A Few Seconds to Breathe

Well—haven’t been able to write anything for a long time.  And this is not going to be a race report.  I had visions before Christmas of getting my act together to start blogging regularly to document and share what we are going through as I approach retirement.  I figured this stage is probably as interesting as the adventures that I will definitely be writing about once I get out the door.

But life threw me for a curveball and many of you know that the last week of January that gradual fade into retirement became a whistful dream and I have found myself thrust into a C-level job until the day I walk out the door (which is also floating around now as I wait to find out when my replacement arrives and how much overlap we need).  I thought I was a busy person before but the last 6 weeks have really been over the top.  I am still drinking from the firehose and figure that I just need to get used to it because it’s not going to change.  

In the midst of this we have been getting the house ready to sell.  Thankfully it went on the market this week—which is really the only reason I am finding some time to write—I can’t touch anything in my house anymore in case I make a mess.  We have been living in this house for 19 years and discovered that you really accumulate a ton of not all the useful or important junk.  When we started cleaning the house out before Christmas, many things seemed like they were important to keep.  One thing you need to know—we aren’t downsizing a little bit—we are going from 3800 sq. ft. to 200 sq.ft (yes that’s right there are only 2 zeros on there) so basically, anything that doesn’t come with us in the trailer, we will be paying to store.  As time went on and I got my head wrapped around “Is it important enough to pay to keep it’ it was amazing how my perspective changed.  Don and I have looked at each other many times in the last few months and said ‘its just stuff’ and tossed it into the garbage/donate pile.  I know that when we are actually moving out of here a whole lot more stuff is going to go.

Some of the things I learned: 

1. When you go through all your old photos—all those pictures of trees, mountains, sunsets—very few were kept-the quality had to be exceptionally high.  Pretty much every picture of the kids made the keep pile.  Now in the digital age we take so many more photos—I wonder how that’s going to be to clean out?
2. Things you think you should be able to sell for a decent amount often you can’t
3.  Things you think nobody will pay very much for sometimes are worth more than you think  
4. Offering stuff on Craig’s list for $10 won’t get it gone most of the time.  Offer it for Free and your phone explodes with people who want it.  We just gave up on all of that kind of stuff and offered it for free—it was more valuable to us to get it gone than have the $10.  Some things we only had posted for 10 minutes—Don’s phone exploded with people wanting the stuff.
5. Pokemon cards still make young boys happy
6. I still can’t bring myself to get rid of my Steiff stuffed animal collection (see number 2)

Unrelated to cleaning out the house – I have learned that becoming CIO, getting your house ready for selling and training for an Ironman are definitely a recipe for getting sick and I would not recommend this combination to anyone.  I am very happy to get to remove one of them and I hope my body and mind will have an easier time of it since raceday is in 6 weeks and I have the hardest training coming up the next few weeks.

There are a whole lot more things we need to figure out for this retirement thing and get our minds adjusted to—I hope to be able to tackle some of them over the next couple months so we have some of this figured out before –but if not—oh well, I’ll have lots of time on my hands.