The numbers were the part of the decision I'd assumed would be hardest. They weren't. The harder questions were about who I'd be without the role, whether I trusted myself with unstructured time, and what I actually wanted the years on the other side to look like. This section is about the part of the decision that doesn't show up on the spreadsheet.
I deliberately built no structure into these first weeks. I wanted to decompress, not swap one diary for another. What I hadn't reckoned on was where empty time actually goes when you don't fill it, which turns out to be straight into my phone.
Your body keeps the old schedule long after your diary stops. A week and a bit in, I was still bracing for meetings that no longer exist. How long does that take to fade?
A late thought on what it feels like to film my final episodes of a show that’s no longer the one I joined.
At work events, when the room filled up and the noise climbed, I would find the door. A quiet word to the few people who mattered, then gone before anyone formed a circle for a speech. The Irish goodbye. The French call the same move filer à l'anglais, slipping off English-style. I've done it for most of my working life, and my last day was no different.
A few years back I sank hundreds of hours into Fallout 4. I built it up, finished it, and bought more of it when it ran out. Now I load the old save now and again and there's nothing left to do. I've been thinking about that more than I expected to, with my last working day nearly here.
On the long drive this week I worked out exactly how long I've spent employed. Thirty-six years, near enough thirteen thousand days on one payroll or another. I'd gone looking for proof that the time added up to something. The number couldn't give it to me.
We were having dinner last night, me, my wife and my son, and the joke going round was how I'd cope in retirement without anyone asking me things. With my last working day nearly here, people have started queuing up to get the last of what's in my head before it walks out the door, and I've been making a great show of being put upon about it.
The list has been building for years: an overgrown garden, guttering that's needed replacing for a while, rooms I keep meaning to redecorate and never get to. I've given myself a few weeks after 26 June to decompress, and the obvious move is to spend them clearing that backlog. I think that would be a quiet mistake.
A team dinner conversation led to a longer thought about Rush, retirement, and what their songs have been telling me all along.
On stepping away from work, the people you're leaving behind, and the strange grief of ending something you chose to end.
The big question : Should I use an independent financial adviser?
The final countdown is no longer abstract. It's a bank holiday, two trips to the office, a long weekend away, and then the date.
Part of the FreeBefore65 Explore Early Retirement Topics series.
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If your emotional questions are tied to relationships, explore Partners, Family & Caring.
