158

[plonq]

I am down to 158 working days before I could potentially pull the pin for good in my job. It feels a little odd to be saying that - especially since I'm only 55. I don't feel that old, and I'm assured that I don't act that old, but in just a few months I'll pass the magic 85 years of combined age and service, which will make me eligible for a full pension.

To say that I have mixed feelings about this would be an understatement.

On the one hand I really enjoy the work I do, and I like all of the people I work with. I have worked closely with many of these people for more than twenty years in a lot of cases, and it's going to leave a weird hole in my social life when I go.

At the same time, I just got notified that they are going to send me for engineer training again this year because I have already partly completed the program. I am also getting repeated notifications that I need to renew training as a car inspector/mechanic. Nothing thrills me like the thought of getting sent off to work 12 hour night-shifts in sub-zero temperatures.

I am also a bit unimpressed with the working conditions. Our department is on a slow skid into becoming a coding sweatshop. It goes in fits and starts, but the ultimate target I see on the horizon is of a place where I no longer want to work. I also will not miss the turns on 24/7 call - especially since they removed the small financial stipend that went with it. It is not the money that bothers me, but the principle of it. The small allowance was an acknowledgement that we were putting our lives on hold for a week or more at a time to be available. It was just a mean, insulting cut because it saved the company very little money.

It is an act very typical of our current department president.

Anyway, I am rehashing things that I'm sure I've already said here.

Some of you that I follow here have retired, with varying degrees of recency.
How has it worked for you?
Was it a good decision?
What did you do with your life?
Are you bored?

I guess my biggest source of reluctance in pulling the pin is that it will change a lot in my life, and change is scary. I really don't know what I will do to fill the hole my job leaves behind. I'm afraid of feeling useless.

Comments

[frith]

I took five months off a couple of years ago because winter is a drag and I have so many things I can't seem to get done at home. Unfortunately, having the extra time did not get me caught up on much of anything. Since my job provides me with physical exercise and keeps me on a regular schedule, I concluded that I was better off working.

Some retired people at where I work come back from time to time when we're short of staff in the carpentry and horticultural departments. Perhaps working part-time could be an option, assuming you could choose which tasks? Otherwise, maybe there's a shortline tourism track that's hiring?

[plonq]

My job involves disturbingly little physical activity - in fact one of the things I plan to do when I retire is get more active again.