Brilliant thoughts. Jumping back in with some personal perspective: How do I fill my days? Least of my worries. By retiring, I just meant from a corporate desk job, not from work. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and yes, I’ve been in the technical writing field but that’s not quite the same. I think writing can fill my days very nicely till the day I pop off. That’s who I am and that’s what I want to do. But I don’t know how much it’d pay and I’ve been “stuck” in a fairly successful career and it’s been hard to jump off it.
I do agree that purpose is a very important point to consider as I have cousins about my age who were in business, have retired, and keep wondering what to do now. I started writing my fiction book when I was laid off from Intel over half a dozen years ago, and then never got time to finish it. So now I’d like to. And I have at least twenty more book ideas in the pipeline. As for family, my l’ll one is just 4, so I think some more time spent with her over the next decade would be valuable for both of us. She hates my “meeting calls” that I get into every night and I don’t want to regret not spending more time with her if I can help it. I’ve thought about all this deeply for many years, and even have a Dreams.xls spreadsheet. J So I know exactly what I’m going to do and where I’ll spend my time from the day I call it quits. A few of you gave some good tips on consulting. Makes sense. During that post-Intel break, I had tied up with a firm who signed me up for x days a month and gave me y rs. That worked out well, and I have a few such possibilities in the pipeline. The idea here is to have a supplemental stream of income, get out and meet people, leverage from my experience, and continue to dabble selectively in the areas that I’m interested in. I’ve telecommuted and done stints so I’ve worked out the discipline and structure part. The major barrier for me really has been the financial part. Which brings me to the albatross around my neck, my dream house. I’ve poured all my savings over the years into it and now I wonder if I really need something this large when I retire. So yes, it’s a bit about downsizing. I’ll probably need to sell my house and get into another place to help me get a permanent corpus that’ll set me up. It makes cold, logical sense, but I’ve been resisting it emotionally for many years. But home is where I live with my loved ones, isn’t it. Bricks and stones don’t maketh a dream home etc. etc. Putting it down in black and white has helped me get perspective,, so thanks for the awesome insights, Rajesh, Suresh, Shaym, Udhay, Dibyo. Any other thoughts, stories? And yes, I do know Silk Smitha. J So you’ve been lured into the list on false premise, Suresh? My thanks Sandhya On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 9:02 PM, Dibyo <[email protected]> wrote: > Mohit Satyanand wrote something last month that made sense to me, perhaps, > it is useful to you. > > http://qz.com/244258/i-can-afford-the-choice-of-not-working-full-time-it-took-two-decades-of-planning-and-discipline/ > > > > ----- > > When I left the corporate world, I lost my company car. I didn’t replace it > for 7 years, wrote TV scripts at home, and cycled to the editing studio. > Expensive suits gave way to denim jeans; hand-made shoes to Hawaii > chappals. Holidays were a bus ride or a friend’s car into the hills, a tent > in open fields, or a run-down room in a dak bungalow. On one of these > trips, waking in a clearing in a Kumaon forest, I realised the home of my > dreams would be here. > Meanwhile, with the magic of compounding, and the deepening discipline of > material restraint, the FY Fund had grown, and stretched to a small plot of > fallow land, and a one-roomed cottage of stone and pine, built by a local > mason. No architect, no interior designer. No furniture, except for a > picnic table, and a cast-off sofa. To this day, we sleep on mattresses in > the loft, and my work-space is the sill of our large window on the garden. > ----- > > My big takeaway is that such a move is easier the better prepared one is. > > best, > Dibyo >
