The Before

I used to wake up on workday mornings with my mind on fire, my brain drenched in the sweat of new ideas. My thoughts were amped up with ambition, all aimed at getting things done. Work things. Career things. Paycheck generating things. However, the first thing was my 4:00AM morning runs. I didn’t need an alarm clock to get up, lace up, and hit the pavement. Running got my mind and body connected as one purposeful unit, prepared to handle the demands of the rest of my work day.

Along my running route I would solve problems that had haunted my dreams the night before. Morning sweat, like Drain-O, would unclog the channels of my creativity. They addicted me, those early morning runs. On most days I would be high on endorphins by the time I hit the shower 90 minutes later, another 7-miles churned out, another 1000 active k-calories burned. Breakfast and a kiss goodbye, and I was out the door.

Then suddenly, there was no more job to run off to. The big down-shift happened. Retirement. I stopped working, and my entire world changed.

The After

September 2021: Colorado - We both retired on the same day September 3, 2021 - Partners in Life and on the Road

Friday September 3, 2021 marked the last day I headed out the door for work. After a 38-year career as an engineer, I had taken a SNR. It's my playful turn on a very common engineering term, Signal-To-Noise ratio, which I turned into - Sabbatical with No plans of Returning. I'm still uncomfortable calling this next phase of my life, retirement. For a long time, retirement had conjured up in my mind an image of old people moving to the sunbelt, first to play golf and then to die. Yes, I live in the sunbelt, but I have not yet discovered the joys of golf, and I'm sure as heck not yet ready to die.

September 2021: Wyoming - Jenny Lake, Jackson, Cheyenne and Grand Tetons National Park

Adjusting to Retirement – Freedom With Structure

So how has the first 12 months of my retirement been? In a word – exhilarating. It’s been a change that nothing could have completely prepared me for. I simply had to experience it for myself.

While I now have plenty of freedom as to how I spend my time, one habit that I'm holding onto, is having a schedule. Without that structure, I know that would wander down the rabbit hole of complacency and restlessness.

I still have retained some of my nerdy bits, so I have “themed” each day of the week, around which I have built a daily schedule. One example are my Wednesdays. They are now my Wealth and Wellness Wednesdays. It’s the day when I do all my banking, check on our investments, and finalize important financial decisions. I also do my longest and hardest workouts on Wednesdays as well - 15 hard miles bike ride, ‘cause 15 is my favorite number and I now have the time. Wednesdays are also one of my Vegetarian and Intermittent fasting days, and when I do the bulk of my cooking for the week.

Likewise, Tuesdays are now themed as our Travel Tuesdays. We begin all our major travels on Tuesdays, and when I’m at home that’s the day I’ll do much of the pre-planning for each major trip. Nerdy, I know. But it works for me.

October 2021 - Montana: Town of West Yellowstone and Yellowstone National Park

When I’m At Home

When we are not traveling, I break my days up into two distinct periods. Mornings are my “High Energy” periods. During this time, I try to knockout three things that I value highly: my physical wellness; my spiritual/emotional wellness; and my intellectual wellness.

The first thing I do after waking up is a sweat-producing workout. Yeah, I’m still addicted to my Endorphin Highs. I still like to run, so I run 2-days a week. I supplement that with Peloton bike rides 4 times a week.

I follow my workouts with a calm inducing devotional, mainly aimed at giving thanks and to reset my gratitude meter. Gratitude is undervalued. It’s powerful. It changes your mindset. I have discovered that keeping a Gratitude Journal is like having a therapist at the tip of my pen. And it’s a lot cheaper.

My last morning session is one that engages my brain. Since retiring, I have completed my Commercial Drone Pilot certification. I’m now studying towards becoming a Certified Financial Planner (CFP). I give these activities top priority because they nourish my mind, body and soul.

The afternoons and evenings are when I down-shift a bit. This is where I lose myself to my fertile imagination. I usually alternate between a passion project and home maintenance. Hello Photoshop, FinalCut, Microsoft Word, Scrivener, my old friends. These are the tools of my creative trade.

Here I dedicate time to writing, reading, and working with my hands. My goal is to read 12 books per year, just for the simple pleasure of reading. The books that I read for learning something technical, do not count.

Sprinkled in between are several evenings of pure fun. I have discovered Pickleball y’all. More accurately, my friends Tom and Debbie, introduced me to the game. It’s halfway between Tennis and Ping-pong, and it has been feeding my dormant competitive drive, in an addictive, yet low key way. It suits my persona perfectly – it’s new, it’s competitive as I want is to be, it’s physical but not too much, and it gets me out of the house, and into a whole new social circle. Thanks Tom.

November 2021: The Arizona Desert - Hiking, Camping and enjoying the cooler temps

What’s Been Really Working

Retirement has most certainly brought on a huge changes in my routine, but I have adjusted well. Here are some things that have been definitely working for me during my first year of not doing a 9-to-5 gig anymore:

Travel and Adventuring: Many folks say that when they retire, they are going to do a lot of traveling, and many never end up doing it. They get sick, or don’t have the money, or, for heaven sakes, end up going back to working full-time. Not us. We are doing it. After a delayed start due to the pandemic, we’ve amped up our travel schedule. I had spent many years dreaming of traveling more. Doing slower travel. Checking off those bucket-list travel items. Now that we are able, we’ve been booking those flights and hitting the road.

But here is a reality Check - If you didn’t travel or like traveling while you were working, you’re not going to all of sudden start traveling when you stop working. Your leopard spots will not change all that much, simply because you may have more flexibility with your time. Your home body self will remain that home bodied self, still glued to the couch.

January 2022 - Coastal Northern California

Sleeping: I spent decades surviving on 5 to 6 hours of sleep per night. That was my rhythm, that was my routine, regardless of what the sleep experts said about needing 8 hours per night to live a healthier life. Now that I have the time, I’m getting closer to 7 to 8 hours sleep per night, and my body and mood now thanks me. At the strong urging of Spousal Unit, I did do a sleep study and discovered that suffered from a medium case of sleep-apnea. That was fixed with a custom-made Oral Appliance from an Orthodontist. It took 5 visits, but once the appliance fit and function were dialed-in, it’s been magic. By the way, a C-Pap machine was not going to work for me. And no more earplugs for Vivien!!! I happier Vivien means a happier Derrick.
Time to Help Others: Yes folks, it’s true, you do need a purpose in order to more fully enjoy life and to happily get out of bed each day. For many, work provides the getting out of bed part. I don’t know about the happiness piece though. So, what happens when you don’t have a job anymore? For me, helping others provides a meaningful portion of my purpose, and now that I have the time, helping others brings me great joy and satisfaction.

I’m studying to be a Certified Financial Planner. Not a second career, but rather to help other with their finances. Getting your finance in order is a pre-requisite to a less stressful retirement, and I enjoy helping others navigate the perplexing maze of personal finance. and the bonus is that crunching numbers feeds my brain.

I also do manual labor – helping neighbors move and install furniture, fix things, providing IT support. All this in the middle of the week at 10:00AM, now that I have the time. Helping others and while not focusing on myself has been is a wonderful way to spend my extra time.
Wellnesses: I’ve been spending some quality time just working on me. I’m done with having to prove anything to anyone. So now I’m focused on just improving me. Becoming a better version of Derrick.

o Physical Wellness: I’m running, hiking, power walking, camping, playing pickleball and staying active much more now, than I’ve done in decades. And as an added bonus, I got a steal of deal on a used Peloton right after the Pandemic was “over,” and everyone started going back to the gym. Between the Peloton and Pickleball, I’ve rediscovered my inner competitive little genie. And the results are I’m 10-lbs lighter than the day I retired.

o Intellectual Wellness: I’m studying to become a Certified Financial Planner. It sparks my curiosity, it’s mentally challenging and it helps to keep my mind sharp. I have amped-up my reading. I polished off over 12 books in 12 months. Mindset by Carol Dwerk, The Ego is the Problem by Ryan Holiday and Shoe Dog by Phil Knight has been a few of my faves. My Kindle is always loaded with 4 books - the one that I’m currently reading and 3 that are queued and waiting to be read.

o Emotional and Spiritual Wellness: I do a daily 10-minutes devotional where I focus on gratitude. Just finding things, big and small, to be thankful for, has really centered me, and has been a great way to kick start my day. Plus, amazingly, I finding that I’m not as impatient nor judgmental was I once was. I can actually, within reason, now roll with the flow, which is a brand-new world for me. For decades I was hard-wired to be results driven, conditioned to be continuously cranking on that fly-wheel of success. Maybe it’s all that Netflix and Chillin’ that we also have more time for these day :)

What’s Not Been Working

There are a few things that are not working for me in retirement:

Our Travel Budget: We have blown up our travel spending budget big time. We’re traveling more frequently, staying longer on each trip and spending more on travel than me and my nerdy budget-conscious bean-counting brain had budgeted for, prior to retirement. I know that this is a first world problem and I’m not complaining. For the first time in my life, I’m getting comfortable spending more money to have more fun and experiences. By the way, Spousal Unit, has no such problem. Just saying.

Writing That Book: Before retirement I got, what I considered, 3 great ideas for writing 3 books, and was convinced that by the end of the first year of retirement I would already be a published author. To date, I have made very little progress towards writing the first one. Problem is, I’m having too much fun living my life, that I have not sat down and dedicated the type of time that is required to write a good enough book, that I would enjoy reading. I’m thinking that in 2023 I might start one, or at a minimum write a high-quality short story. Only time will tell.
Thinking of My Mortality: Over the last 12-months I’ve had a few Loved Ones and important people in my life have pass-away. Some have died way too early. And with that, I have been thinking of my own mortality much more so than in the past. Retirement it turns out, has not been quite the sangria-la I had once imagined it to be. The realities, the fragilities and the anxieties of life remain, and now I have more time to think about them. I’m still very much a work in progress, working hard on living in the moment.
That Garage Cleanup: 12-Months into retirement and my garage is still an unqualified mess. And so are those junk drawers. I’ve gotten as far as getting my closet straightened out, but that’s it. Those house cleanup projects that I once thought I would knock out within the first six months of retirement remains undone, with no finish line in sight.
Spontaneity: I once thought that after retiring I would morph into this flexible spontaneous human being. One who would grab last minute travel deals, be off to hither and yonder on a minute’s notice, decide at 6:00PM where to go for dinner. Nope. Heck No. Vivien and I still plan our days, our weeks, our months and indeed our years. Yeah, that’s a plural - years. We have not shaken that chronic planning disease. We’re hopeless to spontaneity cause, and have no plans to change that.

To Change or Not to Change

One of the retirement changes that we are not making is moving to another part of the country. When we envisioned our dream after-work life, remaining close to family and friends and the wonderful Arizona weather (for 9 months out of the year), remained a top priority. For the first several years of our retirement, we will stay in the same house that has been our home for 20-plus years now. We intend to travel to cooler beach locations during the hot summer months. However, we have sacrificed the dream of owning a beach home, for the flexibility of summering on each coast. Spending a summer in Alaska is also on our bucket list. The novelty of traveling to new places has supplanted our desire to settle down in one place, even if that place is only yards away from our collective love – the beach.

I’m not sure if Vivien has totally comes to terms with the no beach-home decision, so our plans may change in the future. To be determined.

Travel Tuesdays

Speaking of adventures, I’m now a total sucker for our Travel Tuesdays dates. We love them. We usually ease out of our driveway after rush-hour, and by nightfall, who knows where we’ll end up. In April we ended up in Big Bear Lake, California, where the snow had not yet melted from those valleys at the foothill of the Sierras. In May, it was Moab, that outdoor mecca that I had heard so much about but didn’t visit for any length of time before now. We took our time getting there, driving through the back-roads of southern Utah, where sun drenched red rocks burnt our retinas, mile after beautiful mile. Road trips, taken slowly by car, have become our go-to excuse to get out of the house. From the photography overloaded experience that is the Hot-Air Balloon Festival in Albuquerque New Mexico, to the out of way beauty of watching Bisons gently strolling by our car as we ate lunch in Yellowstone National Park in Montana, our Travel Tuesdays have taken us far and wide.

August 2022 - Southern California: San Diego

Retirement Dreams

When I was a younger man, I didn’t believe in the concept of purgatory. But now as I approach my 7th decade of life, I’m more comfortable to slip into an in-between Purgatorial state of mind: no longer young enough to be wild; but still young enough to have wild-ass dreams. And oh boy, have I been dreaming.

I have been dreaming of hiking from Katmandu to Mount Everest’s base camp, not to climb, but simply to stare up at the walls of ice and snow in awesome wonder. I’ve been dreaming of waking up early to see the sunrise over the Serengeti plains, amid the wildebeest migration season, where the Apex predator is a Lioness with hungry cubs to feed. I’ve been dreaming of Iceland and the fjords of Norway. I’ve been dreaming of getting back to New Zealand, perhaps to catch the spirit of one of my favorite travel song - Stephen Still’s Southern Cross:

When you see the Southern Cross for the first time

You understand now why you came this way

'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small

But it's as big as the promise, the promise of a comin' day

The day is coming when I will no longer live in this carbon life form here on earth. But in the meantime, I’ve been living my dream, and also been dreaming, that before I die, I want to do all these, and so much more.

Our Precious Gift

Our Christmas gift came in August, via the stork of our Daughter and Bonus Son, with the arrival of our first grandchild, our grandson Kyler. The first 12-months of retirement has been quite a spectacular year. But his arrival has been the greatest experience of them all. Being a father is life long journey of love. Being a grandpa is an emotional expansion of the heart that I can’t put into words. I simply can’t. You grandparents out there know what I’m talking about…..

Year Two

The 2nd year of retirement will be one of grand-parenting, traveling and visiting friends and family. From The Keys to Istanbul, Athens to Edinburgh, we’ll be hitting the roads again this year. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll write a blog or two about it….