On My Retirement - The Beginning - Part 2

Now that my retirement papers have been turned in, everyone notified, the news made public that I am retiring, I have to consider my out of workforce position, and my next steps.

I have to remember several things.

I have lived a very structured life with getting up at 5AM for a decade, ending work at 3PM. Originally then commuting from Seattle to my home in Squamish, a two hour journey that including walking through Seattle to the ferry, a 35 minute ride to Bainbridge Island, a bus ride that was anywhere from 20 minutes to over an hour for the 11 mile trip, depending on traffic, weather, and accidents or road work.

Or that stupid house on the north side of the road that every year put up an unbelievable amount of Christmas decorations that people couldn't help but to slow down and further impact commutre traffic home. Everyone pretty much on the commuter bus hated that when all we wanted to do was to get home and traffic was always too slow anyway without that light display that we had to deal with, year, after year, after year, winter after winter.

I have to remember that my job in IT work, working on front line servers to the public for a four state not for profit corporation on their software, applications, web servers, supporting web site developers, programmers and others, required a high level of functionality. The problem solving skills it required, the attention to detail, the starting and finishing things, the responsibility to the team, the company, the mission, the responsibility to proactively do what might never be noticed but should be done, the being aware of things related to things related to things, related to issues outside of those things, all this and more adds up to how I am now mentally and emotionally (and physically, being the downside in sitting all day long, in being sedentary in a job), all these things add up to how my minds is now pretty well honed to do anything.

When I graduated from Western Washington University in 1984, I knew I had pushed myself for four years to learn, to absorb all I could, to sharpen my mind, to get the most for the money my VA benefits, our country's citizens taxes, were paying for me to get. While my friends were out partying much of the time I was still in the university library, many times until they kicked me out. I wanted to learn...everything.

I knew I left college with my mind being as sharp and informed as it ever would be all the rest of  my life. Just like I knew when I left the military that my body would probably never be in that top of shape ever again. Both mind and body in the future of those times, I could try to keep in top shape, but might never see those levels of peak performance again.

But I knew I could try. I admit I've paid more attention to my mind being in shape than my body, but I've done well in that department too. Aikido was a wonderful way to exercise both mind and body. But because of my knees years ago, and my ankle, I had to give up practicing. Still however, I am on the dojo's Board of Directors still, for that non-profit school. I have also been donating to them, in matching funds from my job.

I now will definitely have the time to get in more exercise in a more broad sense than before. I have work out equipment at home, weights and an elliptical but I've wanted to do more. And now in having moved to a metropolitan location, I have much more and easier access to all this.

Why do I mention all of the above?

Because I have now moved from a structured, corporate environment to a private, small business environment. There is no CEO, or CIO filtering down our agenda to the working grunt on the front line. I no longer have my Director, or Manager, nor my Lead to manage me and my workload, my direction, my goals, and so on.

I now do that all for myself. Whenever you go into your own endeavors, into a small business environment, something that escapes many, something that a lot of people are not aware of is what I have been saying here.

My previous job that I just left took a turn. We were headed into Amazon AWS services from hardware and virtual servers that we maintained, into new technology where we used the "cloud". I was against it at first for security reasons until I attended the Amazon immersion day event and walked out of there very impressed. But it would mean we all at work in IT had to re-educate ourselves.

It meant that we would need to get certified, to study new information, then pass a test. To work extra hours, to work extra hard during the work day, to push the company into a new era, into new technologies, hopefully to refine our process, to save money, to make a better company.

I realized I was at a point where I could do that for them, or retire and do that for myself.

I decided I had given twenty-one years to this company and now I had the opportunity to do it for myself, to seek what I truly wanted to do, to "seek my bliss" if you will. To finally now that my family life was just myself now, my kids were raised and out into the world, I could break away and take the risk to do what I wanted to do.

And what was that?

Basically, to write. To be a writer. To be able to say, "I am a writer", when asked, and not, "Well I work in IT to pay the bills, but I'd like to be just a writer, to write full time." And here I am, finally. Now it's up to me.

So many make the mistake at a time like this to take their time, to not have the motivation others either inspired of them at a job, or demanded of them, depending on the work culture and environment. I have the skills, I have the motivation, I have the past spurring me on into what I want and not what I have to do. I have the mind for this, I have proven my skills,

I have produced products: short stories in horror, science fiction, books, ebooks, audiobooks, screenplays that although they haven't sold (yet), have placed in reputable screenplay contests. I have studied cinema since childhood and in college and on my own. My life has been a study in cinema, I have everything I need to do what I want in this area. I just need to do it.

Time will tell where this will lead.

However I have taken steps to set myself up for success. I have sold my house and I'm now renting. I am unencumbered by mortgage or debt. I have purchased equipment for producing films. I have not just time now to write full time, but to write when inspiration strikes me.

The gold standard of a writer who wishes to be a writer. That ability to jump up out of bed and write when inspiration hits, when your muse calls out to you, without worry for having to be up for a day job at 5AM, to be sharp all day long.

I now have to remember to use all these things, motivations, skills, a sharp mind, a habituated work ethic, the need to work extra hard, extra hours only now for myself, not for others, not for a large company. When I find a team to do this with me, to take this journey with me, I will expand all this to include them in the hope they will have their own inspiration, or will find mine infectious, a positive force to join with.

So many new small companies fail. Much of the reason for that is in not treating it like their previous jobs, where they had to answer to someone, to see much hard work applied to the mission. When they can finally choose their own mission, to succeed or fail on their own, they fail, because they do not realize how much harder it is without external influences monitoring them, riding them, wanting deadlines met, products produced, people supported.

I've revamped my old production company, LGN Productions. AKA, Last good Nerve Productions. A company started by a friend and myself, where we brought in a couple of others and produced a documentary in 1993-4. It aired twice in the Pacific Northwest. Then my life changed drastically and it all fell by the wayside. I moved out of Seattle.

I spent the next twenty some years being married, raising my kids, and working toward building a retirement that has finally come to fruition. Perhaps too soon, but I don't plan to simply sit on my laurels.

One might ask why, if I wanted to do this so bad for so long, why it took this long to get around to doing what I wanted to in life?

I tried. Trust me. I worked for a production company for some years and finally quit because I could never get anything I wrote on screen. I touched base with famous people when the opportunities arose but never did that pan out for me. It took years to get my first short story published. I tried from 1984 to 1990 when I sold my first story to a horror magazine. I'd been published in local computer rags before but they didn't pay.

Life kept taking over. I put things on hold. Finally when I realized my kids would be moving out soon, I started writing day and night. That was in 2010. We now have more outlets for people because of the internet and social media. Things started to turn for me. At some point I had gotten my mind into doing what I'd been practicing doing for so many years until finally it just seemed like the only thing holding me back was, my day job.

The job that was paying the bills. I realized I'd have to quit. Retirement was arriving and so I started working toward that. A situation where I'd have at least some income but could put all my time, energy and well, time, into doing what I wanted, what I thought I should do, what I was best at. I've established my name, my brand. I've gotten as far as I can, without quitting my job, my career. Finally, it was time.

And so, here we are.

I plan to act, to produce...stuff, to offer...something. Something worth paying attention to. Perhaps to change opinions, give laughter, share a nightmare that is fun to behold in a safe environment such as a story, a book, a film. Time will tell where this leads, and if I'm worthy.

Stay tuned....

On My Retirement - The End - Part 1

I wish you all a pleasant Veteran's Day.

UPDATE November 11, 2016 - 2:20PM PST - turned in my equipment at work. Had lunch at Kell's Irish Pub, pint of Guinness, shot of Jamesons 21 year old whiskey, clam chowder and enjoyed it very much.

Took the ferry home on my first and last commute ride from Bremerton to Seattle. Didn't realize I had the radio AND the dash fan on and killed the battery. Ferry worker gave me a quick jump and I zipped off the boat. Got home, trickle charging the battery to condition it happy and having a shot or two of Taliskers. Retirement, is here. Now the hard work begins and as I designate it. I'm a tough taskmaster, too.

UPDATE November 11, 2016 - 8:47AM PST - I am in Seattle. Took the Bremerton ferry over with my car, to drop off my things and retire from my company. Seeing old friends, experiencing nostalgia. So much here has changed since I was in town to work a year ago. Seattle it is said has more boom cranes putting up buildings than any other city in America, even San Francisco. It's noisy, there's a lot of people, many younger people probably in high tech companies. Amazon and Google are right next door. But then Amazon is everywhere it seems, even has entire floors of this building. I have turned in some of my stuff, my monitor, peripherals, my cell phone for being on call. I still have only my laptop and my ID badge which I'll turn in as I leave. Twenty-one years here and so much has changed. I had a family, a wife, two kids when I started here in 1995. I was a tech writer contractor for nine months before being hired on April Fool's Day. Once I leave here today, that is all behind me.


"A new life awaits where you can begin again." Blade Runner film reference. Love that film. I have new adventures. My son's gold mine which he just got the claim on. Video productions with my new equipment. And massive amounts of writing I can finally delve into. All I can say is thanks all and Cheers!


And now, back to reality....



I am crestfallen. But humor will help...some. Trump was voted to be president. America is in disarray. He has damaged us, with more to come. Capitalism will run rampant now. Republicans are in power. I won't say we are doomed, or that some good may come of it, if we don't all die instead. But dark times are ahead of us.

I wrote this blog and the next, part two, last week when I thought Hillary Clinton would win. I voted for Bernie, I voted for Hillary. There was no way Trump, a real sad person for a president, could win. He's Vice President Pence is not a good person either. Both guided by Gods. Trump by money, Pence by a Roman tradition in the Catholic church (maybe the Pope who is awesome most of the time, will have some sway with him).

Please world, wish us luck. Many of us are for America, for the World. Not for capitalism at all costs, not for conservative beliefs, but for progressive beliefs. We want to push the world into a better place, not go back to the defective and delusional 1950s.

Returning to our regularly scheduled programming now, today I start my retirement heading into uncertain and possible miserable times. I will write. I will not be censored. Stay tuned. I will always be honest with you, or you will know if I can not be and I will make it painfully obvious.

Putting aside now for a moment all the dark in our world,..

Cheers! I'm retiring!

I was in the Air Force in the late 1970s. I like to take today off for my years in service, for my friends I knew back then in the service and for the many friends I've lost who have been in the service. So I have today off.

Today is also the day I retire from the general workforce.

I am now sixty-one. How can I be that old? I have stayed mentally young because I have an open mind, I embrace positive change, and I seek truth. I had wanted to retire by fifty but I can't really say that I actually had tried to achieve that. It was more wish fulfillment. Family and life kept me from retiring that young. My own inattention perhaps kept me from it.

In 1995 I had been out of work for months. Fifteen hundred were let go from US West Technologies that January in 1994. But I was kept on, my contact extended for months. Then, I too was out of work. I got a few short contracts, I took on other contract agencies in a desperate attempt to find work, but then things dried up. There were a lot of people out of work that summer who did things just like what I did.

Bills were piled up. Thank God for unemployment as it paid our mortgage. My wife made a little money as a horse trainer but she was stressed out. I was stressed out. Then I got a call about a job but with an $8/hr cut in pay, I turned it down. I had to. Three times over the next couple of weeks they called back about it and I turned it down. Then I got a call from a woman recruiter.

She painted a very pretty picture of a new contract as a Sr. Technical Writer. Suddenly it started to sound real familiar. I stopped her and asked if this was the same job they kept calling me about. There was a hesitation and I knew it was. She then admitted it but talked me into just calling the guy who was the manager hiring and to talk to him.

From that point on as I see it now in hindsight, I was lost. I was hired before I hung up on the phone with her. I called the guy, I went in to see him. I kept hesitating and he finally just said to come in, meet people, look around and then say no if I wanted. So I went in. I accepted the job. I got him to try to raise the pay but they didn't have the money for that. At five and a half months out of work, I talked with my wife about it and ended up taking the job.

Nine months after I started the position, I was hired, on April 1st, 1996. Twenty-one years later, I am now retiring. I have in work there, gone from a subsidiary company, then after being absorbed by the parent company, we then became a part of a four state group.

Originally I had said I would take the job if and only if two things. One, I get my birthday off as I have never, against all odds, ever worked on my birthday. We get one day a year for us and only us and I take it. Although, as my mother was born on my birthday, I have never actually had it all to myself. Which explains much of that mindset.

But, you say, weren't you born on your mother's birthday as you're obviously younger than her?

She had always said that I was God's gift to her on her birthday. A pleasant, sweet motherly like thing to say. My being a smart ass teenager when she first told me this, my response was: I think you should reconsider that because considering I was the gift, perhaps God hated you. She laughed and said, Oh don't say that, you were my bundle of joy."

And at eight pounds, thirteen ounces (the same exact weight my son weighed at birth), it was quite a bundle indeed. When I was born my father called his mother and told her in his confusion that I was thirteen pounds eight ounces and almost gave my grandmother a heart attack.

The other thing I wanted a guarantee on if I took that job was that I would never, ever work for the parents company. This was a thirty person company and I didn't want to work for a big entity. I had recently worked for US West Technologies on a high level development team. It was an amazing opportunity to see corporate workings at such a level. And I never wanted that view point again.

So I took the job. It took me over two years to recouperate from my recently acquired debt in my loss per hour of a sizable sum. But I learned a lot and loved the people I worked with. Then in the last years of the dotcom boom, the manager left along with others. My phone rang so much with calls form headhunters trying to steal me away, I had to stop answering the phone as I couldn't get any work done.

I had wanted to go but my wife was fearful of the months out of work and was looking the current job as a bird in the hand. Others went off, made lots of money, bought hot cars, paid off houses with stock options and so on while I remained.

As each person left, I got their server. I started as a tech writer, but one who could become a webmaster. Then I became by default as other left, the network guy, the DBA, the security guy, the hardware guy, the software guy. I took servers out of the box, physically built them up, installed software, secured them, put them on the network and ran, updated, upgraded, secured them.

At one point I didn't have a manager for eighteen months. I was ordered to see the network assimilated by the corporate group. I was now just part of a team, not what was once a standalone company. Bill Gates stole our president. Paul Allen stole others. We did good work. But the new headquarters in Portland didn't like our little group. We had a bad reputation. Because we did good work. But that's for another time and is part of a previous blog a while back.

I saw that network into the bigger picture. I was derided, ignored, people didn't know me and didn't want me because I was part of a now defunct entity. And yet I continued. Eventually the main money making network in Washington state was part of the overall new network.

The entire company once was hit by a virus and in a teleconference across four states once about it, this being after it was all over, I was derided again. But I was able to point out that of all the parts of the network the only part that was not affected at all was the one I ran. During that time and after I was associated with a group started by our head of computer security. An amazing guy.

I’ve had a secret clearance for nuclear weapons in the Air Force, been involved through the aforementioned company and elsewhere in the past, with cyber security issues and as well being a member from the beginning of our private international Agora, a group started by our head of security for computer security experts and law enforcement, drawing from national and international police forces (Secret Service, NSA, Australian police, Canadian Mounties, etc.).

This was set up by our previous security head in Washington, Kirk Bailey Chief Information Security Officer of UW, whom I worked with in that group for tech setup along with a few others. UW is also one of my alma maters and I worked there for seven and a half years. Worked in the Personnel Office and with the Psychology Department on their Marital Research project and other things.

Over the years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, we were given briefings from people like now the famous Richard Clarke (former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism for the United States), the NSA, President’s Committee on the Infrastructure, and so on.

The Agora set up an ad hoc team that built Seattle Police Department’s first cybersecurity unit.

I was a system/network still running that network until we got a new manager. She further restructured things and moved me to another team. A new team of web/internet systems administrators. Finally I would have someone to talk to about my job, about issues and problems.

I am now retiring from that team. I was moved off of it along with many others from other teams in an attempt to build a team of experts on a middle tier team between the initial help you got in calling support, to the engineering teams such as I had been on and am now back on again. That middle level team lasted just over four years.

It is now twenty-one years later from starting at this company. Today is my last day.

The last day working with people I've known for decades. When I delivered the news at the end of our weekly team teleconference, you could hear a pin drop. Then we ended the meeting. I got several congratulations from teammates and one or two, "I'm envious". I will no longer have to deal with corporate issues. No more being, "on call" for problems where a computer could call me any hour day or night for problems.

No more on call. I had my first on call in 1976 in the Air Force for nuclear war. If I got called, we all went to the base, sent of nuclear bombers, and knew that cities were about to be nuked, people melted or disintegrated. Years later I would pull  on call support for medical centers when I worked on the mainframe for two major medical centers in Seattle for their Radiology and Pathology departments.

Then I got his job when I was on call for not cities dying, not people dying, but web sites dying in the middle of the night. People asked me why I was always so calm in this job when I first started it. I could only reply that masses of people wouldn't die, individuals wouldn't die, no one would die, so what's the panic?

Finally, no more on call.

I have for years wanted the luxury of writing at my leisure, or under my self imposed pressure. Of producing artistic things, not technological ones. Of seeking my bliss, not a paycheck. Because working for a company puts you on a fixed income. You do the same things over and over.

Now the sky is the limit. I can turn on a dime. I am the team. My potential now is the sky and beyond, not the corporate boardroom or someone's limited vision. Limited either from lack of vision or corporate restriction. I can delve into art and satiate my desire to follow my passions, my talents, the talents I seem to be best suited for, that have been restrained for so long.

Life now feels...wonderful. Like I can finally breathe, can finally follow my own path. I can post during the day where I want, what I want. I am not restrained by what my fellow workers or executives might see me say online. I can be fully open and honest, restricted by my own good taste and sensibilities.

Retirement. This isn't retirement for me. It is the beginning of actually doing what I've wanted to do, All my life. It is the initiation.

The future is the potential. My energy, my vision, my orientation, my skills, my ability to see, to act upon, to produce...whatever I want.

People complain about retirement. When should it be? Should we raise the age limit. Idiocy. We need to get our economy under control. We need to work toward people retiring younger and younger so they can then turn themselves to what is important to them, what is important to our nation, and humanity. We need to orient them that retirement isn't just vacations, doing nothing, puttering around the garden.

Retirement in that sense is empowerment, self-actualization to do what you can and want to, to seek your true potential outside of the confines of business or government. It should be a point to take risks,

A government should have as focus, empowering it's citizens, raising us as a culture above. It shouldn't just be to maintain, to just keep out heads above water so we don't drown. Days to work per week should be less, hours worked per day should be less. Age to retire should be lowered and lowered until one day you only have to work at all if you want.

However at that point we also need to educated our generations to have a certain orientation at retirement, or in life. To seek passion to produce quality. To seek to better yourself, our nation and the entire human species.

And so I reach for retirement with that all in mind.

I won't be just sitting around on vacation. I have revived my production company.
Stay tuned....