Entering phase 3

Retirement Life

It's early 2017. A full year since retirement, and Vacation Time has been fun. But in the winter, it's too cold in my garage to do woodworking, so I started thinking about, "what else can I do"? I did a bit of trolling on some job sites, using search words like, "occasional" and "temporary". I even reached out to a friend who does brand work, to see if they needed anyone to help out once in a while. I quickly realized that while I had marketable skills, the ad hoc level of work that I was willing to do was simply too ground level for me. e.g. manning a registration desk at a conference was not something I was ready to put myself through.

So a couple of months later, I'm at a cocktail party, and run into an old friend. Talk quickly turns to what I'm up to, and after finding out that I'm retired, she says, "you should be auditioning for commercials!". Yeah right. That's like being a real actor. I suggest that I might be up for something a little more basic, like extra work. So she referred me to a friend who runs a background (BG) agency. I sign up, get some photos taken, and literally a couple of weeks later, I'm on Supergirl!

What the heck?!? Yes, on my first day as a BG, I was pulled into two scenes where I either sat next to, or interacted directly with the actors. What a trip! Ok, so it's not a show that I would normally watch, and the acting is, well, not that great. But for a former IT professional, this is a significant departure from my daily activities.

Ok, truth be told, there is a ton of sitting around, waiting in an area called background holding. You receive a call time the night before with some wardrobe instructions, and after you check in with the background wrangler(s) and sign some paperwork, you get processed by wardrobe; this usually means having the costumer look you over, and if necessary, have you change into something different. Then you go through the hair and makeup department, and then you wait. And wait. Sometimes, the wrangler will keep you informed of what is happening on-set, sometimes you have no idea what is happening. But you meet other BGs, and often strike up conversation about other shows or BG activities.

After what might have been a couple of hours, or sometimes half a day, you get called to set. The BGs stand off to the side, and an Assistant Director, or sometimes one of the wranglers will give you instructions on what to do when they call for action. For the most part, you really just behave normally, except that you have to mime conversation. Whatever action you are performing, walking down the street, sitting in an audience, or being a doctor in a hospital, you do the same thing for each take. They change the camera angle three or four times, so you might have to do the action again, or if you end up behind the camera or some rigging, you get relaxed back to holding.

My first couple of days on set were very long - 15 hours! You get fed throughout the day, and there is always a table or tent set up with Craft Services, which we call Crafty for short. I made sure that I brought a book, as there can be long stretches with no activity. Will this be a regular thing for me? Let's find out.

Working towards phase 3

Retirement Life

I spent the better part of a year in "Vacation Time", the first phase of retirement. I didn't spend the entire time doing woodworking, as I also used some of my new free time to fix up all of those niggly little things on my 1967 Mercedes 250SL roadster. I bought it back in 1998 or 99, just a bit before the dot com crash... a good idea in retrospect, otherwise my investment would have turned into a significant loss.

Anyhow, it didn't need much work really, but I had been noticing that the value on hagerty.com had been climbing substantially, and since it was mostly collecting dust, I decided it was time to sell it. I ended up doing most of the little things on my own, and then had one minor spot of rust taken care of at the body shop. Three days after listing it on craigslist, I sold my little baby.

Later that year, we decided it was time to get another dog, a Bernese Mountain dog, to be precise. I immediately reached out to the breeder who we got our first one from, and she indicated that she had yearling that had been returned. His name is Buddy, and he had more energy and size than the original owners could handle, so he became my new retirement Buddy.

The first phase of retirement

Retirement Life

I attended a seminar put on by my financial planner that featured the author of a booklet named "The Four Phases of Retirement". I won't go into detail, but the four phases were listed as:

1. Vacation Time
2. Plunge into the Abyss of Insignificance
3. Trial & Error
4. Reinvent & Repurpose

My last post addressed the potential way to avoid #2, so I managed to stay firmly entrenched in Phase 1. Mere weeks after my announced retirement, one of my university chums suggested that I join him and some other mates on a ski weekend in the Swiss Alps. What better way to enter Vacation Time, than to go on a ski trip to Saas-Fee!

After a very boozy, four days in Switzerland, I was back in Vancouver, with loads of time on my hands. What to do now? That's where the "honey do" list came into play. You all know what I'm talking about. All of those little jobs that you kept putting off, saying that, "I don't have the time to get that done". But now, you don't have that excuse anymore.

So the jobs on the list slowly got ticked off. Some were just little 1-2 hour tasks that should really have been done ages ago. Some were monumental, multi-day, or week-long projects that took planning and some level of skill to finish. But slowly, the task list got whittled down, until there were none left. Back to vacation time? No, since the wifey didn't have the vacation time (she's still working), no new travel plans were on the horizon.

Enter the woodworking hobby. Since I'd accumulated the tools and some skills during the renovations of our house and above-mentioned tasks, I thought I'd putter around the garage doing woodworking as a hobby. And so, RC Board Works was created.

Retired. Now what?

Retirement Life

It's funny. You work all those years trying to achieve financial independence so that you can retire, but most people don't have the faintest idea what they will do once they do retire. Given that I had started thinking about it a few years prior to my exit from Company A, I had been doing some reading about how to retire.

I'm going to get the quote incorrect, but I read an article that suggested that one needs to "master the art of being irrelevant". Huh? What most people struggle most with retirement is the sudden transition to... nothingness. For most of us, the latter part of our careers represented the most value, highest status that we can or could achieve. To go from that to being no one, is too hard for many to adjust to, and quite often many end up going back to work, simply to fill that need for being... needed. So this article I read, talked about transitioning, during your working career, to a less relevant individual. I can't say that everyone can do this the same way, but I started doing everything I could, to no longer being "the man".

You see, I was often the man you would go to in order to solve the problem. The guy to bring to the presentation to make the executive pitch. The presenter that the marketing team wanted to take on the roadshow to talk about the new products. The problem solver that got us out of that issue with the customer, and secured the next purchase order. The leader to bring the team together, even though things were going to hell in a handbasket (what does that even mean?).

So instead of being "the man", I started teaching others to be... well, me. Rather than just give the presentation, I'd say, "I'll give the pitch this time, but I expect you to watch me, and then be able to do the same the next time.". Even if I knew that resolving the current challenge would take less time, I'd push the individual(s) to learn how to work it out, so that the next time, it could be done without me. It's a hard thing to do - we've built our professional careers around self-importance and promotion; indeed, how else would one get ahead, if you're not going to boast about your accomplishments? But as one co-worker once told me, when you're leaving a company, it's not about you anymore.

Did it work? I would say that without a doubt, yes. Sure, there is a transition period where you feel a bit abandoned... from hero to zero, as we used to say. And as much as you'd like to think that you will stay in touch with "the old work gang", it doesn't happen. Sure, you go for a few lunches here and a few beers there, but they don't really want you around anymore - you're the free-wheeling retired guy, and they resent you for it. Similarly, they still have the drudgery of the day-to-day work, and let's face it, you don't want to be dragged down by that anymore. So after a few months, you're on your own... get used to it.

Next: The first phase of retirement

A new saga begins (began)!

Retirement Life

Ok, it began a few years ago, but I've forgotten about blogging, what with all of the other social media methods out there. But since it has cooled off a bit, I ended up down in the scotch lounge again tonight, and decided to put in a bit of an update.

So back in 2015, for a number of reasons that I won't spend too much time expanding upon, I decided to retire from my 30-year career in IT. It had actually been part of my plan to retire at 50, but I was having fun in my last business development position, and I told the boss (wife) that if I'm still going to enjoy work, I might as well have a few extra bucks in my pocket. But in 2014, the BD group was about to fold up, and rather than end up in limbo, I decided to take a sales management position back in the "field" (I've always found that term kinda funny - like I'm out bailng hay or something).

It was actually not a bad new gig, as I had an aptitude for team management, and from what my guys told me, they had never had a better manager. But along came a new regional sales manager, that was less than perfect. Okay, I'm being very polite here... he was an asshole. I knew him from a previous life, and nothing had changed; things were worse, in fact. So instead of being able to manage just my team and my work life, I had his team coming to me to complain about the asshat manager that was ruining their life. I tried to work it out for a bit, thinking, "why would I quit, when it's this guy that is the problem?". But suffice it to say, things got untenable, very quickly.

Then along came an opportunity. Using my very adept political skills, I managed to orchestrate my own exit package. Yep, that's two packages in the space of less than 10 years. It was brilliant, if I do say so myself. In a very brief nutshell, I managed to place a capable person into my position, and take his package.  I sold it to management on the premise that he had more seniority, so my buyout would cost the company less. He was an individual that wanted to stay at the company, and I was not. So win-win-win all around. This all happened around the holiday season, 2015, right before my 51st birthday.

So in the end, although I technically didn't retire until I was 51, when all of the papers were signed etc., I pulled the plug on my ~30 year high tech career when I was 50. Not a bad milestone.