First Year of Retirement Goals

According to the blackboard painted on my kitchen wall, I’ve got 45 shifts left before I retire(or mini-retire, or sabbatical, or whatever the fuck it turns out to be). That’s less than three months. As I get closer to this date, I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to do during this first year after I bounce from paid belligerency. Sure, I’ve dreamed about this for years. But now I feel the need to narrow it down and get specific.

At first I had some pretty audacious goals, many of which were quite involved with associated logistical complexity. I thought about traveling to Colorado to summit another 14er, and finally doing some ice climbing. I’ve also considered getting back into jiu jitsu, and wanted to take several multi-day trips to check out the primo mountain biking a few states away. Also on the slate was DIY’ing some solar panels on my roof, and maybe applying for a PhD program. Wanted to at least triple my hunting frequency, and take up archery. I considered taking my daughter out of daycare completely, so I could be a full-on stay at home dad. Upping my writing frequency to two or three posts a week was on the docket. May as well throw in figuring out what career, job, or purpose to do next, then plan the fuck out of how I’ll conquer that. 

Anybody else see any issues with the above???

While writing out these plans, I could feel the stress build. I knew if I committed to these goals, I’d be running from one to the other, stressed about completing them all in a year. 

Because not accomplishing all of those goals this first year would be a failure! 

Luckily, I’m not a complete idiot. 

After thinking about this for a day or two, I thought better. I know me; when I set a goal, I complete it. Even if it damn near kills me. Armed with this knowledge, I’m a bit more circumspect with what I set my sights on these days. 

With some age and exprience (or really just me banging my head against the wall over and over until I realized I was being stupid), I now know to go easy with trying to do all of the things, and instead make goals that fit within the mostly chill yet sometimes challenging life I want to live. Along with that, I’m just one dude standing on the shoulders of giants. I’ve read more than a few blogs by early retirees that went bananas trying to do all of the things, and were more stressed in retirement than they were at work. I can see that tendency in myself as well. Type A hard headed stupidity sums up much of my personality. 

Taking a breath, and with the goal of focusing on what’s actually important, I whittled down my hard core crazy goals into the following:

1. Support my wife as she increases her work load. 

I hit major burnout almost four years ago, while running our department’s primary tactical team, working crazy hours, and taking care of our newborn son with no local family support and minimal childcare. My wife was also working full time. After the burnout hit, I dialed back to a more normal work schedule and left the tactical team. I asked my wife to go down to 30 hours a week to help with my mental burden (her company is awesome, mine does not allow part time work), and we increased the amount of childcare from 4 hours a day to 7. After I held normal people hours for a few years, I was asked to retrain an existing unit into another type of tactical team. I’ve been doing this for about a year, and while the hours are more regular, I’m back to night shift. My wife has gone down to 20 hours a week so she can do all the kid stuff while I sleep until noon. This has been taxing for her, and she misses being more involved with work. She’s in this weird situation where she actually likes her job and her company is good to her. So when I bounce, my primary goal will be to take on many of the kid and domestic responsibilities so she can get more involved with work. She probably won’t go back to complete full time, but maybe 30-35 hours a week. As I go back and edit this, I recall that my wife has sacrificed much to support me and my crazy job. It paid off for me; despite the price we’ve both paid, I’ve got to do some amazing things and have unbelievable opportunities. I want to give her the gift she’s given me.

2. Sleep better.

Though I’m getting at least 7 hours of sleep most nights/mornings, I constantly feel like crap. From experience on different shifts, I know this is due to me working nights. It’s not natural to go to bed after 4am and wake at noon. I would like to switch back to something like going to bed at 9pm and getting up at 6am. With two young kids in the mix, hopefully this will get me at least 7 hours of sleep, but on a more regular schedule. I’ll continue to do all the healthy sleep habit stuff I’ve done to survive late shift like:

• Avoid blue light hours prior to bedtime
• Exposure to sunlight within 30 minutes of waking
• Exposure to sunset/dusk light before sleep
• Rarely drink alcohol
• Stop eating 4 hours prior to bedtime
• Meditate upon waking and before bed
• Reading fiction before sleep
• Using a white noise machine

Hopefully continuing all of this stuff, but being on a more normal schedule will help me get better sleep and not feel like crap all of the time. I’m also thinking about incorporating napping, especially after nights when one of the kids is up a bunch. I’ll finally have time for the ecstasy of the siesta! 

3. Decompress.

I’ve been in crazy professions that involve stupid hours, sleep deprivation, and people occasionally trying kill me for over 20 years now. I’m giving myself permission to just chill for a bit, and try to relax for at least the first 6 months. Mostly this involves me deliberately not trying to do all of the things, and instead embrace #sluglife on the reg.  

4. Do the 60 for 60 meditation thing.

Naval Ravikant, lauded dude of the internet, discussed this technique across various socials. I’ve been meditating for years, but usually only for 10-15 minutes a day. This has helped me to notice when my mind is going off on some tangent which is less than helpful, and reduce the time it takes me to get back to somewhere more chill. This Naval dude talks about doing 60 minutes of meditation for 60 days, which he and others have found helpful to clear out their mental inbox and deal with stuff they didn’t even know was there. I’ve been wanting to try this out for years, and for the first time ever I’ll have a schedule conducive to such a practice.

5. Experiment with less child care.

Right now both our kids are in daycare from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm, five days a week. Our oldest starts Kindergarten in the fall, but until then I’d like to try taking them out of daycare one day each. I’ll have to get my sleep schedule on dayshift first, but after I’ve adjusted to that, I think it’d be nice to have a couple days a week where I’m able to spend one on one time with each kid. I’m cautioning myself to not go overboard with this, as I really want to prioritize sleep and decompressing. I love my kids, but they’d probably rather have a relaxed dad they see most of the time instead of a stressed out dad they see all of the time. 

6. Maintain my workout stuff.

Right now I do one day of yoga, two days of strength training, and then 1-2 days of mountain biking and 1-2 days of some other cardio variety (sandbag fun, running, rowing, whatever). I make sure I don’t work out more than 6 days in a row, and try to get at least one rest day in a week. I’d like to keep this up, but try to not go overboard. Me going overboard leads to injury. Injury leads to pain, pain to anger, anger to the darkside….

7. Mountain bike a little bit more.

In keeping with the above, it’d be cool if I got out twice a week most weeks, and dropped one or both of the cardio variety days depending on how I’m feeling. Because of my current work schedule, I’m usually in a rush to get to the park 20 minutes from my house, hit it hard for 45 minutes to an hour, and then rush home. I’d like to stretch these rides to be a little longer. While I hit the awesome nationally ranked park almost every month, it takes an hour to get there. I’d like to try making the pilgrimage to that dirt nirvana maybe every third week or so. Again, I’m prioritizing #sluglife, but if I can do a little more mountain biking while not getting all rushed, that will be a win. 

There you have it, goals for my first year of retirement. I’m deliberately lowering the bar. If I can just do the first three (support my wife, sleep better, decompress) I’ll be content. The other four would be nice, and I think they’re doable. But shit happens, and I’m cool with rolling with it and embracing the #sluglife. I know me, and I will always have the desire to crush it. I’m pretty sure even if I dial it down to a six, I’ll still be plugging away at making my life better, and hopefully embracing a little more self-care along the way. I’m looking forward to seeing how this all pans out, and what adventures arise. For right now though, I’m enjoying this moment. Days left working are down to double digits. The end is nigh, and the age of napping is almost upon us!