It’s the end of era in shiny things

   …I am now officially a retired person! Yesterday was my last day at work, which is just so bizarre that I am having trouble processing it, despite having put in my notice four months ago as required by the state. It is quite exciting, although I  think it is going to take awhile to sink in. Baker B retired three years ago so it IS about time, but firstly I don’t feel old enough to retire, which is of course great but quite the disconnect, and secondly I always assumed I’d be working till I was 100. Also great that it didn’t take quite that long! Or that I had to work till noon on the day of my funeral, which is what Miss Tattoo expects for herself.  

I am a catastrophizer extraordinaire, so I have worried and worried and worried that we are not financially prepared for this, despite having the house paid off, the cars paid off, the credit cards paid off, a fair amount set aside, some land my dad left me in Asheville, and a storage unit Mark’s mom left us in Morganton (a whole other story as it was flooded by Helene and the long-time renter left and now we’ve got to sell it), a decent pension from the state, and insurance included in our pensions for a ridiculously reasonable fee. That’s something that came to a halt about ten years ago, so we were REALLY lucky to get grandfathered in. My salary was shite at the university but the benefits are very good. 

Anyhow, Friday was the Big Day! I am still exhausted from the Wrapping Things Up efforts though. Here’s a tip - if you are using your work email for every.fucking.thing.ever, stop doing that. RIGHT NOW.  Omg I have used my work email for nearly everything over the past 25 years because I worked at a university and they don’t care if you use your work accounts for personal stuff. As long as you aren’t conducting political campaigns through university owned accounts or threatening other people, no problem! Which was great until it comes to having to switch everything to a personal account. I worked all week on changing my email for ten million gazillon accounts. Plus moving all the personal stuff I had on my work account to my personal account. A lot of the email changes were actually pretty easy, but a lot more were…not. You have to get a code from your original email and then you have to get a code from your new email and then you have to go back to the account you’re switching and hope that it will all work out. Flickr gets the prize for being the worst massive horrific pain in the ass ever, because I actually had to send them a link to a *photo of myself* ON Flickr, and then send them a copy of my driver’s license, so they can figure out I’m actually the owner of the account and not trying to hijack it for… whatever reason you’d hijack someone else’s Flickr account for. And of course it will take ages for them to verify. My credit cards were nowhere near as stringent. And I do appreciate the attention to verification but still. It’s been a ginormous ordeal and I’m sure I haven’t succeed with all of my accounts. And I’ll probably be locked out of some of them way on down the road.

But that’s a problem for Future Me! Current me is just trying to get used to the fact that I am DONE. I had gotten so overwhelmingly sick of my job that it’s a total thrill to think I will never have to do all that boring/annoying/irritating stuff I did daily ever again. I WILL miss my coworkers - Mr. Organized and Ms. Tattoo especially since the three of us have worked together as a tight-knit team for probably 15 years. They are both fantastic coworkers with the perfect balance of support and snarkiness, and I will really miss them terribly although we have sworn to stay in contact. And the rest of our office is great too. They threw me a retirement party Thursday that was disguised as our postponed-for-bad-weather Christmas party. We were to bring White Elephant gifts, and play the game where you draw numbers, everyone picks out a gift in numerical order and unwraps it, and the next person can either pick a new gift or take the one the previous person selected. Basically it’s a stealing other people’s stuff game and although I think white elephant usually means silly junk, ours were supposed to be things people might actually want. Last time we did it I ended up with a really nice little Yeti travel mug that I use ALL the time. 

I was not going to even participate because I just did not feel like being in the spotlight - HAHAHAHAHA!!! - so pretended to have forgotten we were doing the gift exchange. Since it’s way past Christmas at this point I figured I could get away with that. But several people professed to have brought an extra gift! So I could use theirs!!! Of course I caved. And oddly enough I drew #1, so I got to select the first gift. Even odder, every single person after me decided that instead of selecting an unopened mystery gift they would take mine. And I would have to go pick out another one and unwrap it. By the fifth or sixth time I decided they were doing that intentionally! Just to tease me!! WELL it turned out that it WAS quite intentional, and at the very end they announced that I was keeping ALL the gifts!! That part was quite shocking and unexpected, and so nice I nearly cried. 

People keep asking me what I will DO, like I am actually in danger of being bored 🤣! Yeah. No danger of that! I am going to first of all focus on writing. I think I’ve mentioned joining a critique group a number of years ago, and that gave me a lot more focus and accountability so I actually HAVE done quite a bit of work in recent years. But not enough, because I was too busy with/exhausted from my day job. Now… I will have time!!! I will have great big hunks of time and can actually maybe even finish what I am working on. Which is no big secret but I will write about THAT later so as to get done with this entry tonight. And there are a gazillion other things I am thrilled to have time for like making jewellery and hiking and traveling around - Baker B and I are taking some at least couple-of-day trips very soon - and just all sorts of things. Things that could be worked into daily life around a job but I don’t ever seem to manage that. Well, not enough. There is always The Job hanging over my head and I am not someone who is just overflowing with energy and can tackle all the things at once. And I never have been that person, or I’d be on my tenth novel at this point. 

SO it is all quite exciting - and will be even more exciting when it really hits me that I am DONE with my annoying day job and all the things I want to do are now my job! I will also be devoting time to getting my England Trip Entries done, which I am falling behind on - what a shock. And I will leave you with a couple of Party Pics: 

  I really do not know what’s up with my ensemble. I meant to take the weird vest off when we got there but got distracted and forgot. Apparently dressing weirdly is my superpower. 

Miss Tattoo is sitting beside me on the right, Mr. Organized is standing in the light green shirt, and Baker B is on the far right standing behind us, looking VERY serious.