Yesterday, I wrote in my personal blog that I voluntarily retired from the National Weather Service, departing with full benefits including a pension and my retirement investments. After spending a decade as a meteorologist and more than two decades as their information technology officer, I had done all that I had set out to do in my career as a federal employee. It was simply time for me to move on and accept new challenges.

At the time, I wasn’t ready to declare I was retired, but instead I was leaving the National Weather Service and working my way toward a new career. When I was in my 40s and early 50s, I had always thought I would move on to a third career focused as an analyst in content management or increase the number of commercial websites that I owned and supported. After a year of retirement experience and listening to my heart, I've come to accept that I was lying to myself a year ago. My new career is actually retirement itself.  It also hasn't escaped me that I'm one of the early birds of my generation, Gen X, to reach retirement. It's a lonely place at the moment, but others are sure to follow.

While I'm still in the honeymoon phase of my retirement, I'm more convinced than ever that I'm done with full-time employment, whether that be working for a boss or for clients. Sure, I’ll occasionally take on projects, freelance work, and volunteer work, but those endeavors need to come out as something positive for me as well as others around me. In retirement, my focus has shifted from how best to advance a career to how best to live better.

Living better isn’t as easy as it sounds. Gen X knows this through their own experiences that it takes work and commitment to do and be better. How many years have we tried and not succeeded? Everything is a challenge whether we're talking our about diet and exercise, volunteer work, traveling, growing relationships, taking care of our near-adult kids, some of us taking care of our parents, and just keeping the house and lawn nice. The difference is with retirement you’ve run out of excuses to not get some of this done. For many of us this is the transition from planning to do to actually doing because time is running out on us faster than we want to admit to ourselves. 

When you first announce your retirement date, there are inevitably a few friends that will warn you that you will get bored and wish you hadn’t left work behind. Others will warn you that you're too young and won't be able to afford retirement without a steady paycheck. These people mean well, but their advice often comes not out of wisdom but out of fear for what lies ahead of them in their own retirement. I found none of these warnings to be true, and worse, if you wait too late, you’re bound to miss out on the benefits retirement has to offer you.  I plan to expand at a later date why you should look forward to retirement and not let your fears prevent you from entering one of the most important phases in your lifetime.

Ultimately, I’m finding there is a lot of power in retirement and that it doesn’t signify an end as much as a new beginning. Despite all my work experiences from the age of 15 to now, I have very little experience in my own personal retirement journey. However, after a year of coasting through the first year of retirement, I’m ready to do the hard work as well as experience the fun involved in my retirement years. Here is what I do know: we're not our grandparents nor our parents. Just as many of us are doing currently, the future for us will be our own way, and if people tell us we're doing it wrong, we really don't care because it's our generation's turn.

This point in time also signifies a shift in the focus of my writings in the future from here on out. Less business, career, and information technology focused, more focused on the lessons and “fun stuff” Gen X has to offer. I've placed this website, Gen X Living, on hold for so long that now it's time to spend more time here and see where it all takes us. Stay tuned…