A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Where are you and where are you going?
IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by IlliniDave »

By my count, 36 work days left presuming I bank all my vacation and take it as a payout at the end. A rough estimate is that I've had in the ballpark of 7,900 workdays at this position so I can say I'm 99.5% done.

The part-time offramp seems to be falling apart just days after it got approval from the project management branch of my management chain. I've been going back and forth with it. Everyone I've sought advice from advised me to take it. I see it as advantageous, but at the price of a few figurative headaches. And my tolerance for what I'll put up with to get some more money has shrunk considerably. The conversation is not over, but insofar as I have to make short-term decisions, my assumption is I work the 36 days and then I'm done.

I had the official talk including dates with all my customer stakeholders (I sort of have two bosses in their organization). Everyone has been nice. The source of the part-time off ramp is falling apart is coming from them, however. My replacement (iDave++) should be on site next week, so day-by-day I'll be taking baby steps away form the actual work as I mentor him. That will probably be the hardest part for me. Not because I'm passionate about the work, but more because I'll start drifting to the periphery (and ultimately out of) the team.

The last little contracting job that I am overseeing has begun. After it, everything left is cosmetic/style in nature and my decorating consultant will manage all that work, which is a big relief to me. I'm making headway packing and disposing, but I need the freed up bandwidth to work that more urgently. My goal is to get it all winnowed down so that everything will fit in an ~8X8X8 PODS container, except my most essential music toys (and other small important items) which I will move myself. My chances of succeeding the volume challenge are about 50/50.

Real estate here is a little bonkers. The seller's agent I've been working with has upped the anticipated listing price again (and she thinks the selling price will be above that). I had a long conversation with my aunt about her house. During it I indicated that I'd been getting feedback that I'd probably clear more than market value of her house selling mine. I did it just to clear the air in case she had tossed out the number she did to make it more attainable for me with just my own sale proceeds. I could clear 80% more than my prior best-case estimates of just a year ago, and I had talked through all the math of that with her. She's sticking by her guns and trying to justify lowering the price even more. I guess it's an issue of fairness to her (i.e., why me and not one of my other siblings). She has her reasons and I have mine why the gesture is completely unnecessary. But in the end I conceded to the extent I told her if we get to the end of the year (what we picked as the decision point) and decide to go forward I won't make an issue of trying to give her more than she asks for. My nobility of character clearly has limits.

I'm still dismayed by my refreshed projection of my financial future. Reasonable chance it is just the post-covid transients feeding into a formula that was never intended to encompass transients. Or it may be the new normal. It's not bad enough to prompt me to stand down, but I'm anxious to rearrange some things.

7Wannabe5
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Have you read “The Remains of the Day” by Ishiguro?

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by IlliniDave »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 8:37 am
Have you read “The Remains of the Day” by Ishiguro?
I have not. Don't think I've ever heard of it.

7Wannabe5
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think you might like it. Very relaxing.

Scott 2
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by Scott 2 »

What are the criteria you passed/failed?

Financially, I feel ahead of anything I'd hoped for, when I submitted notice in January. Numbers are much better than when I began serious consideration, back in August of 2020.

I suspect you are 2-3x ahead of us, with a shorter time horizon and single person household. I know you have legacy aspirations, but I am curious what pitfalls could be looming. If I missed something, better to identify it now.

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by IlliniDave »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 1:37 pm
I think you might like it. Very relaxing.
I googled it. Looks like there was a well-regarded movie made from it. Sounds like the tale of a late midlife loner looking for a way forward. I'm under a new book ban until after I'm done freighting crap across states, but I'll put it on my list for after I'm settled.

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by IlliniDave »

Scott 2 wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 5:44 pm
What are the criteria you passed/failed?

Financially, I feel ahead of anything I'd hoped for, when I submitted notice in January. Numbers are much better than when I began serious consideration, back in August of 2020.

I suspect you are 2-3x ahead of us, with a shorter time horizon and single person household. I know you have legacy aspirations, but I am curious what pitfalls could be looming. If I missed something, better to identify it now.
Hmmm. Let's see. The two that were green were the initial balance of the stash, and the minimum balance of the stash through the point I plan to start SS, so though the "bridge" years.

The yellow or red ones were change in stash size from start to 70, gross total withdrawals from the stash, and anticipated terminal net worth.

Like you, looking at current balances everything looks good. But using my conservative method for estimating future stock returns, bond yields around 1/3 of inflation (albeit the inflation measure is relatively speaking an instantaneous one), and projecting the most recent inflation rate forward, the long haul goes from looking gloriously successful to "better keep an eye on this, the trend is going the wrong direction".

I don't believe my own financial future is insecure, but I'm projecting to be somewhat more constrained in what I can spend, and a lot less to leave behind.

Pitfalls are rising inflation, being more exposed to SOR risk, and having less margin to absorb random financial black swans.

Scott 2
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by Scott 2 »

Thanks, those are criteria I considered. I have been watching inflation and SOR risk closely. I think there's been a "too big to fail" shift in how the economy is managed. I am counting on those risks becoming politically unbearable before they crush me.

I became more willing to accept the financial risks (ie gambling on poverty if I make it to old age), after evaluating my risks of dying or becoming infirm. I'd rather spend the healthiest years well, than run from potential suffering during the ailing ones. I've heard too many stories about people dying just before retirement, discovering cancer just after, etc.

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by IlliniDave »

Scott 2, getting out while I have some get-up-and-go remaining has been a motivator for me for a good while. I think I did a respectable job of trying to build a situation that covered all the boxes I wanted to check. Not all will get checked, but what's the old saying: the perfect is the enemy of the good?

In other news my replacement had his first afternoon with the team today. That felt a little strange. My current colleagues seemed to like him so more evidence that I am disposable. My time at work is getting increasingly surreal.

Scott 2
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by Scott 2 »

No longer being important was the most jarring part of my transition. I didn't think of myself that way. Remove it though, I definitely noticed. Completely unexpected.

It was also immediately obvious my work relationships were entirely utilitarian. People I'd talked to multiple times a day, for 10 years, never again. One person emailed my back twice, then left me on read. I'd suspected as much, but still found it left a gap.

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by IlliniDave »

Scott 2 wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 8:09 pm
No longer being important was the most jarring part of my transition. I didn't think of myself that way. Remove it though, I definitely noticed. Completely unexpected.
Same here regarding "completely unexpected". I 100% believed that I had escaped the trap of entwining my identity/sense of worth with my role and standing in the workplace. Maybe I fell a little short of that. And I've noticed a few colleagues beginning to pull away, all among those I've been closest to during my last 20ish year stint. I think it's more a matter of them creating a buffer for the departure than them discarding me because I will soon no longer be useful to them. But maybe I'm just kidding myself with that, haha.

So far the home stretch has been quite unlike what I imagined it would be.

RockyMtnLiving
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by RockyMtnLiving »

What both of you are experiencing certainly resonates with me as well. It is a weird sensation to have spent decades building a career, only to realize towards the end of it just how unimportant it all was, including the relationships.

And I, too, never wanted to be defined by my career. But it happens.

I used to be a capitalist. Maybe I still am; I’m not sure actually. Anyway, looking back on the decades of toil, the expenditure of one’s life merely to scrape together a wage so one can survive in society, suddenly seems oddly depersonalizing in a way.

And speaking of depersonalizing, I also suspect that, when push comes to shove, every single Homo sapien is in fact alone. We are born alone, and will die alone. But even the days in between are effectively spent alone. We think we have family, friends, colleagues — and we do, of course. And Homo sapiens are in fact social creatures. But each person actually exists in his or her own bubble. Life is fairly transactional, and solitary.

This also bears on aspects of physics, too, at least how I view it. At the end of the day, a Homo sapien could be viewed as nothing more than a fairly limited sensor. And by “limited” I mean “local.” The senses — touch, sight, hearing, what have you — operate over very limited distances. This also bears on “time”, about which books have been written. My sense of “now”, for example, is different from that of my closest friend. Time is relative, of course, too. Time seems very local and centered around one’s immediate experiences. Time seems solitary, too, in this way.

Anyway, as I age, I have come to appreciate that I am nothing more than a quite limited sensor who is stumbling through life largely alone, trying to scrape together the necessary resources to avoid fairly negative economic outcomes when I am older still and likely in poor health.

Life is an odd journey, for sure.

7Wannabe5
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

The need to periodically restructure identity as we age is not limited to salaried employment. Kids leaving the nest is another big transition, and giving up the business I had started myself felt like a much bigger identity loss than leaving salaried employment.

OTOH, I find that going out and getting laid helps a bit with that “limited lone sensor” feeling -lol. Seriously, going out and doing anything that kind of stresses your functioning back into more youthful mode, another example would be rebooting my old math skills in order to pass certifying exam or my plan to maybe try to reboot my swimming skills and get lifeguard certificate or trying to achieve rough competence in structural carpentry, etc etc etc

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by IlliniDave »

RockyMtnLiving wrote:
Fri May 28, 2021 5:06 am
What both of you are experiencing certainly resonates with me as well. It is a weird sensation to have spent decades building a career, only to realize towards the end of it just how unimportant it all was, including the relationships...
I still don't know what I think about career, per se. Very often when I apply the term to my employment I put it in quotes. I suppose to me personally many of the specific activities and accomplishments were unimportant, especially once I got to the point I started thinking about life beyond working for a paycheck. That was probably in my later 30s although explicit early retirement thoughts didn't come until mid-40s. Looking at it from an immediate practical perspective it still seems important in the sense it provided for me and my family and affords me a decent palette of options at an age where I'm still not too old to exploit some of them. Hopefully. It was a means to the ends I strove to achieve, and a fairly optimal one. Of course, if I had my mid-50s wisdom and experience in my 23-year-old body the ends I would strive for might well be different, but its too late to change that. Seems like one way or another, expending one's life to survive is the game all living creatures play. I'm just happy I could extract enough from the society I was plopped into to have some time where scraping together resources to survive is not job 1. Sounds a little selfish and exploitative, but I didn't make the rules, I just navigated them.

I'm not ready to say the relationships are/were unimportant. Maybe transient and destined to wind down and come to an end soon. I'm in my fifth occupation/geographic phase (childhood through high school, college, professional stints 1, 2, and 3). I still keep in touch with folks from all the locations but it's generally perfunctory (a couple exceptions) so it's what I expect from this third and final occupation phase even though it was the longest of all.

I think you are right that there is a way in which we are all alone. Our sense of everything is necessarily a product of our perception which is limited and individual. We each walk in our own world which is a custom-filtered version of the "real" world.

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by IlliniDave »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Fri May 28, 2021 6:32 am
The need to periodically restructure identity as we age is not limited to salaried employment...
Yeah, that seems reasonable. I'm hoping insofar as I have to do so because of leaving the workforce, it is minimal, since I never really though of myself as "an engineer" or "an employee of MyMegaCorp". Circumstances and activities are going change quite a bit, and I suppose it's unavoidable that they wind up flavoring one's identity. And in a role like mine there's a swath of people I associate with that includes a core group with a lot of continuity, giving a tribal aspect to it. I tend to think of identity as some almost ephemeral thing that floats above circumstance remaining relatively consistent over time (continually evolving rather than static). There are periods of more rapid change: the emptying of the nest you mentioned is a good example for us older parents.

I was hoping retirement would be more a case of being somewhat freer to wallow in the me that is aligned with how I self-identify. Likely my self-identity is a little idealized and aspirational, making it all a little more complicated than I imagined. I'd be surprised if I had to retool my identity every time I delve into a new activity, but who knows what lies ahead.

7Wannabe5
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Identity might be too strong a word, maybe something more like evolving collection of preferences and values. It’s pretty clear that some humans become ever more rigid in “I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like green eggs and ham” as they age, because we all suffer from more than a bit of sunk cost fallacy in reference to our own narratives and sources of meaning.

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by IlliniDave »

Ha, yep. I'm definitely headed towards the no-more-eating-green-eggs-and-ham-for-me phase. So much of my life has been defined by compromise and cultivating both/and versus either/or that I'm looking forward to being a stubborn old fart set in his ways. Like anything I've tried, I won't be able to achieve that perfectly, but I hope I've set myself up with the luxury of having a bit more self-determination. Call it rigid flexibility or flexible rigidity.

7Wannabe5
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Lol- Yeah, I agree that compromise sucks. It’s also true that both/and often requires more energy than either/or. I think what I’m about lately is attempt to adjust all the dials on both/and system until what emerges is good. Maybe call it ambient utility.

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by IlliniDave »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 9:19 am
Lol- Yeah, I agree that compromise sucks.
It doesn't always, but always compromising definitely does. Reminds me of the the lyrics in a now old Rush song.

"I can learn to resist
Anything but temptation
I can learn to coexist
With anything but pain

I can learn to compromise
Anything but my desires ..."

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Post by IlliniDave »

Well today's the day I'm going to go sit down with my "official boss" and tell her my plans. Written notice will either be 30 days or maybe even two weeks prior to check out day. I'm not looking forward to the conversation. She and I have been in the ~group (different names over the years but smallest building block of the org chart) about since she joined the company 20 years ago. Mostly as peers until she became manager in 2019. Recently another longstanding member of the gang retired and my boss was genuinely sad about it. Chances are she'll be less sad about me leaving, ha, but still, part of me feels like I'm abandoning ship.

The part-time/remote option is languishing. I decided I'm not going to do all the leg work to put it in place. That makes it feel too much like the company is doing me a favor rather than vice-versa, which is how I see it.

Getting pretty close to the point where momentum is going to carry me through this.

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