How to Retire Early

Retiring early is a journey not an event. There are complicated material, psychological and spiritual aspects. There is a "going to" and a "going away from." To successfully retire early, you must address all aspects, not just the money. Money is actually the easiest part.

I have been exploring various aspects of: I have a mission I want to accomplish which I need to quit my day job to get the time. I have enough money to support myself at a middle class level for life. I am quitting a very secure six figure engineering job where I am skilled and respected.

I have for my entire career thought that I would quit as soon as I got the money. Now, at the age of 59, I have the money. But I am the child of a man who never quit. He had a heart attack at the age of 76, was alive in the hospital calling clients and working, and then coded out while in the hospital. I am the child of a mother who retired at 55 and enjoyed the life provided by her husband. That is a conflict between 2 very different personalities. I am struggling on the inside with my early cultural editing.

I work with people who have mostly worked for the same company for their careers. My boss has been there 42 years! I am a person who has been laid off several times; and I even took a 4 year leave from my career to live in a monastery. Upon leaving the monastery, I had to work at 3 small jobs for a year before I got a job back in engineering. My view of my life is that it can be re-started after a discontinuity. Quitting my job now and thinking I can have a successful phase 3 of my life is thinking beyond that of the people around me. The people around me don't understand. They logically think that nothing could be better than slouching around the company collecting the huge salary. Taking it easy is their choice; not daring to try something completely new.

Once I took my dog out of the race at work, and became extremely good at what I do, I also became extremely bored as well as realizing how largely useless and administrative my job is. Actually personal growth is important enough to me that I'm willing to quit a lucrative salary in order to find something new.

And yes, there are personnel issues at work which I don't like dealing with.

I am going to something. I have for 33 years been doing daily spiritual studies. I have a collection of books written by wise people. Last June, nearly a year ago, I had an ah-ha moment. I realized what I could do with my 4 years in a contemplative monastery plus all these years of spiritual studies. I immediately started working on it and have continued daily to work on it. I also know that I live in the internet age. No one can stop me from creating a web page, an app and publishing a book. Many other people have been successful at those tasks. I can learn how and have fun learning.

For now, my quit date is not until September. So I struggle at work with less and less interest in the pettiness.

More on this journey as I go along.