Monthly Archives: April 2014

04.19.14
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Early Retirement: My Mid-year Review

Well, I’ve been doing this Early Retirement Thing for almost eight months now, so it seems as good a time as any to step back and evaluate how it’s going. I looked back at my earlier post (“The Great Experiment: Early Retirement….or Now What?”) in which I outlined my objectives for this year:

  1. To finish long-ignored cleanup projects around the house;
  2. To learn how to “do” retirement happily; and
  3. To discover rewarding activities that feed me physically, spiritually and emotionally (and perhaps financially).

In the same post, I also set up a “To Do List” for myself that I intended to complete this year:

  1. Visit Paris for the first time with my husband (a life-long dream!)
  2. Clean out the garage and a storage shed
  3.  Inventory my deceased parents’ belongings (in said garage and storage shed), work out with my brothers what to keep and what goes to who, and get rid of the rest
  4. Pack up the parental items for my brothers in our new SUV and…..
  5. Do a Route 66 driving trip with my husband (another life-long dream) to deliver the goods
  6. Determine what our next big trip will be and when
  7. Rest and recover from the corporate world!
  8. Beyond that, I will go with the flow, open myself up to new experiences, not make any commitments for a year and purposely let things evolve.
The view from my new morning commute - I walk from home to the YMCA and admire the neighbors'

The view from my new morning commute – I walk from home to the YMCA and admire the neighbors’ gardens

As I look at my lists, it’s surprisingly heartening to see that I am generally on track (since some days I don’t even know what day it is or what I am supposed to be doing).   And here’s my lessons learned so far:

Clean-up projects: I’ve done a good job of cleaning out closets and drawers inside the house and my husband and I are off to a good start on the garage. (Its now organized but we haven’t thrown much out.)  But, I will be shocked if we have the garage and storage shed completely cleaned out by the end of the year. It is highly unpleasant and emotional work and there is nothing in our immediate future (like an imminent downsizing or move) forcing us to purge. Furthermore, we have differing ideas about what to keep and what to toss, so I am finding it is best to take it slow. Life’s too short!

Family heirlooms: I have been much more successful in weeding through my parents’ stuff, deciding objectively what to keep, and we will be taking a load to St Louis to deposit with my brother. I am finding it much easier, with the passage of time, to be able to part with things that were hard to even look at a few years ago.

Travel: Our trip to France was indeed a dream come true. As expected, there were a few bumps along the way, but we saw and did everything I hoped, and we both have great memories to last our lifetimes. We also enjoyed our trips last fall to Annapolis for Navy football games. We are now planning a cross-country road trip (Route 50 eastbound and Route 66 westbound) that should be quite the adventure and have decided our next big trip will be Ireland in the fall. In general, I have found travel to be the best part of retirement. It takes my husband and I out of our normal routine, encourages us to work together on the planning and execution, and gives us a shared sense of adventure.

Home life: I have found one of the biggest adjustments has been to a 24/7 marriage relationship. When I was working, I was gone much of the day and traveling quite a bit, so it was a big change (for both of us) to suddenly be home all day, initially with nothing to do. This is one of those areas where “experts” advise extensive pre-retirement planning and communication as to post-retirement activities, expectations and roles. However, despite our best intentions, we found it difficult to anticipate exactly how things would play out until we actually found ourselves thrown together in the same house all day. I suppose those with more perfect marriages would find the adjustment effortless, but for us it has taken (and will continue to take) work to find the right balance (e.g., things like individual v. joint activities, time apart v time together).

My husband and I are very different in several key areas, which we already knew after 25 years of marriage, but it became more pronounced the more time we spent together. For example, he is more of an introvert than I. He can go hours, days (weeks!) with very little social interaction; whereas, I am quickly climbing the walls after too much quiet time. What has evolved is that I am often out of the house on my own – at exercise classes, lunches/outings with friends, book club, study groups, etc., while my husband putters around the house working on his projects. We do have some lunch or golf dates, but we have learned to give ourselves freedom to have plenty of separate time. When we are both home, we are often working in opposite ends of the house – I have taken over the den as my “office” and my husband has his “office” in the family room. Most days when we are home, we have breakfast together, go our separate ways during the day, and then come back together for dinner in the evening. I suspect other couples may have different routines that succeed for them but this seems to work for us – it gives us each space to do our own thing, and we have things to talk about when we come back together. As with so many other areas of my life, I am finding this year to be a journey of self-discovery and a time to devote effort toward deferred relationship issues (both with myself and significant others).

Friends: Unfortunately, I have not kept in touch with as many of my work-friends as I’d hoped. I suppose it was inevitable, but as time passed we had less in common without the shared workplace, and we have not put in the effort to build personal relationships. Over the years I developed many on-the-job friendships with colleagues and clients strictly over shared work projects and interactions (many of them long-distance and some of them I never or rarely saw in person). Without the daily professional exchanges, it takes time and effort to maintain all those relationships! The few work friends I do keep in touch with regularly, however, have been those with whom we reciprocate with time and energy, and who have developed into close and cherished personal friends.

Because of this, I am grateful that I maintained strong personal friendships outside work throughout my career. Post-retirement, I turned to a solid core of friends whom I am now happily spending more time with and deepening those bonds. In some cases, I reconnected with good friends from high school or those I’ve collected in the area over the past 25 years. I’ve met a few new people, but close friendships take time to develop so I’ve never been more thankful for my old friends, my golden friends.

Physical health. I have never felt better (knock on wood!) My stress level is way down, I’m exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, and I’m usually pretty happy!

Work prospects. Never say never! I am starting to feel like I wouldn’t mind holding down a job again someday. It wouldn’t be the type of work I previously did, but I do miss many aspects (going to an office, the camaraderie, challenging myself, the sense of satisfaction with the mastery of skills and accomplishment, self-esteem, and of course, the paycheck).   I can also see myself becoming bored and/or restless at some point. So, another part of my journey is to be open and imaginative about work opportunities; to find something I love that affords me flexibility for travel and other activities I enjoy.

Stay tuned!

04.10.14
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March Madness

A few weeks ago I came home to find my husband working intensely on the computer. I knew he was behind on a few projects that he was having trouble focusing on, so I was glad to see him so locked in.

“Hi! Are you working on the Treasurer’s Report? Or maps for our trip?”

“Nope,” he mumbled, barely looking up, “my bracket.”

Oh, geez, I thought. It’s here again – the NCAA tournament, arguably my husband’s happiest time of year. My usual mild annoyance with the upcoming prospect of 3 straight weeks of nonstop basketball turned to abject terror as I realized I would no longer have the job or the office as my quiet space. With the lucky exception of a silent retreat weekend I booked for myself and a mens retreat he booked for himself, this year I would be living full-time in the thick of March Madness. And what I subsequently witnessed really was a curious form of madness.

My husband's 2014 NCAA bracket

My husband’s 2014 NCAA bracket

Over the next few days my husband consulted websites and churned out spreadsheets and schedules and brackets, placing his annual wager with his brother, with the intensity ratcheted higher by the addition of the Warren Buffet $1 Billion Bracket Challenge.

And then the tournament began. There are something like 46 games played the first few days. I am pretty sure my husband watched most of them. Sometimes he watched one on the TV, another on the computer, another on his iPad. When I walked by the bathroom, I heard a game on an iPhone through the door.

The farther his favorite team (UCLA) advanced in the tournament, the more emotional he became.  After UCLA won their first game against Tulsa, my husband immediately began talking about the Bruins winning the national title, which usually made him misty-eyed just thinking about it. It seemed that several teams from the Pac-12 (his favorite conference) went farther than expected. It was shaping up to be a magnificent tournament!

In order to pace myself, I usually don’t pay much attention until the Sweet Sixteen or Elite Eight rounds. I enjoy watching a game or two at a time, but not 34. So, when I was home, I spent most of the first week quarantined in the den with plenty of reading material while my husband sat transfixed by the TV. From the other room, I would hear yelling (presumably at the refs or players) or hooting and hollering (probably at a great shot or block or play). It actually made me smile to be witness to this odd form of insane joy. It was rather touching to see my husband so enthralled – like my son used to be with Pokemon or Power Rangers.

I have seen statistics, which in the past I assumed were overblown, demonstrating a downturn in workplace productivity during March Madness. I never paid them much attention since I was apparently part of the minority actually working non-distractedly during the tournament. After personally living the full March Madness effect, however, I can now totally agree that it impairs concentration on non-basketball activities.

For 3 weeks, during meals, car rides, walks, most of our conversation revolved around the tournament. My husband would randomly blurt out his latest thoughts on UCLA, scouting reports on players and match-ups with other teams, bad calls by the refs, etc.   He was obsessed.

UCLA won their first two rounds and the team was then set to play the overall #1 seed, Florida, in the Sweet Sixteen round. My husband was certain UCLA would win and approached the game like a four-year-old heading to Disneyland, barely able to contain himself. San Diego State (my home-town team) also made the Sweet Sixteen, playing Arizona, so I decided to really start watching and rooting in earnest for these two teams (although my husband informed me the SDSU Aztecs were dead to him since they were playing Arizona from the Pac-12).

And then the madness ended as quickly and abruptly as it began. At the end of the night, my poor husband sat dejected and heartbroken after Florida beat UCLA. And following the next round, there were no more Pac-12 teams left. At the conclusion of the UCLA game, he solemnly declared that his heart was no longer in the tournament, and there was no further reason for him to watch.

We did, of course, watch the rest of the tournament, somewhat somberly (still grieving for UCLA) but with reverence for the survivors. I now feel that I have been properly inculcated into the full March Madness experience. I marvel at the level of fan intensity and have a heightened respect for the emotions provoked by this tournament. The “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” is a gross understatement. But you know what? There’s something oddly appealing about this madness. Maybe next year, I’ll fill out a bracket.

04.06.14
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Good Ole Rupe

Capt Brooke's obituary in the January-February 2014 Edition of Shipmate Magazine

Capt Brooke’s obituary in the January-February 2014 Edition of Shipmate Magazine

Today we received our March-April 2014 edition of Shipmate, the magazine published by the Alumni Association of the US Naval Academy. My husband is a 1967 graduate and my late father Bob was also an alumnus, graduating with the great class of 1947. Dad passed away on Veterans Day in 2005. I still really miss him.

Alas, the first thing I turn to is the Last Call section, which features obituaries by class year. I check both the 1967 and 1947 sections, dreading the sight of a familiar name amongst these pages. Once I get through Last Call, then I feel comfortable reading other news and articles.

Today I finished Last Call for both classes and didn’t see any names I recognized. Then I began reading the Class News. Midway through the 1947 Class News I read “The joys of our Holiday Season were dimmed by the following losses from our ranks: …………….Rupert Brooke……………,”

My heart sank when I read that Rupert Brooke had died. I felt that old familiar punched-in-the-gut feeling. Again. He was a dear friend and long-time tennis partner of my Dad’s. He and Dad had a standing weekly tennis date in San Diego (where they both retired) for years. Dad would invariably come back from one of his tennis dates with another uproarious story about “Good Ole Rupe” (as he always called him).

I only met Capt. Brooke (as I called him) a few times, but he was such a central character in my Dad’s life that he became one of those people who felt like an old friend in mine.   I knew that Capt. Brooke had been a Tailhook naval aviator and he regaled my father (who as a Navy dentist was a bit of wimp himself but loved vicarious flying) with stories of carrier landings and other thrilling daredevil aviator adventures.

At one point, shortly before my father’s cancer diagnosis, he told me that ‘Ole Rupe’ was very sick – that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of skin cancer and was not expected to survive.   I don’t recall my Dad ever being sadder.

As fate would have it, Capt. Brooke survived that bout of cancer while my father did not. In fact, Capt. Brooke missed my father’s funeral due to his own hospitalization.

Once Capt. Brooke recovered, I took my Mom to have lunch with the Brookes, and he wrote me a series of letters with stories about my Dad and offering encouragement to my son (who was pursuing an appointment to USNA himself). When my mother passed away three years later, Capt. Brooke was again quick to offer condolences and support, and in the years since we exchanged Christmas cards and I received occasional notes of encouragement.  I haven’t received anything from Capt. Brooke in the past couple years and in fact one letter I wrote to him last summer went unanswered so I feared a turn for the worse.

And now ‘Good Ole Rupe’ is gone. And I am heartbroken. Capt. Brooke was one of the few remaining threads to my Dad. The more time elapsed and the more friends and associates gone, the more “final” my Dad’s death feels. News like Capt. Brooke’s death stirs up sorrow for my Dad anew and begins another cycle of grief.

I turned to the previous Shipmate edition and found the obituary for Capt. Brooke (which I had apparently missed). I read that Capt. Brooke was born and raised in Oklahoma City and that he met his wife of 67 years when they were both in junior high school. He had two kids and six grandchildren and was a weekly calculus tutor for struggling students at a nearby high school. And I know that he was an inspiration to me and a beloved friend to my Dad. You will be missed, Capt. Brooke. Rest in peace. Say hello to my Dad for me. He will be delighted to have his favorite tennis partner back.