Today is Saturday, January 1, 2022. So, Happy New Year to you! For me, the day represents not only the beginning of a new year, but also of a new phase of life as today is my first official day of retirement. As I recently mentioned to a friend, while I’ve given this phase a great deal of thought and have received great advice and support from others, I’d be a fool to think I have it figured out. But that’s the future. For this blog entry I simply wanted to recount the last several days to give you an idea of how things unfolded.
To begin with, email traffic dropped significantly as it often does during the holiday season. As a result, there were few interruptions to vacation beyond the organization of the retirement celebrations the week of January 3. Then, as 12/31 approached, I contacted the company’s technology area to wipe clean my mobile devices of any company-related applications or data. This involves deleting everything on the phone or iPad and starting over as if the device were new (and, ultimately, downloading backed-up data from the cloud). Although this action takes some time, the process went relatively smoothly. The hard part, I found, was communicating to certain company contacts that I was disconnecting from the company’s communication platforms. And when I say “hard part,” I mean I felt some emotion over it. I guess the severing of the means of communication that have been a central part of a person’s life for nearly four decades has some deep roots! The good news is the reaction passed fairly quickly upon the realization that this step guaranteed fewer interruptions not only in the short term, but for years to come.
On 12/31, there were a number of steps that needed to be taken to “close the loop” on my various duties with my employer. Forms to be signed, resignations to put in place, and emails to be written. Then, mid-afternoon, it was time for a short nap to ensure I could make it to midnight later that evening. I set my alarm so I could get up and celebrate the passing of 4:45 p.m., the end of my typical workday. Now, here’s the fun part: when I walked out to the kitchen, my wife and youngest daughter were waiting with a bottle of champagne to toast the event. Coincidentally, the bubbly was from a vineyard located in Carmel in the Valley, California, the three of us had visited together a few years ago. They then broke into a rousing rendition of “For he’s a jolly good fellow.” I was indeed, at that moment, a jolly fellow!
So, this morning I now sit writing my first blog while retired. From here, I still have a few things to wrap up like canceling my corporate credit card, returning my technology, and celebrating this career milestone with many very good friends and wonderful family. In the next few weeks I intend to enter a description of my thoughts following the retirement celebrations of the coming week, as well as to provide more background on the steps I have taken to enhance the likelihood of a successful transition to retirement. My previous entries have only scratched the surface, and have not gotten into my trait self-assessment, purpose identification, or “Tree of Life.” I hope you find them interesting.
The end of labor is to gain leisure.
Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE)
In many ways I think we’ve lost the sight of the purpose of free time. We seem to immediately equate idleness with laziness but those two things are very different. “Leisure” is not a synonym for “inactive” – idleness offers an opportunity for Play, something people rarely indulge in these days.
Celeste Headlee, American radio journalist, author, public speaker, and co-host of the weekly series Retro Report on PBS.