Some days at the current Death Star drag. The countdown clock to the day I retire seems to barely move.  The brain keeps replaying  “What am I doing?  Why did I sign up to this? You Moron”.  

But then you hit a few days – or even a whole week – where you are on your game.  Your decisions are spot on, projects start moving,  shit gets done. It feels good – great, actually.  You’ve added value. That’s the good part of work. 

For a bit it makes you forget the many parts that feel like breaking rocks with a tiny hammer.

This makes you wonder.  This “accomplishment” is energizing.  Maybe there is a place for work in my days?  Maybe I should just go down to working four days a week instead of fully retiring?

I have to admit being engaged at work has been rare for me over the last 4 or 5 years.  By the end of my last job, the old Death Star, was pretty well built and we were just deciding on paint colours. 

 There were no new, exciting projects to get engaged in. No work battle to fight.  No X-wings flying by.  It basically was the reason I was counting how many months to retirement 

 Being engaged makes the time go by faster.  The last 2 weeks have flown by.  That is a good thing. On the other hand, it is dangerous to my main goal of retiring.  

The key take away from this is not the fact that work is enjoyable and fulfilling.  The real lesson is that being engaged is energizing.  Getting stuff done is rewarding.  That engaged feeling is what will make retirement full of life.  

Work can give you this feeling, but you know the soul-sucking stuff is right around the corner: pointless meetings, performance reviews, KPIs or stats for some manager with no relevance to the actual world. Hell, most of the work in these two exciting weeks has still been sitting in a chair talking to people through a screen, with zero social life to go with it.

The worst part of working hard and being all in at work is it actually gets in the way of my other priorities.  I want to itch my own scratch by being creative, doing exercise, and being social outside of work.   Those are the priorities that I shouldn’t let fall.  If I don’t focus on these priorities it will make retirement harder in the long run.

So, T-9 to lift off.  Nine months to get ready to trigger the explosion that leads to my next chapter.  To have a successful exit, I need to get my head on straight.  

The universe sent me a reminder today.  My work is next to the public library so when I need to get up for a walk, I often go there to browse.  As I am walking in I see this stranger ride up on his bike with a guitar strapped to his back.  He walks into the library ahead of me to look at some books.  He just seems interesting to me.

I walked up to  him to get his story (Step 1: Social is good).  Let’s call him Bob.  Bob is 58, retired for 3 years, fit as hell, and full of energy.  He took up guitar as  a hobby when he retired.  Bob jams with friends 3 times a week.   He helps his elderly parents, spends time with his kids when they are available, and frequents the library to get  new books.   He uses his time to avoid places when they are crowded ( like Costco ) or when traffic is heavy.   

Bob just seemed happy and interesting.  A symbol for me of what I want to be.  A reminder of my path.  The vision of what I want to look like at his age.  The right thing would have been to get his contact info and then do a meetup for a beer to build that retiree network.  Baby steps.  Next time.

The second big step this week is I hired my Death Star successor.  He is a good guy, a few years younger than me, and can take over when I leave.  We worked together before, I trust him, and I will feel less guilty leaving here after 9 months.  He knows the other senior managers at my current work and will fit in quite well.  I can hold  my head high when I leave knowing my role will be in good hands

So T-9.  I do admit there a little waiver in the countdown clock as the last 2 weeks have been good.  But that is to be expected as I said in one of my first posts. 

Becoming  Ready Emotionally (RE) to retire is the struggle that I’m focussed on. 

There will be up and down periods to get to retirement.  Work days or weeks flying by to get there are not a bad thing.