I’m in a good spot. Mentally, physically. As I sit here on my porch, sipping an Eventide Gin Cocktail as Claire prepares the evening meal, the rigamarole of the past few weeks is ebbing. Decisions have been made and uncertainties are disappearing back into the mists from whence they came. And from the initial chaos, I am becoming more productive in the things I care about than I have ever been.
I don’t miss Qualcomm. I don’t miss the work. I do miss the people and, maybe, I miss the interesting projects that I used to work on. But the projects became less interesting and the overhead kept increasing and my productivity kept decreasing. At the end of the day, it was still good enough, but there was no support for what I saw needed to be done and, to be honest, I began to care less and less. “Not my circus, not my monkeys” as a slogan will only take you to the point when you realize that you’re just in a different cage in the same zoo.
All of that is in the past now. I now get to spend hours at a print shop on a Friday seeing the maps for Winter’s Victory come off the press and do on-the-spot proofing. I now get to spend hours creating a new software product and, hopefully, a new wargaming paradigm. I now get to spend hours doing genealogy for family & friends. I now get to spend hours doing game design. I now wake up on Mondays without a sense of dread about how spending time on the day job is getting in the way of what I want to spend time doing. I’m busy and productive and happy.
I still don’t consider myself retired. I am self-employed. In the earlier part of my career, I enjoyed working at such small companies as Omtool, Image Concepts and XLi (before the endless series of acquisitions). I’m now back to my small company roots and it’s fun; it’s exciting; it’s risky. I’m in more control over my life than I’ve been in years.
I couldn’t be happier.