Honeymoon over

The retirement honeymoon phase passes and you are left with the exercise of pure adaptation.

I was speaking this past week with two ex-colleagues one currently working in Spain and the other in Germany. Both are in their early 40's and have young children with the challenges in this new frontier (I think) being more daunting than when I was their age. The speed that technology has brought has also introduced a chaos which didn't used to exist and they remind me how right I was to leave when I did.

The engineering profession is a tougher one at this velocity and the lack of maturity both on the client and consultant sides has made it that well executed projects are the exception rather than the norm. We as consultants became for some clients necessary evils who were putting the breaks on their vision and increasing their project costs. I knew then it was time to go especially when I had reached the target I had in mind several years before.

Yes, there is more time to reflect on the self and define what you want the rest of your life to look like. The only difference is that there are no longer clearly defined milestones. You have put in your career time, raised children to adulthood and can now focus more on the self and the improvements you still want to make.

I have more perspective on what needs fixing and with less distractions can go about that work without a timeline since no one is pushing me from behind. I tell people that it's a mini identity crisis which it sort of is except that I've spent all my life in reflection and I know just what to do because those reflexes are primed.