So today I realized I really have no possible need for my beat up old brief case. I emptied it out and got rid of most of what was in it.
Though I kept a few things like the Business card from my favorite Boss. He passed away months after hiring me for a second time.
It is kind of a weird feeling. I found some old photos, two I put up in my home office. The rest went into a photo box.
Lots of odds and ends of my professional working career and an ancient address book.
I still have my old, leather-bound, Franklin Planner notebook, which I purchased sometime around 1993, while I was at my first job. Prior to all things being either on your work computer or on your smartphone, it was a reasonably valuable tool for calendars, task management, and managing contacts.
One had to buy “refills” (new calendar pages) every year; I just went and took a look, and the calendar pages which are in it are from November and December of 2005, which tells you how long ago it was that I actually used it for my job.
Really should throw it out, but there’s a bit of nostalgia there.
Most of the people that I know, post-retirement, describe a sort of inability to remember their working lives, their career, or “who they were” in that role.
Are you feeling any of that – like it’s just a faint memory, particularly relative to the percentage of your life you spent earning a paycheck?
I bought a shadow box to display stuff I collected over my 40 years at Boeing. I have my first badge that was given to me the day I started in 1980. Boeing would not let me keep my badge when I retired so I photocopied it and put it in a badge holder. I have all of my anniversary pins that are given every 5 years of employment. Then I added some mementos from all the programs I worked on. I also have a plastic container with a bunch of other stuff I collected over the years. I met a couple guys I worked with a few weeks ago. They told me I got out just in time, management is making changes and they are not for the better. I feel sorry for them, they all still have at least 20 years to go before they can retire.
Well no stress, no worries about commutes and gas prices.
But I’m not forgetting my work life yet.
I retired in May after a 41 career, and the last 21 years at the same place. I kept nothing except the guillotine paper cutter (hell, nobody uses those and it’s not like it had the healthcare system logo on it). Most of my physicians are in that same building but I pretty much feel nothing when I walk in. Only one of my friends is still there, the others lost to job, transfers or retirement. I do not even remember walking out my last day. I can tell you what I wore on the first day of my first job in September 1981, but I can’t tell you what I wore five months ago. I liked my job. I was tired of working.
I think I’m still bargaining with retirement, but I’m well past the denial stage where I have any inclination to do any hard work.
The other day I noticed a box on my dresser contained (some of, but not all) my years of service pins. Thought of tossing them, but they take up minimal space in a container that has plenty.
I had 1 very good friend at work. He died 25 years ago. I have a few things that remind me of him. Other than that, I’m not sure there is a single thing I’d keep from my job other than one post-it with a scribble from 15 years ago that still means something to me.
I think I kept a flowchart that I made BY HAND on graph paper using a pencil and plastic shape template. Those were the days!
I still have many flowchart stencils but my flowcharts are long gone.
I have my nametag ( which was accidental, I just found it in a bag this week) , a couple of pins, a letter signed ( but certainly not written ) by the head of my agency and a plaque. Neither the letter nor the plaque are on display.
I just repaired a clock that was given to me for 25 years of service that I would have thrown out normally but for that fact. It’s a nice clock, but it would have been cheaper to buy a new one than have the parts replaced. Other than that, I don’t have many reminders of what I used to do, or who I used to be.
I almost posted about this in the “Interesting Object” thread. Back in the 1980’s when I was still working in a pharma lab, working on a powder product, I invented a shallow bed powder sampling probe*.
It’s very simple - essentially a cross between a scoop and a ladle - but it worked, and our engineer manufactured them for lab use. The lab techs christened it “Popeye’s Pipe”. It’s the only thing I ever invented that was manufactured and used; one left with me when the site was closed down, and that’s a cool momento. There are a few others - the odd business card, that sort of thing - but not much. When I retired I very deliberately chose to fade away; I was able to reduce my workweek stepwise down to one day, at which point that day would irritate the hell out of me. It was real easy to give it up and walk away.
When did you retire @What_Exit - was there a thread I missed?
j
* - skipable technical explanation: in early stage product development, you have to work with very small amounts of material. When you blend products, this leads to shallow beds in the mixer. You can’t use a traditional sample thief in a shallow bed. If you use a spoon spatula, there are well recognized segregation problems - essentially, the particles can roll off the spatula selectively. So it was an unmet need.
I didn’t do a thread on it but this is one place I explained it a little:
I’m still in my 50s, we’re savers and downsized recently so our expenses are low. My wife is still working but probably only 2 more years.
Ah. Thanks!
j
I have a box of mementos from my career. I haven’t looked in it in years. I know there’s a resin-encased 80386 chip I got from Intel when the 386 was new. When I was at 3DO and working on the boot code for the first M2 prototype, I kept the first CD that I got to boot, and wrote “First bootable M2 disc” on it. I thought it would be an immensely interesting artifact in the future. Now almost no one has even heard of 3DO, let alone the M2.
I’m not sure where, but I have an 8" IBM diskette for the old System 36/38 first gen AS400s. It hung for years on the wall of my home office in the last house.
Of course I have my TI99/4A computer I first learned how to program on, sitting in a box in the stand I use for my Laser Printer and power tool chargers. Those are my relics.
I have a bunch of project mementos consisting of die photographs and samples of the microprocessor I worked on, and a big, dead wafer autographed by my colleagues that I got at my retirement party.
I also have got a lot of stuff from IEEE and the conference I’m involved with, but I haven’t quite retired from that yet.
I kept a battered, falling-apart indexed notebook that I used during my ten years with The NHS. I am not that great at remembering people, so there is a lot of stuff about my former colleagues in there with phone numbers that are probably long out of date.
My final job before retiring was as a truck driver. I worked for an agency at first and they provided a uniform, including a dozen blue, short-sleeved shirts. I retired in 2011 and still wear the shirts around the house or when doing chores like shopping. They must have been washed hundreds of times.
I am not close to retirement yet - maybe another 7-8 years. I have my old Lands End canvas bag with my initials and the shoulder strap, probably with a Franklin Planner inside, suffed in a closet somewhere. I have one memento from my map-making days - a poster-size map of the SF Bay Area signed by all my friends and coworkers when I left. That was probably a good 25 years ago. If I am still with the job I have now when I retire there wont be much I’d want as keepsakes. I am looking forward to not looking back!