1300 days to retirement
Happy Sunday. I’m doing 100-day incremental countdowns to my expected retirement date. When I started the last count at 1400, I was full of goals, thinking I would accomplish a bunch of things, mostly around writing, etc. And the increments are intended as a bit of a test drive for my future retirement.
Now, I know that when I retire, one of the first things I’m going to do is take 100 days off. A 3-month vacation where I do basically SFA. It’ll be August, Jacob may be starting school still and Andrea will be working. But as that fall kicks off, I’m going to chillax like a MF. I’m going to read, I’m going to walk, I am going to NAP like crazy.
I intend to do almost no work during that period, even though I have lots of writing projects lined up. I’m struggling if some of those writing projects will start sooner than that, juggling some stuff, but as far as I know, they’ll be lined up waiting for me to pull the trigger over the late fall and early winter.
So I wondered if I should use this first big 100-day increment to work/plan/adjust or just to chill? And the decision was almost made for me. There has been a LOT going on even without my goals.
Work is not going as smoothly as I had hoped, and I honestly don’t know what my long-term plan is for that. I’m engaged in some e-scanning with mentors, and enjoying the conversations with nothing major hanging in the balance. Planning without consequences, in many ways.
My home life has been a relative stress ball though. Jacob has had a bunch of health stuff going on over the last 4 months almost to the day since I last wrote about my 100-day plans. And with no real resolution in sight. It’s better than it was, but still not sustainable in its current form. So we continue to push.
Both Andrea and I have little room for an additional mental load. So last week, when I happened to notice at first a line on our ceiling, I didn’t really enjoy discovering that the line was actually more than a line. It was about a half-inch wide and about six to eight feet long. Obviously along a beam, directly below where we had work done on the bathroom last year. Dun dun dun.
I checked around, and sure enough, there were other areas with rippling and shifted surface tension on the drywall. It looked like obvious water damage and was even a bit spongy (albeit dry) to the touch. Well, frak. Andrea was home the next two days while I was at the office doing mentoring stuff, so she had the plumber come in. His reaction? Yep, obviously water damage from above.
Except when he started opening holes in our kitchen ceiling, there was, in fact, no water. It was exactly along a beam, where two drywall areas had overlapped. Something shifted, the tape slipped, and the line formed. I don’t know what happened to the other areas. But no water. He had to make six or seven holes to find out though, yet didn’t have to break tiles upstairs in the bathroom. Yay. So all we need is the drywall in our kitchen ceiling fixed. Do you know how much MESS that makes? A lot. Just the holes in the ceiling left a fine coating of dust everywhere. And even some in our toaster, which we haven’t figured out how to clean out yet. We’re hoping compressed air does the job.
When I focused on the “day” last time, I used today as a microcosm of the types of things I’ll do in retirement. Laundry, of course. Reading, of course. Some internet stuff, the black hole for time. And some HR work (I was coaching someone this afternoon). Followed by groceries. Just “being” without trying to push myself like I don’t have time for things.
I don’t know if it is the perfect way to celebrate the 1300-day mark or not, but it worked. I still have some stuff to do tonight that is a holdover from my week, and I’ll have to do it tonight unfortunately. I’d love to dump it to tomorrow, but I’m not retired yet. See you in 100 days (Tuesday, May 14). In the meantime, 185 weeks and 5 days to go.