Cutting the Cord, a.k.a. Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space

Honestly, it's a little weird.

I've been in the same job for 29 years, and I'm leaving in two months.

Thanks to a retirement system that I never used to think about when I was younger, I don't have to get a new job to have enough money to live on. I'm a lucky man, and I'm grateful as hell.

But I'll almost certainly keep working in some form or other.

I'm leaving because I have pretty solid info that moves are afoot -- among those who have the power to make such moves -- to change aspects of that very retirement system in a way that would cost me a lot of money if I stick around. It would be a ridiculous and foolish risk to stay -- or so say those who advise me on financial decisions. The math on leaving adds up -- easily -- whereas the math on staying makes the obvious sentimentality of that potential course of action seem something close to reckless.

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By the way, in case you can't tell, I'm being intentionally vague. If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you'll know that we don't ever talk about my day job as a lawyer here. I'm trying to maintain that facade, for now anyway.
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OK, it's probably closer to really weird. I'm really good at my day job. I could keep doing it forever.

But it's also exhilarating as hell to be free-falling, with a giant safety net below me.

I'm 56 years old and in two months I can do whatever I want.

Have I mentioned the exhilaration part of the deal?

I'm in two bands. I do volunteer work. I teach. Add in travel, gym, yoga, playing sports, etc., and I don't think I'll be anything close to bored. Last night I had a few ciders with a guy that works in a law office that I might want to join one day. Or not. I can also just handle individual cases once I'm "retired." There's talk of relocating to the Mountain West some day.

Hell, there might even be a book in me. There could be some freelancing or other work in the "paleo" world.

None of these things could come true, or all of them, or, more likely, something somewhere in between.

The exhilaration is real. The uncertainty is pretty cool.

 It's time to have (more) fun (than ever). Let's go.