Today marked an interesting milestone in my life. In addition to it being the anniversary of my 32nd year of employment service, February 10th, 2007 also marks the day that I can retire from the company I work for with a full pension. In some respects I actually missed the day, as I was travelling from San Francisco to Kuala Lumpur and of course you have to cross the date line so I left Friday morning, February 9th and arrived at the hotel at one in the morning February 11th here in Malaysia !
As several folks have pointed out to me, from here on in I’m effectively just working for a portion of my salary, as if I were to retire I’d actually be paid quite a good salary to sit at home and do nothing ! I’ll be the first to admit that it does feel a bit odd, as over the years I have worked with many folks who couldn’t wait for their first available retirement opportunity to arrive and who were desperate to leave, and here am I marking the event by just being on my way to another meeting ! Of course it would be an easy decision if I didn’t so thoroughly enjoy what I do, or if my health were poor. Naturally business priorities can change, but at the moment, at least the role I have is one that the company supports having. And I have told my manager, that I’ll be gone pretty quick if the content of the role became uninteresting or were changed significantly.
We’ll just have to see what happens – within the computer support and delivery area we are currently restructuring yet again, so as always, time will tell the story !