I'm not retired

How I went from working at the largest software company in the world to running the smallest one

I fretted over leaving my team at Microsoft, but my boss was unexpectedly magnificent helping me through it, including arranging a little going away party, which in the waning days of covid didn’t seem possible.

Here it is - this is the photo from three years ago that popped up on my phone:

Can you feel my joy from the far side of the table?

Three years ago! Also, only three years ago?

I had been at Microsoft 20 years and I'd worked in tech for over 30 years.

I was exhausted but also giddy. I'd done the math over and over, lurking in online FIRE communities, watching escapist van life videos.

My spidey sense has always been my career coach, tingling every couple of years, letting me know it was time to change jobs. My spidey sense had been screaming at me for the better part of a year to make a change.

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Year 1: Change everything

For me, it was time. Once I was confident in my math, the other elements were in place. My kids had grown up and needed less of my help, my parents had grown old and needed more of it and my wife was burned out after two years on the covid front lines as an elementary school teacher of immigrant kids.

JFran retirement cheeseburger

LFG! Time to shake things up. Job #1 was selling our house. It was perfect for some new young family and that wasn’t us.

Three piles

The most satisfying part of this was pile #1 - the stuff we got rid of. We kept Lola. Pile #2 fit into a pretty good sized truck and we shoved it all into a storage locker up by JFran’s parents. I drove pile #3 up to a little cabin at the top of a mountain where we’d live the next year.

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Year 2: Winter came

It was a doozy.

This is going to cost you a lot of cookies

In between dodging snowplows:

No planes were harmed in the taking of these photos

When the new year rolled around, blue skies made a comeback and we were ready to roll out. We got lucky, threading the needle between two storms to make it down the mountain and back to find a place not too far from JFran’s Mom and Dad.

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Year 3: Restart

When I first left Microsoft I got lots of comments like ‘I cant wait to see what you do in your next act!’

TF do you mean?! I’ll tell you what I’ll be doing - fat naps, reading, doodling, events involving coffee or beer, long bike rides and hikes and perhaps going to some new places where I can take long bike rides and hikes and nap and drink more coffee.

But, after we settled into our new place, I got bored. Unexpected. Spidey sense tingling. I missed the clickety clack of my keyboard, I missed making stuff, I missed the tech and I missed helping people.

So, after consulting with an old friend I started a web design company with one employee (it me!) Tech Tales is Wirepine’s newsletter. Or is Wirepine TechTales company?

www.wirepine.com

So no, I’m not retired. I danced with that word when I was riding the high of escaping the grind. Now it doesn’t fit. I got a few raised eyebrows when I said I was going all in on small business and nonprofits but they’re super interesting people and it couldn’t be more different than what I did the prior 30 years (at least without leaving tech behind and that’s not happening).

My Mom and Dad died this year. My dad was 97, my mom was 98. We spread my mom’s ashes in the Pacific Ocean at the same GPS coordinates as my dad’s and we did it on what would have been their 66th wedding anniversary.

I turn 60 next year - how did that happen!? It doesn't matter, Tick Tock mfer, no one gets out alive.

I don’t golf, but have you ever played disc golf? Different vibe; shorts and beers and a sling of discs. The other day I ran into a morning disc golf crew that calls themselves the HOGS, Happy Old Guys - that’s the goal.

I could not find a picture of happy hogs playing disc golf on Unsplash

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How about you? Are you just getting into the game and trying to figure it out? Upping your game? Plotting your escape? Wondering what you do now that you’re out? Let me know how it’s going in the comments.

best, Andrew