It has been a difficult adjustment stepping away from my career…

…immediately after writing that, Jim Gaffigan’s falsetto inner voice rang out in my head: Taking early retirement in his forties? What a nightmare right? Look at Mr. Humble over here, complaining about having nothing but free time.

What I mean by difficult, is not real struggle, but it has still been a surprisingly challenging adjustment. Way to make yourself sound like a stressed man of the people! Wow, you are soooo empathetic! (looks like Gaffigan’s mocking voice is riding shotgun for this entire post.)

There are the awkward social interactions, like when people ask, “what do you do?” or when older people state they’re x years away from retirement. That’s not the challenging part though. It’s handling unstructured free time. Seriously, this asshole is complaining about free time?

When I was grinding, trying to forge a successful career, there never seemed to be enough time. It didn’t feel like I was totally in control of my life. So often, just managing to take care of critical obligations. Wake up at ass o’clock, pick out clothes, shower, commute to work, frantically plan the day, ready presentations, meetings and experiments before the office got busy. Giving all my best energy and effort to my employer. Come home. Try to summon the will to workout. Find comfort with my significant other in a low energy state. This left such small amounts of time and energy. A tiny window to do anything else. Welcome to being an adult, buddy.

After a couple decades of work you start to fantasize about retirement. All the things you would do with all that free time. How you’ll be able to pursue personal fulfillment unfettered. You’ll write in your blog, or finish a novel. Workout religiously. All the travel, gardening, woodwork, learn a foreign language, expand your social network, take up a sport, etc etc etc. It will make all the sacrifice now so worth it.

In reality, I’ve had a real hard time managing that open time. Now that Claw and I are settled into what we hope is our forever home, don’t you mean the “until you die house?” so many of my days just fritter away. I have a whiteboard full of tasks I truly want to do. I want survey and manage the small forest on my property, I want to grow mushrooms, garden. I want to paint the bedroom, repair shit. All the other stuff I would daydream about while still working.

Without the pressure of my career, (and having a wonderful permissive, kind wife like Claw), I just have such a hard time getting daily momentum. So many days I wake up, screw around on the internet or phone until 11:30am. Claw works from home, so I’ll make her lunch (of course it’s the least I can do). I’ll have my lunch. Maybe then I’ll finally get my workout done. Shower get dressed. Then it’s late afternoon and why start something so late in the day? Claw will be off work soon then we can eat and watch TV and movies. I’ll just have a nap with the cats instead. Fuck. I don’t need a Gaffigan inner voice to tell me how shameful and slothful that is, my inner voice does just fine.

There has been hope lately though. I made a small change that has reduced the amount of attention theft that the algorithms perpetrate. A significant victory in blocking out the social media “smart fog”. Okay, let’s hear this miracle solution, Einstein.

All I have done, is pledged to myself to not use my phone as anything more than a clock until I get my workout done in the morning. That’s it? That’s it. And it’s working. It’s the only thing that has worked so far.

I’m really trying to make it a long term habit. I know momentum is critically important for me. When I have positive momentum, I can be such a dynamo. When I have negative momentum, I am the MVP of sloth. On days when I get up and workout right away, those tend to be the satisfying days that fulfill the promise and hope I had for retirement. It works because I get bored quickly, and have nothing else to do but weightlift. After that I shower, get dressed and naturally just flow into the day. Geez, with this amazing insight, why don’t you write a self-help book about this? We have the next Tony Robbins over here. You can call it “The Subtle Art of Not Touching Your Phone” Such a brilliant insight!

I think my inner voice is meaner than Gaffigan’s.