Tekward said:
What (if anything) do you miss about the job?
Travel, frequent flyer miles, training, benefits, T1 net access, free pens & coffee
?
Travel? I enjoyed meeting folks and making friends of people who had previously just been a voice over the phone. Saw a few sights, got taken out to lots of interesting restaurants and clubs, but the rest of it was just a pain after the novelty of traveling on somebody else's nickel wore off.
Frequent flyer miles - Okay, that was a decent bennie but not worth working for a living.
Training - It was useful for work - but I don't do work anymore so I'm trying to forget as much as I can.
T1, free pens, coffee - Cable at home is faster than sharing T1 with 3,000 people, the pens were cheap and I always bought my own, and we paid for our own coffee.
I missed some of the work stuff (for a short time) when I would see a story in the paper about a problem my former co-workers were grappling with. My mind would just automatically start mapping out a solution. Now, when I bother to read those stories, all I think is "Thank God that's not
my problem", and move on.
What I still miss though, is how easy it was to keep in touch with work friends. When you were always running across people on the elevator or in meetings, it was easy to say "hey, let's go eat lunch" or "want to stop for a beer?" Now, I still keep in touch with people and we still socialize, but it all has to be coordinated "Tuesday is no good for me, I'm playing golf - how about Thursday?" Coordinating that with other retirees can be a bigger pain because they're like me - they have plenty of time to do
stuff, but they're all off doing that
stuff all over the map. "No, we can't meet then, I'll be on a dive trip in Florida that week."