Retirement Commences

Escape velocity has been attained. I retired at the end of February and, so far, it's really the cat's pajamas!

At 4:30 on a Thursday afternoon working from home, gainful employment ended quietly and peacefully. Although, after 31 years cracking away as a commercial insurance underwriter, the conclusion was amusingly anticlimactic.

As I closed in on retirement with 20 minutes remaining in my career, before clicking off the laptop, I was getting giddy. After 31 years, only 20 minutes to go, then 19, 18, and so forth . . . I set my permanent retirement out-of-office email reply, signed off my apps, turned off the laptop, bundled the electrical cord, and removed my chair and computer table out of my son's room from whence I'd worked the final two months.

Being a self-proclaimed goofball, I awoke earlier than usual to see what it looked like and felt like. Then Ghost Dog and I went for a longer than usual morning walk. Building out that elusive and fabled retirement routine had begun.

Day one of retirement, being a Friday, was more like the onset of a three-day weekend. Beyond that, though, that next full week and beyond, in my head, was represented largely as a blank space. There were a few lunch playdates on the calendar, but it was as if there was a roadmap in my head, the destinations were there, but everything was dark as if the infrastructure had not yet been built-out. No roads, no streetlights. That would hopefully be mentally built out in the subsequent weeks as my retirement routine became established providing the infrastructure to better envision my future.

A few early observations from Retirement: 

[1] A fun side effect leading up to retirement in the preceding month, I'd enjoyed an enhanced coherence of thought. It's as if my brain was preemptively reallocating brain power away from work, freeing it up to deploy for non-work activity. It's been neat, and surprisingly noticeable, as if a distraction has been removed from my consciousness.

There is a book by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Player Piano, where citizens have an alarm device implanted in their heads. The alarms periodically activate distracting them from deep and thoughtful contemplation. As retirement approached, I enjoyed enhanced clarity as if my distraction device had been deactivated.

[2] Referenced earlier, the mental blank space when thinking of the future. This was similar to what I experienced graduating from college, the summer of 1990. I had graduated and a job had not yet been procured. When I thought of the future at that tender point in my almost-adult life, thinking of those coming weeks and months, I had difficulty envisioning what that would look like. That's me again. As if I'm entering a dark room. I know there are things in there I want, but I haven't yet located the light switch. However, there is no fear about entering that dark room.

[3] I no longer have an adversarial relationship with the clock. By the fourth work day into retirement, the clock had lost its sinister persona. It had been my taskmaster, and I had been totally unaware until that morning's surprise revelation. But no longer would it dictate to me, with roving pin pricks throughout the day, what had to be done or be completed by when. An inconvenient constraint. The clock now merely represents a stationary point on a map.

[4] I've enjoyed a noticeable bump-up in patience! I've considered myself a patient fellow, although there have been triggers, like if there is not enough time to complete the desired array of tasks. Even then, I had developed an awareness of the onset of impatience, and that possibility of such a flareup has lately become more remote.

Life is good. And to be clear, life was good even during work. I was fortunate in my career of gainful employment, that employer, those professional tasks matching well with my abilities, and that coterie of distinguished colleagues with whom I worked. This has been a good run. Now then, just one final professional task remained, set my permanent retirement voicemail message.

"This is Bill with State Farm insurance. I am retired as of March 1, 2024. For assistance please call Underwriting, your assigned Business Lines Consultant or engage the Underwriting Chat feature. Thank you for calling."

With that, I turned off the cell phone and concluded my career.