Developing a plan

For most of my adult life I have held the belief that I will not retire, in the traditional sense of the term. Rather, I'll have to hold steady employment for the rest of my life. Twenty years ago this would probably have sounded a lot sadder than it does today and I'm pretty comfortable with this notion. I'm not sure when it happened exaclty, but the idea that one works until their sixties and then stops seems more fantasy today than anything else.

Working for the government, I figured I would just keep my job until I either passed away or could no longer physically do anything. However, after my recent Disney World jaunt, I am rethinking things. Rather than sit out this job, I'm wondering now if I might actually take a "retirement" at 30 years and then find a retirement job. Many active-duty military retire after 20 - 30 years and go into another career to make ends meet. While I will still have to make ends meet, my goal isn't necessarily to have another career. I just want to get a job at the happiest place on Earth. I think finishing out my years working at Disney World would be a great thing.

Something I noticed walking through the different parks is that many of the park employees are older, retirement-aged folks. The guys checking the bags at the front of every park, a lot of the people staffing the photo booths at the end of many rides, many of the street vendors were all elderly. Of course this set my mind to working. Because I've held the belief that I'd have to keep working until I could no longer do so, I've never developed any kind of retirement plan. Now I'm starting to plot.