Thanks. And now that I have thought about it a bit, I think I will concentrate on the few worthwhile things that I would like to do in the next few weeks, rather than gloating over the things I won’t do. It may make a small difference for some people still working.
I spent much of my last month documenting like crazy. I’m not sure anyone ever read it, but they could have.
I did much the same. Trying to brain dump a decade’s accumulated knowledge in 3 weeks.
When I came back a few months later as a consultant I learned that due to large turnover after my departure nobody still working there even knew that the internal documentation repository existed. But I found my final doc was still right where I’d stored it.
The consulting gig did not last long. As dysfunctional as they’d been when I left, it was 5x worse now. And despite adopting a very consultant-y “not my circus not my monkeys” attitude it was just too depressing.
Today I did a retirement acceptance thing.
Every 6 months I need to get a medical exam from an FAA-approved private physician. Because I’ve got some existing medical issues, even though I moved to Florida 9 years ago, twice each year I still fly back to see my old doctor in St. Louis. He’s better suited to defeating the FAA paperwork monster.
This morning I saw him, and his clinical assistant, for the last time. I’ll age out and have no need of my medical before the next one is due. This also means this probably represents my last visit to what had been my home city for 20 years. My wife from that era has died and my current wife has no connection to, and an active disinterest in, anything to do with the old city.
Had a last dinner with some old friends from that era, and drove and walked around for a few hours saying goodbye for most likely the last time to a lot of once-familiar haunts. Ate a couple of local delicacies not really dietarily appropriate for me any more. And generally tried to put a positive spin on putting a bottom line under a big slice of the middle of my life. You can return but you can’t go back.
I’m writing this while riding home to FL in the cockpit of another airline’s jet. They happened to have a more convenient schedule than my employer has. That’s another privilege I’ll lose with retirement and probably won’t use again between now and then. So another “last”.
Sorta wistful and sorta “I’ve done enough; let the kids take over while I sleep under a palm tree all day and chase my woman around the hut all night.”
I’m experiencing a lot of “last times”, too. I’ve been at this job for 23 years and there are many.
Last night I had a disturbing dream and I’ll record it here before the effects wear off.
I dreamt I was cast in a play, and the play was a transparent knockoff of Alien. I was taking the part which was basically Ripley. Since I was familiar with the general story arc and really admire the Ripley character, I felt I could handle this part. But the play was about to go on, and I realized that I hadn’t even seen a script or had a rehearsal. I was feeling dread, both from not knowing my part and because the xenomorph in the play was feeling more and more real and deadly to me as curtain time approached.
I don’t need to be Freud to analyze this. The approach of retirement makes me feel overwhelmed with all the crap I have to do, since we’ll also be moving and trying to figure out Medicare/Medigap/Advantage, and deal with old age issues simultaneously. I have no roadmap to guide me or experience to draw on and am feeling distinctly non-Ripley as the deadline looms. That deadline is just after this year’s profit-sharing is deposited into my 401(k), which should take place about the end of May.
Deep breaths, deep breaths.
Were you nekkid? Most anxiety dreams can always be made worse if you are nekkid in them. If you had clothes on in the dream, you have nothing to worry about.
I am working on less than two hours of sleep last night. I should be past the point of caring, but my managers are doing something colossally boneheaded at work that will affect morale here long after I am gone. But for some reason I do care, and I was pretty much awake and livid until 4 am. One month can’t come soon enough. Oh, and my computer has been down for a day and a half thus far this week, so the stuff I wanted to do isn’t getting done.
Just saw this, and this thread jumped into my mind.
