nothing,” as Oscar Wilde said, “is the most difficult thing in the world.” From Benjamin Franklin’s “air baths” to Jack Kerouac’s “dharma bums,” Generation-X slackers, and beyond, anti-work-ethic proponents have held a central place in modern culture. Moving with verve and wit through a series of fascinating case studies that illuminate the changing place of leisure in the American republic, Doing Nothing revises the way we understand slackers and work itself."

I am curious if anyone else here would admit to being subject matter for this book as well.

If you are, you are likely a great candidate for early retirement and living a life of leisure.

Here are some retirement quotations and other inspirational quotes to put leisure and retirement in proper perspective.

"It was such a pleasant morning that I thought it would be a pity to get up."
— Somerset Maugham

"How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years
gotten enough to eat and escaped being eaten?"
— Logan Pearsall Smith

"He that lives upon hope will die fasting."
— Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth

"How lovely it is to do nothing all day and then to rest afterwards."
— Spanish Proverb

Free E-book about Work to Be Translated Into Kurdish

It's amazing the things that happen when you post free e-books on the Internet.

I received this e-mail the other day about my free e-book 1001 Best Things Ever Said about Work (and the Workplace) :

----- Original Message -----
From: abubakr abdulla
To: ez-books (at) telus (dot) net
Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 12:39 AM
Subject: hi

Mr. Ernie J. Zelinski
iam abubakr from iraq
i wont to published you book (1001 best things ever said about work) by KURDSIH language.
Kurdsh People life in North of Iraq.
are you agree...
thank you for agreement
i wait for your answer.
good day

abubakr
Erbil - kurdistan - Iraq

For the record I gave this guy permission to publish the e-book given that it is a book of inspirational quotes and funny quotations.

This e-book is available at:

Free E-books at The Joy of Not Working

Free E-books at The Real Career Success Center

This free E-book in PDF format is the ultimate book of quotations about work for the professional speaker, journalist, author, career advisor, life coach, and connoisseur of great quotations. It also makes great reading for just about everyone.

Refer to the Table of Contents and you will see that this E-book is organized into over 125 subjects and categories for easy reference.

What's more, all you have to do is place your cursor on the category and you will taken to the respective page for the category.

Partial Table of Contents of Subject Areas

• Ability
• Accomplishing the Impossible
• Action
• Aggravations of Work Ambition
• Bad Days at Work
• Boring Work
• Bureaucracy
• Busyness
• Careers
• Career Advice
• Change in the Workplace
• Committees
• Dating People at Work
• Delegation

You can place 1001 Best Things Ever Said about Work (and the Workplace) on your website as an important retirement resource.

Retirement Planning on a Low Income — Retirement Life Can Still Be Fun!

There is a lot of misinformation coming from financial institutions and the media about how retired people with low incomes can't have much enjoyment in retirement. Perhaps these "experts" on retirement should check out some research performed by Claritas, the organization that classifies American neighborhoods demographically for marketing purposes.

One of the groups classified according to the Claritas PRIZM system is called the Hometown Retired. There are just over 1,200,000 Hometown Retired households (1.11%) in the U.S. They have an annual household median income of only $26,000, much lower than the national median income. Almost a third of these households are renters. If they own their own homes, their houses are aging – half were built before 1958. The value of their houses or condos is a far cry from the national median value of houses and condos.

Because most never made it beyond high school and spent their working lives at blue-collar jobs, Hometown Retired households’ retirements are extremely modest from the financial point of view; typically they get by on social security and modest pensions. Despite being below the national average in income and assets, most Hometown Retired households don't consider themselves poor, however. One of the reasons why this group is relatively comfortable financially is because the majority live on the fringes of large cities. Here it costs less to live than it costs to live in the cities themselves.

Hometown Retired households are comprised of retirees, two-thirds of whom are over 65; nonetheless, don't assume that these people don't do much more than hang around the house and watch TV all day. On the contrary, the typical retirees comprising Household Retired households are just as busy as when they were working full-time. Best of all, they are enjoying retirement.

How do these retirees get by financially and enjoy themselves on their low incomes? According to Claritas, Hometown Retirees shop at Woolworth's or a reasonable substitute such as Wal-Mart. They use lawn maintenance services, belong to a veterans' club, drive a Chrysler Sebring car, eat Wheaties, and own a microwave oven. They buy Firestone tires, heavy rock music, and rechargeable batteries. They dine at the places such as Golden Corral.

Hometown Retirees spend a portion of their time vacationing on bus tours, trying to quit smoking, bowling at least 20 times a year, and partaking in karate or martial arts. They are also collecting stamps, playing cards and chess, volunteering for political causes, shopping on the Internet, and drinking low-alcohol beer. Hometown Retirees are reading True Story, Discover, Audubon, Field & Stream, Hunting, Soap Opera Weekly, and Ladies Home Journal magazines. They are listening to easy-listening, nostalgia, and soft-contemporary music on the radio. And when they find time for it, on TV they are watching soap operas, the Montel Williams Show, the CBS Sunday Night Movie, the NCAA swimming and diving championships, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the NBC Nightly News.

The real gem of information that Claritas gives us is that the large majority of Hometown Retired households isn't complaining about not having enough MONEY to do the things they want to do. Indeed, their biggest complaint in life is not having enough TIME in the day to do all the things that they want to do. Above all, hometown retirees prove that just because you are a retired person with a low income doesn't mean that you can't have fun in life.

Four Retirement Quotes to Help You with Your Retirement Planning

Retirement is like a long vacation in Las Vegas. The goal is to enjoy it the fullest, but not so fully that you run out of money.
— Jonathan Clements

Your best purchases in retirement will turn out to be the ones that you never made.
— from How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free

Retirement is when the living is easy and the payments are hard.
— Unknown wise person

The question isn't at what age I want to retire, it's at what income.
— George Foreman