Yesterday I talked about the milestone of having lived in Colorado for 30 years.
Today’s milestone is a bit different.
So … I retired today.
It wasn’t in my original plans (and I don’t respond well to changes of plan, as all who know me will tell you). But regardless of my plans, I got notification three months ago that my role was being eliminated, too bad, so sad, if you find another job in the company great, but that will zap your severance.
Harrumph.
Not the first time I’ve been RIFfed (and it was indeed a RIF of some sort — several others were all departing on the same day), and, in bygone days, I was sometimes that guy on the other side of the table (a real table in those days, not a Zoom table), so I know the drill.
Reasons Not To Retire
- Not having a job will mean financial ruin and I will die, alone and unloved, in a damp refrigerator box in an alley. (This is my go-to catastrophizing trope, which I know is not true, but still gibbers at me in the dark.)
- I am not quite of retirement age — close, but not quite there.
- It wasn’t the plan yet!
Reasons To Retire
- A very generous severance.
- My wife earns well (and covers our insurance, too).
- I’m pretty close to retirement age.
- We can actually afford it. (And, yes, I am very aware how blessed / fortunate we are in that.)
- Trying to find a job in the tech industry these days for someone of the age I was 6 years ago (when I finally got this job after a year and a half unemployed) was no easy task, and something I really wasn’t looking forward to trying again 6 years later (and being so close to retirement age).
Also contributing to the emotional mix was The Project I have been project managing, which has been a huge hairball for the last three years and is currently struggling between “We think we can get it done … in the Spring” or “Management Pulling the Plug.” The stress of that has been … not healthy for me, in a variety of ways, which made the idea being no longer in that kind of rat race a lot more attractive.
So even if the company had offered to keep me on once they realized what they had done (whatever algorithm dictated the RIF was … weird; nobody who should have known about it, or the impact it would have on The Project, was in on it and they were all generally as gobsmacked as me over it), it is possible, even likely, I would have turned them down.
So, today was the last day, and quite likely my last day in White Collar America. I finished cleaning my cube, I sent the last emails, I attend the last meetings, I said the last goodbyes, I turned in my laptop and card key, and drove away.
Yay?
Well, I’m not one of those people who defines himself by his job, or his company, or even as being the main breadwinner or being a professional or whatever. My work-life balance is fairly decent, and I have a plethora of projects and identified tasks around the house to keep me busy for, like, years. Plus hobbies. Plus being at my wife’s beck-and-call for coffee service, etc. And if I do get bored, there are a lot of volunteering activities I could do.
It does feel a little weird knowing I can turn off the 7 a.m. weekday alarm on my phone (with a skip for Tuesdays when I had to get up at 6:35 a.m. for a status call). It’s odd that the place I’ve been going to, and walking near, and being paid by, for the last six years (minus one week, to the day) will now just be a place I zip past on the interstate — but any bitterness about my treatment is very much mitigated by a guilty sense of relief from being out form under The Project.
I’ll miss the people. I’ll miss the neighborhood.
I won’t miss the company, their irksome RTO policy, their continuous reorganizing, or The Project.
* * *
So, generalizing between the two days of milestones, my life has had two 30ish-year phases:
- Growing up in California, going to college, finding my career, getting married, getting divorced.
- Moving to Colorado, getting remarried (much more successfully), continuing then wrapping up my career.
Given reasonable lifespans, I am now believably starting Phase 3, retirement and what I do with it.
Let’s see how that works.
On the balance, it sounds like the universe unfolded as it should. My father died at my current age (73) and that heavily coloured my thinking about retirement. Time felt very finite and I don’t regret for a minute retiring when I did. It took about a year to truly relax into it. I’m sure you’ll find your feet more quickly than I. Here’s to the next stage, eh?
Congratulations on getting out from under The Project. I hope retirement goes well for you. Your idea of breaking your life into two parts of ~30 years each is amusing to me. If I try to do something similar, there are at least five different phases, maybe eight, depending on how I distinguish between the different phases.