After I finished my dissertation in 2008, I fell into a deep depression. I sat in a chair and couldn't move. The depression was accompanied by various bodily pains, all of which later got names (diagnoses). By 2011, the disability insurances of Germany, Austria and USA were convinced: I wasn't going to get better. It is now 2019, and I have worked as assiduously as possible to 'get better'. (Apparently, what with ageing and all, getting 'well' isn't going to happen.) My mother's death in 2016 threw me back several years, but that, too, has now passed. In the meantime, getting better has come to involve plans for the 'retirement future', and my husband and I -- after some real knock-down-drag-outs on the subject -- are also now dealing with that. So there I sat yesterday, in my age-appropriate easy-chair, watching the clouds thicken for the oncoming night storm, feeling the cooling breeze after the baking summer sun, and thought: OK, f...