James Pearl Thinks Blogging is Dead

Norm said:
What I Learned in (Pre) Retirement

It turned out that I had 3 weeks off between the jobs, which you could say was unemployment but what I consider to be pre-retirement. It was a sort of dry run on what life might be like in a few years. While I wasn't entirely removed from the job thing because I was doing lots of interviews, I did generally take it easy and just try to enjoy it. So here is what I learned in my time of pre-retirement.

1. Doing it while your spouse works is less enjoyable. I found myself sort of aimless most days with nobody to hang out with. I ended up getting coffee with Kirt a few times but for the most part, I sort of tooled around the house not really driven to do anything significant. So you should plan to both retire at the same time. Note that if it were possible to mountain bike, this would have been less of an issue.

2. I spend a lot of money. This is not entirely true but man, it's easy to spend money when you have lots of free time.

3. You need a purpose. It's pretty obvious upon reflection that work does give us a purpose. I think this is correlated to point 1. But I often found myself not knowing exactly what to do with myself. If D had been off too, I'm sure we would have gone skiing. But being solo, I didn't know what to do with myself most days. I didn't really feel like taking on any major home projects in the time off.

4. Not working is fucking great. Do I need to explain this?

5. I want to retire having done something useful with my end-of-career. I left the last job with a really shitty taste in my mouth. We briefly talked about my never going back to work but with the 3 kids still needing to go through college, it would have been a dumb idea. But more than that, I want to use the last years of my career to do something somewhat meaningful and productive. So far, this job is looking to be a good fit for that. I want to actually make a difference to someone before I hang up my skates.

I think that's enough. I'm not shedding any great truth with item #4 above. But the other ones were a little unexpected and became pretty clear in those 3 weeks. Again, if I could have ridden outside I think it would have been a little different. But I think the conclusions would have generally been the same if my full time job would have been to ride bikes.

I know Tim recently retired, so I would be curious what he thinks about all this.

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Oh, so now I have to examine my life too? Thanks a lot, pal. 😀

First of all, #4.

#1. For me this is true. My wife has to work until June of 2027 to get her small (but not insignificant) pension, so I'm solo retired for now. I sometimes resist planning fun things to do during the day because I feel a bit guilty doing them without my wife. I think once it gets nicer out it will be a little less of an issue.

#2. I do find it's easy to spend more when you can spend endless hours looking for cool stuff on the web (and while planning for a cross-country bike trip in a few months). However, my financial guy keeps telling me that we need to transition more into "spending" mode vs. "savings" mode now that I'm retired. I just read Die With Zero, and I really connected with the idea that we should plan to spend the money that we spent a lifetime saving to have fun and have great experiences while we are still in good enough health/fitness to enjoy them. Another thing that stuck with me is the "Living Legacy" concept where you give money to people/charities while you're still alive, so that you can actually enjoy the effects of your gifts.

#3. While I do think that you need a purpose in retirement, I think that purpose can be "find experiences that make you happy", whatever that may be, rather than find a new job in retirement. When I retired, one question I was asked a lot was "Are you going to work part-time and consult?" My answer was "Absolutely not, especially not right away". I knew for me, that would be a short track right back to working full time. I wanted to make a clean break from working, and if I think I want to do something else in the future there is always that option. My plan since I retired is to ride my bike more, join a gym, maybe do some volunteering, spend more time with family/friends, and plan my bike trip. Once I get done with the trip, I plan to spend some more time on trail maintenance and continuing to help out with Habitat for Humanity when I can.

#4. Duh, see above.

#5. Obviously, I think this is really personality dependent. While I loved what did during my engineering career, it never really defined who I was, or what I felt my identity was. I know that many of the people that I used to work with really don't have many hobbies or interests other than work, and that kind of defines them. One of my good friends is struggling right now with the retirement decision because he thinks of himself as the "laser guy" and he wonders what he will be after retirement. I was lucky enough to have some good projects that I delivered near the end of my career, so I wasn't too bothered leaving the last one unfinished. I considered trying to finish out that program, but the schedule and customer were so unreasonable, I just knew I was signing up for another year of pure pain/hell. My stress levels have have gone from off the charts, to almost non-existent.

I understand if you still enjoy the work and need the money (college is crazy expensive), but I would advise retiring as soon as you can if you can make it work. I know you guys seem to be very good at finding and following through on those experiences that make you happy, so my guess is that you'll have a blast in retirement.
 
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Ah vacation planning! Fav topic. I get an idea, look it up, book all the logistics, and then tell Mark. Sometimes I try to convince other people to come with us. I know what I WANT to do (skiing, hiking, biking, Europe) and then when I finally plan its very spontaneous.
 
Igloos

I believe I mentioned in another post that I want to build an igloo someday. After the first storm, Simon and I started constructing a sort-of-igloo out of the top-layer chunks that had formed on the top of the snow. This was a month ago, and it really started to resemble a castle tower more than an igloo. As the snow melted, we started to toss softer stuff to try and close the gaps but it was in vain as the snow was just not right to work with. It eventually melted down to about 1.5 feet tall before the next storm came along.

This past week Simon got right to it and I went out shortly after and for 2 days we put together what I would never in good conscious call an igloo. But we started to bridge the top and it was forming what might be, to a somewhat blind person, an almost igloo. Unfortunately, overnight it collapsed and we were left with a sort of rounded wall.

A few days days ago Simon came home and started filling it in, something I mentioned to him in passing one day. I followed suit and before long, we had a mound. Below is what we are left with. This picture is taken from the office with little frame of reference. But at its height it was just about 5 feet tall and nearly 10 feet wide. It has since melted a bit but we have ourselves a solid mound of snow here.

His goal was to have this last until April 1. After seeing the weather forecast this coming weekend, he has dialed that back to having some remnant of it last through the ski trip, which we return from on March 14th. I'm not sure it'll last that long given what this coming weekend looks like.

I considered cutting the edges of this and making is more rounded like a tower proper. But I 've run out of snow making energy. Next time we may just start with the biggest pile we can make, then dig an igloo out of it. Again, that's not something I would promote sleeping in. But it would possibly check the box of building an igloo. Or at least an igloo-shaped snow construction.

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Boxes & Bottles

The past few weeks I have done the following 2 things:

1. Pooped in a box
2. Peed in a cup

The first was for my routine check-up and the second was for my new job. It turns out that all the results were good. That is all. I have nothing else to say because sometimes you just have an idea, such as pooping in a box and peeing in a cup. And you go with it. And then you realize there's nothing else to add.

Oh wait! I did not do those 2 things at the same time. I think I should have tried to do that but I think the pee drug test people would have objected to this attempt. So it goes.

I really like this picture below. This is in Rutland, from about 10 days ago. It was the Friday night we drove up to the lodge last time. It had been snowing for a bunch of hours at this point. It was one of those really quiet nights and there were very few cars on the road. Like a perfect snowy night. We were walking to Tokyo House to get sushi. It was good. Then we drove to the lodge.

It was lovely. Much more lovely than the poop in a box. You can't have a picture of that. The end.

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Norm said:
Boxes & Bottles

The past few weeks I have done the following 2 things:

1. Pooped in a box
2. Peed in a cup

The first was for my routine check-up and the second was for my new job. It turns out that all the results were good. That is all. I have nothing else to say because sometimes you just have an idea, such as pooping in a box and peeing in a cup. And you go with it. And then you realize there's nothing else to add.

Oh wait! I did not do those 2 things at the same time. I think I should have tried to do that but I think the pee drug test people would have objected to this attempt. So it goes.

I really like this picture below. This is in Rutland, from about 10 days ago. It was the Friday night we drove up to the lodge last time. It had been snowing for a bunch of hours at this point. It was one of those really quiet nights and there were very few cars on the road. Like a perfect snowy night. We were walking to Tokyo House to get sushi. It was good. Then we drove to the lodge.

It was lovely. Much more lovely than the poop in a box. You can't have a picture of that. The end.

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I will think of this post when I get home and bring the package containing my poop box into the house. Will think about it again as I'm pooping in the box.
 
Brussels

Next up in my series of Painting European Cities I Have Visited in Order is Brussels. So far we have:

Rome
Paris
London
and now Brussels
next up will be Amsterdam

This is far and away the most complicated one I've done so far. I'm sure it took longer than the previous 3 combined. I think it shows. I very much like this one. In all it took nearly 3 months of chipping away at it. I bought the most complicated version of it, and no doubt I got my money's worth. This is probably for the best since I pretty much ripped through the first 2 and needed to make them a tad more time-consuming. I enjoy this but I don't need to crank out 1 of these per week.

As a reminder, these are paint by numbers. While it's a more complex paint by numbers, it's still all drawn out for you, and with a little lot of patience, you can make it look like you're really good, when in fact you're just patient.

I will take a break before I kick off Amsterdam to paint up the new ski hill signs we'll be hitting. up next week. We have at least 3 new hills on tap, possibly 4. We'll see. But at this point, those ski hill signs take a day, maybe 2. So we'll be cracking out Amsterdam before you know it.

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Norm said:
Brussels

Next up in my series of Painting European Cities I Have Visited in Order is Brussels. So far we have:

Rome
Paris
London
and now Brussels
next up will be Amsterdam

This is far and away the most complicated one I've done so far. I'm sure it took longer than the previous 3 combined. I think it shows. I very much like this one. In all it took nearly 3 months of chipping away at it. I bought the most complicated version of it, and no doubt I got my money's worth. This is probably for the best since I pretty much ripped through the first 2 and needed to make them a tad more time-consuming. I enjoy this but I don't need to crank out 1 of these per week.

As a reminder, these are paint by numbers. While it's a more complex paint by numbers, it's still all drawn out for you, and with a little lot of patience, you can make it look like you're really good, when in fact you're just patient.

I will take a break before I kick off Amsterdam to paint up the new ski hill signs we'll be hitting. up next week. We have at least 3 new hills on tap, possibly 4. We'll see. But at this point, those ski hill signs take a day, maybe 2. So we'll be cracking out Amsterdam before you know it.

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Nice, I'll be at the Grand Place in Brussels for a day next month. Pictures look really neat.
 
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