Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Working Way too Hard?

05/04/2011

I think not!  Just this week I let my boss know I will retire at the end of January 2012.  I will have had 29 years with this company at that time.  It has been simply a wonderful ride, but as with most things in ones life, there is a time when one must come to grips with their relevancy to it all, and I have reached it.  My mind works as if in the 80’s, and my company in a different century.  I am just not able to deal with today’s business model as I should and the reality of the times.  It is time I hung it up, as it were, and I have no regrets.

January 17, 1983, was my first day with this company.  Oh, how excited I was.  I made $33,000 that year; more than I had ever made in a single year.  I even won a 10-day vacation in Hawaii in a sales contest that included $500.00 cash, airfare for two, a rental car and hotel accommodations.  It was a fantabulous move for me to associate myself with the company and the good ride continued lo these many years. But it is definitely time for me to go. 

All but two of the sales reps that work me were born 30-years ago or less.  At sixty-eight, I have outlasted many of my peers by a number of years.  There only two people currently working with this company older than I.  Both of them are very likely to die at their desks one of these days, something I wish to avoid.

This is a bittersweet time for me, one I have always hope to avoid, but the reality of it all is that I am more than ready.  Ready because I believe it is right for me and more than right for my company.  I simply have lost my lust for the business and, moreover, my lust for working. This does not mean I won’t work as I always have, I am still being paid to do the job.

I really don’t have a clue as to what I will do in retirement, and, frankly, I don’t care.  I think I could sit in my favorite chair for hours and just meditate.  For some innocuous reason, I think about these days in about building bird houses from time to time.  Seems very odd to me since I have built but one in the whole of my life, and in the vernacular of the day all I can say, WTF.  What the hell do I have to look forward to?  Just the rest of my life full of The Best Days Evers, and a chance to live out the rest of it with The Nancy.

And that is all I have to say about that…