Good Bye Last Day of Work

How many people have waited years and years and years to reach retirement, always hoping it will be Freedom 55 or even earlier but when the day comes they are never prepared.  This is definitely not the case for me since I’ve been preparing for at least 8 years, researching everything from finances to how to live to be 100.  I don’t think there are many people on the planet as well prepared for retirement as myself.

For the last week or so I have been moaning about the fact that I signed up for a seminar the very day of my First Day of Retirement.  Now however I am looking at it as a sign of how my retirement will look, always busy, always inquiring and exploring, active in various ways.  I must take after my father in that respect so I am very thankful for my excellent gene pool.

Enthusiasm aside it will nice to have some days to just sort through my mind and my rooms where I can make some plans for the future and get some sense of the new normal.  It is going to be a lot of fun to be my own boss.  Period. 

One flew Over the Chicken Coop

I certainly can never say that I did not get feted and celebrated on my way towards retirement.  I enjoyed a “roast” last Friday which saw my boss take it away in grand style, alluding to my intimation that I would do a little sustainable farming in my retirement.  The puns were flying about with great hilarity and no one appreciated it as much as I did.  My boasting about all my double-yolkers led them to suggest that I needed to “standardize” my production.  My comment that I had to couple of hens still not producing led to references of a possible exit to The Colonel for those low performers.  Lastly there was a comment that I was chickening out of my job.

I am touched and almost overwhelmed by the kindness and thoughtfulness I have received from so many of my colleagues, I honestly don’t think anyone could have received more accolades or words of appreciation.  Does any of this make me have second thoughts?  Not one bit.

I am excited about this next third of my life, I am optimistic that I will have a fantastic future in retirement where I will enjoy things long put on hold.  Certainly I have thought from the beginning of my purchase of my home that I wanted to develop a small farm and make the land produce something.  When I first began planting vegetables the experiences of Selena in So Big recurred time and again.  When I wrestled with nasty weeds I thought of Scarlett in the cotton fields.  When I got my first hens and enjoyed their antics I regretted that someone else had written a book called “The Egg and I”.

Is there a little drama queen in me somewhere?  Is there a humorist lurking in the wings, ready to burst forth?  Optimism led me to purchase canvas at Michael’s along with paints, charcoal and pencils.  Yet more enthusiasm caused me to buy a brand new, fancy dancy camera.  The artiste is about to make inroads even if I only inflict pain on family and friends.

On a more serious note, how long will I enjoy leisure before I start getting irritated with the powers that be?  When will the lobbyist be reawakened? 

Stay tuned for the next chapter in Sanne’s story!

Assessing a Career

It’s hard to believe that there are only 7 more days before “The Big Day” – first day of retirement!  I’ve been reflecting a little bit (okay a lot) on my 44 year working life.

It started in July 1970 with my summer job in the livestock office at Burns Foods in Winnipeg.  Back in the day they were still using comptometers as calculators.  My job was to calculate the combined weights of the cattle being slaughtered for the various farmers.  After the first week my father (who was the plant superintendent) asked my boss how I was doing.

“She’s still a little slow on the comptometer” was the response.  Or so I heard that night at the supper table.  Then my father told me the trick to up my speed.  Instead of going all the way up the scale to the 8 or 9 – add the 4 & 5 – my father was nothing if not an efficiency expert.  Sure enough by the end of the second week I was going as fast as the woman who had been doing this job for 15 years.  Invariable over the years I would talk about my job at the supper table and often I got some good advice from either of my parents on how to handle matters as they came up.

I’ve worked in a lot of different sectors but excepting my second summer job when I worked on the bacon line at Burns I have always worked in an office environment.  My first full time job was at an insurance company as a telex operator (does anyone remember those pieces of equipment?) but I’ve worked in manufacturing, furniture stores, charitable foundations, law offices, car dealerships, engineering firms and oil companies.  I can say that every job taught me something from new skills (telexing, splicing film, bookkeeping, payroll, computer skills, troubleshooting car repairs) but more importantly I learned to interface with a variety of personalities.  It was extremely rare for me to work with someone who I simply could not get along with, somehow I always managed to find some common ground, but there were a few times where it was impossible.  What did I do?  I quit. 

Common themes in my career were Organization and Friendship.  I still have friends that started back in 1978 from my first law firm but what is most amazing is that in the last 15 years I have developed so many more friendships than ever before.  Something that I have discovered in myself is that I really like people.  I honestly think that if that is the only knowledge to come out of my 44 years of working I walk away rich.

Thanks to The Man.

Questions that are asked

The number one question asked when a retirement is announced?   

“What are you going to do?”  Answers vary:

• Rest
• Finish projects
• Harvest
• Read
• Rest
• Craft
• Farm
• Rest
• Travel
• More rest

You get the idea.  One thing this girl is not going to do is “work”.  After 40 years and before that 12 years of school, well, it’s time to go back to the playground and just play, eat and sleep.  I’m kinda liking that.

Extracurricular Activities

It’s not all work, work, work even though I am extracting all my hard won knowledge to a diligent student.  I put on my entrepreneur’s hat and sent out a note to my colleagues inquiring if they would be interested in purchasing some eggs from a high performing team of hens.  To my amazement I had a resounding response of “yes, yes, yes” and I am sold out of eggs in one day!  Heavens, who knew?

Actually I must say that I am getting my money’s worth in entertainment out of those little Henriettas of mine.  Every day I find them more tame and willing to respond to my voice.  Certainly they are huddling t my feet, in submission but with the keen idea that once they are petted they are going to get a handful of bird seed (rightly figured out).  But they are so sweet and anxious as they hear me step out of the house or the car at night, anxious to have a visit from the seed feeder (that would be me of course).  When they are let out for their daily run they stream along the grass and look like nothing so much as those “weebles wobble but they don’t fall down” toys.

Any time they hear me call their name they come to attention (most of them) and rush towards me hoping for some treat or other.  Then we have the little rogues who turn a deaf ear and continue chasing butterflies, bugs or some elusive plant life just around the next stone, shrub or tree root.  When I come after them with the broom (known as the persuadercator) they eye it cautiously and then hop around it and head somewhat aimlessly towards a distance that might be “home”.  Most of the time they manage to swing around the corner of the garden shed and hit their coop run, but every once in a while one of them looses her head and ends up going in the opposite direction.  I am pretty sure that I’ve already lost 5 pounds just in running after hens!

Yes, I am entertained daily by these little critters.  Who needs internet games or television when there’s wild life out there?