A year into retirement

Sunday Tip Volume 9

Good evening to all. I know you are all devasted that I didn’t pen an article last week. But as Mark Twain said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” I just didn’t have something good to write about.

Today starts year 2 of retirement for me. Whoever said, “I’ll miss working” must not have much of anything going on outside of work. Oh sure, there are people I miss, and the occasional event that we knocked out of the park, but missing the day-to-day. Not one bit. Having my calendar hijacked? Having to deal with a non-emergency emergency? Emails and texts at all hours? I remember a time when I was working out of town for months and resorted to using my laptop unplugged so when the battery died I had to stop working. Pathetic.

This past year has been worry free. I knew I was retirement ready because during the last year of work. I literally dreaded Monday mornings. So much so that when the clock hit 8 pm on Sundays, that became “sad hour”. Unlike 5 pm on Friday, (happy hour) though I rarely left work at 5 pm on a Friday.

You also learn a lot about the people who are truly friends. The people who said, “we will soooo stay in touch”, but have now vanished from any form of contact. I can understand this in the hardline phone and letter writing era, but now with 76,327 ways to communicate? Such is life…… To those of you still in contact, I thank you very much, it means so much to me.

I think there are very few professions that are life and death jobs. It’s understandable how military, police, fire, medical professionals get stressed out from work. So as I look back I wonder why I was so stressed the last couple of years. Someone told me once that my “problem” was that I “cared too much”. I could sleep at night if that was the case. Caring too much helped me make decisions quickly, create new concepts, support and grow team members and make a difference in the bigger picture. The last couple of years my caring was met with brick wall after brick wall. No one wanted to challenge the norm. They ignored the mantra of failure; “if you always do what who always did, you will always get what you always got”. I should have seen that warning sign sooner, and not driven myself to actual physical illness. Such is a job where you have responsibility but little authority. *Pro Tip* Get out of one of those jobs quickly!!

Don’t ignore the warning signs. The two steps forward and three steps back every day. The endless meetings that could be a one on one because the person you were working with wouldn’t make a decision. I didn’t say “couldn’t” purposefully, they protected themself with inaction. For me, that was painful to be part of. Gretzky said it best, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Looking back I’m happy that while I loved many years of what I did, the job didn’t define me. I look forward to every day of retirement with a smile, and of course, coffee. You need to make sure you are happy without work before you stop working. It’s ok to have a day without doing much of anything. I have a very good friend who has the following mindset: Set out to accomplish at least one thing each day, cause that one thing is something you want to do, not have to do. Of course there are very full days as well, it’s up to Sherri and I how we want to spend our days.

Work should be a means to life, not the other way around. Unless you are in a life or death job, keep in mind that no one is running to a helicopter with an organ in a cooler at your workplace. Work will be there the next day, and scarily, many more work tomorrows than retirement tomorrows.

So do good, give back, love and live hard and oh yeah, work. Just don’t work yourself into the ground.

Thanks for reading, share with friends, Romans and countrymen. :) I’d love to hear your feedback, content suggestions or just a hello.

Be kind to everyone you meet.

Best - Andrew No Lip Service