Jager
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2012
- Messages
- 103
... 'tis better, in most respects.
My last day was on Monday, 6/2. That day, as were the days and weeks leading up to it, was rather surreal. After decades of work, of being utterly beholden to my employer for economic security, of having this heavily laden structure of schedule and responsibility imposed upon me, the notion of being free of all that seemed... fantastical. Even after I had given notice and even as the last day slowly approached.
Well, talk about falling into the briar patch.
Like many here, I have long been very detail-oriented with respect to all things financial. I love the markets. I love investing. I'm fascinated by the complexities of human behavior which inform it. I love the math.
What lay behind that years-long near obsession, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, was the distant hope of becoming free. Of wrenching that bloodied scepter from the hands of those that have long wielded it and tossing it to the ground. Of turning my narrowed eyes upon them and quietly averring "never again."
You could run the numbers. You could turn the concept around in your mind. You could imagine it. It was a rational thing, after all. But emotionally, actually achieving it seemed phantasmagorical. A dream.
Surreal indeed.
Only two weeks in, I'm a very junior member of the retireati. But what I can say is that it is both different and better than what I had imagined.
I thought, from having heard from so many ahead of me, that I might have a period of transition to go through. For me, it didn't really seem to take any time at all. The first days held a quiet, relaxed clarity. And the first Sunday evening - when I rightly might have expected, out of habit, to still feel a tug of the old blues, like I had every other Sunday since I've been an adult - I felt instead nothing but a wash of quiet satisfaction.
I can offer that motorcycle rides during the week have a very different character than do those Saturday-Sunday jaunts.
Being able to go to bed when you want, get up when you want, and take a nap whenever you want, is one of the finer pleasures of life. And getting eight hours of sleep after a lifetime of being shorted... well, you just feel better all the time.
What I didn't expect is that my love of finance would so quickly be put in a box. I'm two issues behind on my subscription to Grant's Interest Rate Observer. The stack of The Economist and Fortune magazines is growing. And I haven't visited here - my favorite place on the web - in two weeks. I have no doubt I'll get back to these things. But I find it curious that something that I loved so deeply, for so long, became somehow different once it was no longer the means towards an end.
This morning at breakfast my wife asked what I was going to do today. I thought about it for a moment, then replied "I think I'll go take some pictures."
Indeed. So I'm going to wrap this up, grab up my Leica's, and go find something interesting from which to make art.
Tomorrow I'm going to climb on the Harley and head off to West Virginia for a couple days. Because a road trip is always a good thing.
And because I can.
My last day was on Monday, 6/2. That day, as were the days and weeks leading up to it, was rather surreal. After decades of work, of being utterly beholden to my employer for economic security, of having this heavily laden structure of schedule and responsibility imposed upon me, the notion of being free of all that seemed... fantastical. Even after I had given notice and even as the last day slowly approached.
Well, talk about falling into the briar patch.
Like many here, I have long been very detail-oriented with respect to all things financial. I love the markets. I love investing. I'm fascinated by the complexities of human behavior which inform it. I love the math.
What lay behind that years-long near obsession, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, was the distant hope of becoming free. Of wrenching that bloodied scepter from the hands of those that have long wielded it and tossing it to the ground. Of turning my narrowed eyes upon them and quietly averring "never again."
You could run the numbers. You could turn the concept around in your mind. You could imagine it. It was a rational thing, after all. But emotionally, actually achieving it seemed phantasmagorical. A dream.
Surreal indeed.
Only two weeks in, I'm a very junior member of the retireati. But what I can say is that it is both different and better than what I had imagined.
I thought, from having heard from so many ahead of me, that I might have a period of transition to go through. For me, it didn't really seem to take any time at all. The first days held a quiet, relaxed clarity. And the first Sunday evening - when I rightly might have expected, out of habit, to still feel a tug of the old blues, like I had every other Sunday since I've been an adult - I felt instead nothing but a wash of quiet satisfaction.
I can offer that motorcycle rides during the week have a very different character than do those Saturday-Sunday jaunts.
Being able to go to bed when you want, get up when you want, and take a nap whenever you want, is one of the finer pleasures of life. And getting eight hours of sleep after a lifetime of being shorted... well, you just feel better all the time.
What I didn't expect is that my love of finance would so quickly be put in a box. I'm two issues behind on my subscription to Grant's Interest Rate Observer. The stack of The Economist and Fortune magazines is growing. And I haven't visited here - my favorite place on the web - in two weeks. I have no doubt I'll get back to these things. But I find it curious that something that I loved so deeply, for so long, became somehow different once it was no longer the means towards an end.
This morning at breakfast my wife asked what I was going to do today. I thought about it for a moment, then replied "I think I'll go take some pictures."
Indeed. So I'm going to wrap this up, grab up my Leica's, and go find something interesting from which to make art.
Tomorrow I'm going to climb on the Harley and head off to West Virginia for a couple days. Because a road trip is always a good thing.
And because I can.
