Just for fun I logged into to my state retirement portal the other day to see how close I am to being able to retire. Turns out I have something like two tenths of a year to go before I am officially at the thirty year mark. Well technically. In reality it is only twenty five years, but the Michigan public school system used to have this really cool thing where you could buy up to five years towards your retirement. Over the course of about eight years I paid $50 per paycheck so that now with 25 years in I can retire like I have 30. Likewise, If I wanted to work the full thirty years, I could retire with a service credit of 35 years.
They don't have that system anymore....
At least not in the same capacity as they used to. A short time ago my wife looked into buying some years and the system now is a terrible deal. You are better off investing that money on your own.
Needless to say, my mind has been thinking about retirement a lot lately. I've said this before, but the fact is, I simply can't. As cool as it would be to retire at the tender age of 50, I've still got a mortgage to pay and despite what people (conservatives) seem to think, a state pension doesn't really get you too far these days. Especially if you are still that young.
I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that I am probably going to be here for a bit longer, at least until something better comes along. Unfortunately, "something better" feels less and less likely these days. With layoffs and downsizing sweeping the world especially in the technology sector, it feels like I might be a bit stuck. Which really isn't a big deal I guess. I do enjoy my job. It is fulfilling for me and it gets the bills paid, so you can't really complain about that.
It allows me to sit on HIVE pretty much all day, and for the most part I feel like it might be safe from the dreaded AI tsunami that is sweeping the globe.
For the longest time I have taken issue with the fact that I am not specialized in anything. More like a jack of all trades, I know a little bit about a lot of things. While in the past, that seemed like a detriment, I think today the value is becoming more apparent.
It's easy to take AI and have it complete a specific task. Students are using AI, staff are using AI, even I use AI to some degree, but even if you remove one or two of my responsibilities and hand them off to AI, there are still a couple dozen other things on my plate that I am responsible for.
AI isn't going to crawl on the floor and figure out why a teachers computer isn't projecting to a projector. AI also isn't going to repair a broken screen on a Chromebook. Yes, there are some data, policy, and management things that AI can accomplish, but I think for the most part, people want to see that face when they have questions or concerns.
I'm pretty lucky that I work in a small school district with a very small tech department. For the longest time it was just me, then more recently I was able to hire on 
I was thinking about it the other day and although I am sure there are many other industries like this, it occured to me that education and healthcare are possibly two of the safest sectors right now when it comes to the impact AI is going to have on jobs.
Of course once robots get added into the mix, it might be a totally different story!
As I said before, retiring really isn't an option as cool as that would be. I honestly don't know what I would do with my free time. I'd probably go crazy, so I may as well work right? As long as they aren't shoving me out the door, there isn't much point of leaving. Why not continue to build my investments to put 
It doesn't feel like HIVE is going to be that passive income stream I was hoping it would be in my later years At least right now anyway. Who knows what the future holds!
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