Countdown to Retirement

In one month, 30 days, 20 working days, I will be ending a 40 year career, a working life, varied, mundane, energized, interesting, but ending.  In the days since making the decision and then making a public announcement I have experienced a growing sense of joy as the reality and finality of sunk in my brain.  I thought for sure I would be feeling regrets, anxiety, doubt and myriad other negative emotions but to the contrary every thought and feeling has been positive and given me more energy and delight as the days move on towards a New Phase of My Life.

How did I come to this momentous decision at least a year before my “soft goal”?  The stars aligned and the timing seemed right.  Over the last 11 months I have struggled to recover from a freak knee injury and it has become very clear that a large part of the delayed recover has been due to a very sedentary lifestyle that is caused by a 12 to 14 hour working life.  To use the old fashioned term I am a secretary, I am stationed at my desk for the biggest part of my day capped on either side by a 90 minute commute.  One of my therapists said that even though I am very flexible, in fact, because I am so flexible (thanks to 10 years of yoga practice) my muscles have worked against me in my recovery. 

With an aging mother now residing with me, with a body that needs a different lifestyle, and lastly, realizing that life is moving inexorably onward it just seemed right to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life while there was still time to have a quality of life in which to do that living.  I asked myself “when is enough enough?” and concluded that come what may, the time was now.

I look forward to an active, interesting retirement from a structured working life to a time of adventure that includes flexibility with time and days filled with projects of varied interests.  I feel very fortunate to have so many interests that are fairly inexpensive to develop.  The question will be, what do I start on first?

Stay tuned as I start my countdown to September 30^th, my last day of work and October 1^st my first day of my new life.  Will I start to get cold feet, will the enthusiasm become so much greater that I burst out in song?  Can you picture me dancing down the halls at work singing “I’m free, I’m free, I’m free at last”?  We will see.