Ether is a good start if you decide you don't want to totally go it alone.
Thanks for the suggestion but I'd rather stick with a nice chardonnay!
Seriously everyone, I appreciate all the suggestions and am taking them all to heart!
The idea from pb4uski about setting aside time when I'm not available sounds so good. I'd be happy to start with no phone calls in the evening! Last night my boss called at 6 pm when I was exercising on my treadmill. I let it go to voicemail, so she texted me. I ignored it. After my husband and I had dinner, I called her back at about 8 pm. SHE TALKED UNTIL 11:15!
I just sigh and think, well, she's paying me $80 an hour to listen to her. Not exactly psychiatrist rates but not too bad! I wonder if she realizes that she wastes probably 25% of the time she's paying me for?
Here's another example of the difficulty with setting limits... Last May my husband and I spent the month in England and Scotland. We planned the trip in February and knowing that I would not want to be working halftime while trying to tour the UK I sent an email to the CEO letting her know I was planning the trip and asking if I could drop back to a 20% schedule for that month only, so I could handle email, keep things moving, etc. She wrote back saying that would be fine.
A week before leaving, we were on our regular weekly staff phone call and she reminded everyone that I was leaving for the UK so she wanted everybody to think about what projects they wanted me to take on and get them to me before I left. I reminded her that I was only going to be working the equivalent of 1 day a week, so there wouldn't be a lot of time for project work. She said I never told her I was cutting back my hours! This was on a call with everyone listening! I reminded her I had emailed her in February and she agreed to the reduction. She said she had no idea I wasn't going to keep up my regular schedule. After the call, I searched my email and forwarded her the entire exchange, including her explicit agreement. She responded that if she had known we'd be so busy she would not have agreed. But I found out later from one of my co-workers that the whole time I was gone she continually made comments about how I never told her I was cutting back my hours.
So you can see the problem about setting limits. I'm working for someone not completely rational who needs to be "in control". If I make myself available, tell her what she wants to hear, and am very responsive 18 hours a day by phone/email/text I can keep this nice gig going. But it is very stressful and I'd rather be enjoying life. So it might be 20 hours of work but 7/24 commitment.
I just finished watching all the morning shows and looking at how the stock market has lost 700 points in the last 2 weeks and am thinking this looks like a bad time to make the retirement move...