Retirement
September has been extremely eventful. We made two significant decisions- that I would retire and that we would get a puppy.
When I first came to the decision that I was ready to retire, I felt the world watching me to see if I was sure, if I would fail, if I knew what I was getting into. I wrote a long piece about my retirement and its impact on the people around me, turning my thoughts and their disappointment into words. Then, like many other long pieces, I decided it didn’t need publishing. At least, not right now. In announcing my retirement, I had let down younger female engineers who had looked up to me as a role model. I had caught my parents unawares. After years of cheering me on in my pursuit of career success, they suddenly found themselves watching their “cheeree” walk away from the race. Aside from a select few friends, nobody wished me a happy retirement. But happy I was.
Also obliterating the excitement of retirement, was Hurricane Irma. On the day of my retirement, MrM had to fly 8 hours out to FL and 8 hours back to evacuate my sister who found herself without tickets to fly out on a commercial flight.
As all the excitement from the hurricane wanes, I find myself relaxed and happy. I’m hoping that being retired will give me more time to be present for Ro and the hubby, and will bring me back to reading, writing, and focusing on my health. I’ve managed to work out every weekday since retiring. I’ve been crossing out long-pending items from my to-do list. I’ve picked up a book I can sink my teeth into, and I’ve been walking Pixel a lot more often. Of course these are just little things, but this is exactly what I planned.
“But what will you DO with all that time?”. I don’t know yet. Announcing a reinvention of your life before knowing what you want that life to look like is something you only do to please others. I don’t want the same ambitions that set the course of the last 20 years to color my goals for the future. I need to retrain my eyes to be able to see beyond what they searched for in the past. For now, I am taking time and space to simply float. And I’m at peace with exactly where I am. I haven’t been able to say that in a very long time.