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.
May 2026 : 5 min read - Part of the My Personal Journey to Early Retirement series at FreeBefore65.
Twenty-one working days. That was the figure when I checked the calendar this morning.
It's a familiar unit in working life. Annual leave is measured in working days. Two weeks off is ten working days. We've all counted that way every time we book a holiday. But in the final stretch before you stop, the unit takes on a different weight. It isn't the unit you're spending. It's the unit that's running out.
Let me break down what twenty-one working days actually contains.
A long weekend holiday already booked, somewhere with my wife. That's a few days off the count straight away.
The bank holiday tomorrow, with thirty degrees forecast. Another one gone before I'm back at the desk.
Two trips to the office in the whole remaining period. One ordinary, one for the handover of the laptop and the fob and the lanyard. The fob is the small piece of plastic I've used to enter the office for the last 8 years. Soon I won't be needing it. The trip to give it back is on the calendar.
A few more weeks of remote working at a desk that's still in my own home, in front of a screen full of Teams meetings I'm gradually being released from.
A final day. The 26th of June. Then it stops.
The number sounds significant when you say "twenty-one working days." Twenty-one of anything is meaningful, especially when it's days. But when you break it down into the actual events, the countdown becomes much smaller. A holiday I'm taking anyway. A bank holiday I'd have anyway. A few weeks of low-friction remote working. Two trips to the office. One ending date.
The Village is releasing me in stages. Most of the remaining days don't even feel like Village days. They feel like home days that happen to have my work laptop open on them.
What's actually left
The two office trips are the moments that feel like markers.
The first one is for a meeting that could have been a Teams call but apparently mustn't be. The hidden purpose, the one I'll actually care about, is the chance to say goodbye to my two direct reports in person.
Over the past few years, our small team has developed a robust working relationship, effectively managing my hybrid role. It has been incredibly rewarding to witness how we've all contributed to each other's growth.
The meeting itself is the wrapper. The meal afterwards is the substance. I'll enjoy it. I'll also feel the sadness of our last in-person time together.
The second trip is the ending. Laptop and accessories in a bag, name badge and fob in an envelope, a signed form acknowledging the return. There'll probably be the leaving do, the necessary but slightly embarrassing ritual that every UK office has, with the card and the speech and the awkward gathering of people who've known me for different lengths of time. I'm not looking forward to that part. I'll get through it.
After that I'll drive home. The fob that's been on my lanyard for 8 years won't be there. The lanyard's gone. The laptop's no longer on the home office table.
The question I keep getting
“How long have you got left?”
It's the question that comes up in most conversations now. On Teams calls before the meeting starts, in passing on the office staircase, in the small talk that fills the gaps between work. People ask it with a particular tone, intrigue mainly, a hint of jealousy underneath, and something else I'm only now starting to recognise.
The intrigue is about the act itself. Stepping out of the system rather than being retired by it. People want to know what that feels like, what it took to decide, what comes next. "What Are You Going to Do When You Retire?" - The Uncomfortable Honest Answer
The jealousy is the obvious bit. Most people I work with would like to do what I'm doing. The figures don't work for them yet. They’re not as far into their career. Or they like aspects of work too much to leave. Or they haven't made the decision even though the figures do work. Either way, watching someone else do it surfaces something.
The thing underneath the intrigue and jealousy is harder to name. It's something like dread. They're noticing, in advance, that I'm going to be a space rather than a presence. The colleague they've known for years, the person they'd ask the questions to, the thread of continuity, the office confidante. After June 26th, none of that. They'll notice it. Eventually they won't.
I'm not minimising the value of that space. The team I've worked with closely will feel it sharper than the wider organisation. But organisations are absorbent, and people are replaceable in the structural sense even when they're not in the personal one. Six months on, the team will function. A year later, someone new will be there. Eighteen months on, the questions will go to someone else.
That's both the comforting and the strange part. The dread underneath the question isn't really about me. It's about the fact that people leave, and that workplaces absorb the absence faster than feels right when you're inside one.
The countdown changes shape close up
When I started thinking about leaving, eighteen months ago, the countdown was years. Then it was months. Then it was weeks. Now it's two trips and a date.
The closer the date gets, the smaller the unit becomes. Days, then hours, eventually minutes. Some part of me thinks I'll be counting in minutes on the morning of the 26th, watching the clock on the laptop that won't be mine for much longer.
The other part of me notices that I haven't been counting forwards for a while. I've been counting backwards. Eighteen months until the resignation. Three months notice. Twenty-one working days left. Two trips. The countdown isn't building up to something. It's running down.
There's a song that keeps surfacing while I think about all this. The Final Countdown by the Swedish “hair-metal” band Europe, who had a minor hit in 1986. I was eighteen and it was the year I left school for the next phase of my life. As a fan of hard rock and heavy metal at the time, the song was too soft for my taste, but it did one useful thing for me and my friends. It dragged rock music onto Radio 1 and Top of the Pops, which helped open the door for the heavy metal discos we'd go to in the years that followed.
Forty years later, the title's acquired a new meaning. I'm counting down to stopping work, where I was once counting down to starting it.
What comes after - 🎵 "We're heading to Venus" 🎵
I may not be heading to Venus, but I don't have a polished answer for what comes next. Some readers will have noticed this in earlier posts. I keep using "for peace of mind" as a non-answer when people ask, in the McGoohan (No.6 from The Prisoner) style. The truth is closer to: I have some ideas and I'm not in a hurry to commit to them publicly.
What I do know is that the 27th of June will be the first day in decades when there isn't a meeting notification, a company laptop or a deadline waiting for me or a question that could have been answered with common sense.
That's the bit I'm interested in. The mechanics of the final twenty-one working days are just the running-down clock between now and that morning.
- Early Retirement - The Hardest Part of Leaving Isn't the Leap. It's the Goodbye
- Be Seeing You: The Prisoner, Portmeirion and Why I Finally Understand Number 6
Part of the My Personal Journey to Early Retirement series at FreeBefore65.
Tony writes about his personal journey to early retirement at freebefore65.co.uk.
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