The Grass Is Definitely Greener.

I’ve been doing some consulting work with my former business again. This time, I’m helping the new owners navigate the fun of year-end tax reporting using the IT systems that had grown organically over the years, systems that made perfect sense to me but turned out to be anything but straightforward for them. What I could do almost on autopilot required careful explanation and documentation beyond what I’d already provided. It seems my “logical” system only made sense to me.

It’s a strange experience, once again, revisiting the business I started nearly thirty years ago. New faces everywhere, a different atmosphere, different rhythms and priorities, it’s only been nine months since I sold up and retired, but it might as well be nine years. I felt like a friendly ghost wandering through the house I’d built brick by brick, and the dislocation was slightly surreal. The place still bore my fingerprints, but it no longer felt like mine…they’ve even got rid of the free coffee machine I installed for the staff!

I think some people look back on their working life with regret when it ends, a nagging feeling that their best years are behind them, that they’ve been diminished somehow. The battles they fought and challenges they overcame during their careers become distant memories, gradually forgotten by organizations that have already moved on without them. For those people, retirement can feel like a pale shadow of their former glory, a slow fade into irrelevance.

But I believe that’s entirely the wrong way to look at it. Instead of dwelling on what’s finished and mourning what’s been left behind, we should look forward to the freedom that retirement brings, the chance to choose our days, to pursue what matters to us now rather than what mattered to the business. No more meetings that could have been emails. No more emails that could have been nothing at all. That’s a much healthier perspective. This second round of consulting work is my final self-imposed moral obligation to help out, although I’ll admit the cash is good!

Heading home, I felt sorry for them. They have years of grind ahead of them, the relentless cycle of problems to solve, deadlines to meet, demands to juggle. My mindset has changed so profoundly that the very thought of doing all that again sent a genuine shudder down my back. Meanwhile, I’ll be parking the car and walking to a local coffee shop to meet some other retired friends for a chat and coffee. The only worry in my world is the fact I might be ten minutes late, and even that doesn’t really matter.

I know which reality I prefer inhabiting, and it’s the one where nobody can schedule a meeting with me anymore. Another few days next week will finish my consulting gig, and then I’ll leave the new owners to sink or swim with their dream of running their own business. It’s hard to believe that was my dream for thirty years; now, it would be the material of my retirement nightmares.