Introduction and initial musings ....


What the heck did I just do?

What do you do when you wake up on a Wednesday morning after 10+ years of working for the same company, and 43 years total of working in technology without a break, and realize that not only do you not need to go to work today, but you do not have work to go to anymore. Panic? Wonder how this happened? Hope that you are having a nightmare, and you will wake up at your desk?

Well, none of the above, except for a bit of panic. This is the mind-set I find myself with today, August 2nd 2017, after leaving Google on my own terms, not to go to another company, but to retire from the work force completely. Why would I do something this crazy?

Well, a funny thing happens when you avoid ending your life early, doing dumb things like rock climbing, ice climbing, winter mountaineering, climbing Half-Dome without consuming food. You wake up one morning, look in the mirror and suddenly realize that...holy crap, I'm old. Well, that happened to me this year - I hit 65. And a bunch of things start happening to you such as:

  • You wonder why you are getting up so early to go to someplace you are not so enthralled with
  • You start thinking of all the things you would rather do instead of working
  • You get really pissed off when you get home and have to work, when you would rather work out, read the news, talk about life in general with your wife, or meet some friends for a glass of wine or three.
  • You get even more pissed if you have to work on performance appraisals and/or interview feedback on the weekend
  • You really enjoy being on vacation more than working
  • You find that your body is not quite the same as it was when you were 30...there are more aches and pains after long hikes, and your physician starts telling you that it is no longer a choice on taking certain medications
So, after listening to my wife tell me for the past year that I should retire, I finally woke up one morning and agreed. That was the easy part. We had already been thinking about life after work, and where we want to ultimately land up since California may be the place you want to be when you are working, but maybe not afterwards unless you were fortunate enough to get into the housing market early on. We had visited a couple of places, and spent a lot of time on Redfin checking home prices in place we might want to live in, but had never come to any conclusions. We now had to get a bit more serious about it. I had also given some thought to what retirement would be like for me - lot's of grandiose ideas, but no concrete plans. Plans...why would you need a plan?

So what is this blog all about? Number one, I like to write and without an outlet at work, where I generated large volumes of documents where I could sneak in snarky commentary and quotes from politicians or songs from the 60's, I need someplace else to share my thoughts even if I have an audience of one (or none). Number two is that there may be others like me, slaves to IT who are considering cutting the cord - maybe my random thoughts, rants, complaints and warning might help in their transition. And maybe someone might find this amusing...or take umbrage to things I say about tech. Feel free to comment. It's lonely out here....

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