Soft Launching my Next Big Project - Stopping
FIRE meta regeneration · 45 comments · 650 words · read ~590 times.
As of today, I've quit.
I started working full time before going to university. I worked part-time during my studies. Graduated into a crappy job. Got a place on a prestigious grad scheme. Worked my way up through the public and private sector. Start-ups and Ministries of State. Constantly working.
Not any more!
Yesterday was my last day in the office. Laptop and lanyard handed back. Out-Of-Office on permanently. Today is my first full day of being… what? Free? Unemployed? On extended sabbatical0? Retired?
I've tried to explain this to various people. But it is hard when I can't quite explain it to myself.
Internally, I'm calling it FIRE.
But I'm worried that I'll get bored and come crawling back to the world of work. If I tell people I'm retired, and then change my mind, I risk a humiliating climb down.
So I'm telling people it is a year off. An adult gap year. I have caring responsibilities1. I want an escape hatch in case things don't go as planned.
"Ah," said a friend who is much wiser than I, "You're soft-launching your retirement!"
In the sitcom Frasier, there's a wonderful scene featuring ultra-feminist Ros losing her shit at a party guest. Ros, a high-flying career woman, is dating a guy who drives a garbage truck. She's deeply uncomfortable that his low social status will reflect badly on her.
How do I introduce myself in this brave new world? "Hi, I'm Terence. I don't work."
Do I just go with the generic "I'm an IT consultant"? It has the advantage of moving the conversation onto something less dull!
Will people resent me2? Will I get frustrated that friends can only meet at weekends? Will my mind turn to jelly3?
Throughout this, I've been referring to myself. But I is really We.
Liz quit her job at the same time. So we're a pair of bums off on an adventure together.
There's no non-wanky way to say "we want to find ourselves".
We're not travelling East to ingest mystic herbs in search of a great spiritual revelation.
But who are we without work? What are we like as people when we're not assaulted by the alarm clock, stressed from a commute, and dulled by endless Zoom meetings?
Unlike some couples, our relationship thrived during the confines of lockdown. It turns out, we really like each other! We'll go hand-in-hand, stepping into the future.
So this is it. Our last pay cheques are deposited at the end of December, and then it is the first day of the rest of our lives.
We're off to see Paul McCartney at the O2 tonight. That seems like a pretty good way to kick things off.
What will 2025 brings? Time to find out.
It's traditional to end these sorts of posts with a hearty "Onwards!" - but, instead, I think I'll finish with "Offwards".
Regular reader will know that I've titled all my big job moves as "regenerations" - I started the tradition when I left Vodafone, as I went to GDS, and then was lured to NHSX, before heading back to GDS, and then shuffling sideways to CDDO, after which I bounced to Our Future Health
So what's a good video for going on hiatus?
Ah, of course!
@Edent I'll just say that I'm somewhat jealous and leave it at that - enjoy the time off!
Good luck with it! I like “soft launching my retirement” but that probably only works in the right geeky circles 😉
@Edent Congratulations!
"But who are we without work? What are we like as people when we're not assaulted by the alarm clock, stressed from a commute, and dulled by endless Zoom meetings?"
This hit me... ooof. I don't have a commute anymore but I realised how much of my life and self-worth is contingent on what I do for work.
Good luck to you both - it’s lots of fun. I reckon there’s no hurry to come to conclusions or put a socially acceptable label on things (“bits and pieces” is mine right now).
@blog Congrats! FWIW, I'd try "Hi, I do X" rather than "Hi, I don't work." There will be some new thing to structure your life.
I tried this, it's really hard. After the pandemic I had a whole load of slightly broken businessess / projects, was working flat out on nothing that gave me any joy at all, and got quite depressed. I decided I needed to get to zero before working out what to do next. So started closing/quitting.
Mike says:
If you get bored, there’s probably lot of memorial benches still to find. Maybe you could both set off on a world wide quest to find them all, and yourselves, uploading your adventures to YouTube for the ad revenue.
After I left Bauer I took seven months off and it was absolutely glorious. I highly recommend taking an extended break to anyone who can. The one thing I would recommend is to keep some kind of structure, as it helps you mentally.
best of luck!
@Edent Enjoy your free time. I'm pondering when I can give up work.
Have fun with Macca.
god I am so ready to retire, it's not that I don't love my job, it's that I think I love the idea of just being free.
My dad retired aged 53, he says it's basically the best thing he's ever done.
Best wishes to you both. You've done very well to have the financial independence to not work, so enjoy your time together!
Ok, it’s definitely too soon to be destroying our emotions with Seven and Ace like that.
@Edent great work! (that is the point of work isn‘t it? to fund your non-working hours) you did it!
@issyl0 @Edent
I found retirement very unsettling, and I hadn't expected that. I realised that work had been the ugly scaffolding that was propping up a rather fragile facade.
But I'm adjusting. I'm learning to make clearer distinctions between the stuff I have to do, the stuff I want to do (and at my chosen pace), and the pointless expectations that I can quietly walk away from.
@blog congratulations on your new freedom. I hope you both have lots of lovely adventures together and plenty of time to decompress. Enjoy!
@Edent Congratulations on your... anyway, congratulations!
@sccook @Edent I always thought I never want to retire. Because I saw my grandparents’ retirement being just drinking themselves to a miserable existence in front of the TV every day with no hobbies.
I’ve got many years left yet, but I struggle without purpose, so I’m trying to make hobbies for myself outside of work and remember who I am.
Alex says:
In a strange coincidence I am also expecting my last paycheck at the end of December and join the ranks of the unwaged. I’m similarly viewing the years ahead with some interest and anticipation 😊
Good luck with your journey!
Congratulations! I am rather jealous, mostly because that’s where I’d like to get to, but little things like my choice to spawn are slowing that down a bit.
I know exactly what I’d be doing: working on projects that interest me. Some of them are open source software, others might be something I go “this might be a viable business and I’d like to find out if it is or not”, and some will just be physical or software art. It’s a lot like what I do now, with the exception that I get an extra ~40 hours a week to work on them 🙂
@blog That sounds brilliant, hope you have an amazing time travelling around and also when you are bumming about at home.
@Edent welcome to the default state
I had this kind of pretirement about five years ago. Stopping just to stop. It's a good time to explore interests and learn new things. I did some volunteering that was really enjoyable. But I went back to employment after about a year, partly cos I missed having proper problems to fix.
I did this and well… I think you’ve followed some of it. And of course we bumped into each other around the start of my journey. On the other side of the planet!
Congratulations! Hey, you have time to come to Finland now. We have saunas, the perfect place to contemplate this new existence...
If this is the opposite of your past regenerations, is it a degeneration - you're becoming a pair of degenerates?
Either way, have a big big lot of fun, both of you!
@Edent "How do I introduce myself in this brave new world?"
Well, you're still an IT person, right? Not having a job doesn't change that.
I mean, I still consider myself a historian of the Later Roman Empire, even though I never earned one cent with it. Or a browser researcher, even though my last bout of serious research was like eight years ago. I've got the skills and the basic knowledge, I just need a bit of practice to start it all up again.
@Edent congrats!
Sounds like a great plan, good luck with it. And enjoy Paul McCartney, one of my colleagues is also going!
@Edent Wishing you all the best in finding your way to new senses of identity and ways of contributing to the things you care about.
Paola Hopwood says:
We are soo jelous - well done you two!
@Edent Hah, enjoy your adult gap year! (Or years!)
@Edent good luck!
@Edent congrats! i was fortunate enough to do something similar a few months back. i’ve just been referring to it as “retirement” - the quotes indicating i’ve yet to come up with a satisfactory definition of it 🙂 but it’s been amazing so far - the most productive, energizing, satisfying and intellectually stimulating period i’ve had in many years.
best of luck!
@Edent That sounds like fun, if slightly discombobulating! You’ll probably find a project you really can’t resist in a few months, but in the meantime, bugger off and enjoy yourselves!
“How do I introduce myself in this brave new world? ‘Hi, I'm Terence. I don't work.’”
I was stuck on this for a while when people would ask “what do you do?” Then I realised I could literally answer with what I do most of: “I read, I run, I write.”
Sometimes we are what we do. Like actually do.
Also the video at the end of your post is chef’s kiss
@Edent Enjoy!
Congrats:) We have a similar plan so always up for chats (and coming up with fun make-the-world-nicer projects!)
@Edent Good luck in the journey! It's amazing how much work defines us - our job title becomes our identity. Quitting organisational hierarchies doesn't mean that you're not working, just that you're more free to define what "work" means on your own terms. Scary perhaps, and much harder work in some ways, but YOLO yeah?
@Edent Hope you have a good launch and your new project becomes really successful. Enjoy it!
This is me too. Swapped out desk work for ceramics and being by the coast now. It's a fair trade and I'm loving it. You need another passion. Passion isn't work!
@Edent Congratulations on winning the game of work.
Thanks for sharing, that "what will people think" vibe resonated really strongly.
Knowing someone out there on the internet is doing what you are doing is oddly comforting to me.
@Edent I've been 'economically inactive' since April now. We should compare notes 🙂
@Edent yeah I'm jealous. Literally zero of my identity/self worth/whatever is drawn from my daily grind. If I had the means I'd be retired in a heartbeat.
My wife and I are very different people. I'm not sure she'll ever stop working. The work she'd choose to do would certainly differ, but she'd work nonetheless.
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