It's been nearly a year since I left my workplace for the freedom of retirement. I met a former colleague for coffee this afternoon, and we ended up chatting about our former workplace. She has since moved on to greener pastures, as have I. She filled me in on the recent gossip--who has retired, who quit and where they work now, and so forth. As usually happens, we talk too about former leaders, leadership styles and bad leadership. The latter is rampant, and not just at my former workplace, that I understand. It's just that while I worked there, I was always hoping to witness good leadership in action, and I rarely got to see it. It was immensely disappointing. It always seemed as though most leaders were interested in worrying about how satisfied the leaders above them were, rarely about how satisfied the employees who worked for them were. I call it kissing ass up over in the system, a not uncommon phenomenon.
While I was en route to my coffee meeting, I reflected upon my one year of retirement and leaving the work world behind. Do I miss it at all? No, I don't. I thought about leaving my office, which was the size of a prison cell for two people, for the last time and turning off the light switch. It's a good metaphor for retirement. I turned off the lights--on my job, my career, the perpetual anxiety, the having to deal with arrogant leaders, the stress, and the feeling of never measuring up. How good it feels to have turned off those lights in that old life. And how good it feels to have turned on new light switches in other places; how good it feels to have a new life, one that is totally unencumbered by negative feelings, negative people, and negativity generally. And if I meet negative people in any capacity, I am free to walk away from them, and I do. I am not interested in listening to them or adopting their world views, or adapting in any way to having to deal with them.
I am free. Whenever I say that to former colleagues, they look at me in surprise. So many people tell me that they never would have thought that I would have retired early. I rejoice inside when they say that. It means I kept my poker face for the last five years I worked there, and never told people about my plans. I could plan my exit well, and I did. I could visualize the next stage in my life, and I did. I am free. It's a wonderful feeling.
