A Whole New World

One of the countdowns I was dreading would have been the seven month run up to my pending retirement, scheduled for either June 4th or July 1st, whichever was most expedient. I had already started the countdown. With the anticipation starting to slowly build, I began dreading the time when it would be so close, that it would become a dripping water torture.

Unlike some "career" people, Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality for instance, I was not the job." Long ago, I had programmatically made my job so efficient that I would tell people that it was very much like firemen down at the firehouse. We waited for fires so that we could rush to put them out. The rest of the time we were just perfecting our art, polishing the equipment and inspecting it to make sure it was in prime, working order for when it was needed.

An odd thing happened during my countdown. My company moved my department's functions to the mother ship in Minnesota. No more fires to put out in Hoboken. Instead of a seven-month countdown, it became a 7-day countdown. Suddenly, the future started last Monday.

Since my last day on the job was a Monday, and that was last week, today was the first Monday that I would have that feeling of nowhere to go and nothing pending to do.

And it felt great. Time to take an assessment of where I came from to this point and where I want to go. Really, a whole new world of possibilities.

Gentleman, start your engine.

Back in the Saddle Again

 The feeling of a giant stone lifted off my back washed over me after I uploaded the last of 3.7 GB of files to the printer. The Hockey book was sent into cyberspace. It felt good immediately but after a good night's sleep, the feeling became wonderful. I think when you are in the middle of an intense project, one that goes on seemingly without end, you have no idea what it does to you. 

You forget any other longer-term projects. The order of importance of those "off stage" to do items fades and jumbles. Things you thought important to do next, switch places with "I'd-like-to-do-that items." And if you need real proof that your brain works on problem-solving off stage in your subconscious, I had one of those moments of clarity. A long-time problem of how to draw up a schedule using a program, a task that was daunting because of how irregular a calendar is, suddenly popped into my brain. And, very typically, it came to me while I was in the shower. Don't most of your great Ralph Kramden ideas happen there? Mine do.

That was also a signal to my brain of how much open space there is in my cranium now that the nonfiction writing gremlins had departed. That was a scary thought. Because of the immediate head-clearing catharsis of finish, my subconscious was now wide-open. I shutter to think how much it must have been working overtime .

Today, I did something I haven't done in a long time. I sat down at the piano. Recently, I did entertain thoughts that when I retire next June, I would take the piano back up in earnest.