Change of Direction

[chrispbits]

At the end of March this year and after 2 years on my latest assignment I said goodbye the world of work and retired. Hopefully for good. Somewhat to my surprise (or perhaps not) I quickly adapted to the lack of stress and found I didn't miss work one bit . What we did instead was to buy a motorhome and bugger off to Europe for almost 3 months (90 days and all that) travelling mostly around France and a bit into Spain - essentially trying to follow the good weather. We'll be off again in October and rather than meander around France we'll take the most direct route to southern Spain/Portugal.

So far it has been a bit of a blast. My wife is a bit younger than me so she's only on a sabbatical and has to return to work at the end of the year (someone has to earn some pennies ). One major downside is that flight simming is not on the agenda whilst travelling so I have to get all that in before hitting the road again, albeit I do still follow the goings on here. Good to see that flight simming is as strong as ever with new releases for all three major sims; even if I can no longer invest in all three (something has to give).

Good to see also this site still thriving even if a little quiet at times - it's a good community here and a useful antidote to some of the more rumbunctious sites.

[airboatr]

Good to see that flight simming is as strong as ever with new releases for all three major sims; even if I can no longer invest in all three (something has to give).

Chris, bits and pieces shouldn't set her back much.

[chrispbits]

I couldn't possibly comment Joe.

[airboatr]

OK, I won't force you to.

[simondix]

Yes when I took early retirement it was like a huge weight off my shoulders. Should have done it when I was 17.

[Nigel H-J]

At the end of March this year and after 2 years on my latest assignment I said goodbye the world of work and retired.

Hope you enjoy your retirement as much as I do. I took early retirement about ten years ago as I was finding it hard to negotiate 5 flight of stairs at work as working nights either the lifts fail or the fire alarm sounded, so was struggling a bit and health and safety were taking a bit of interest in me!!

What I have noticed is that time now seems to fly quite literally, weeks seem to fly by. The one thing I have also noticed is that I am kept a lot busier than when I was at work which is a good thing as I really enjoy our garden!!

Wishing you a long and happy retirement!

Regards
Nigel.

[alemaobaiano]

My retirement hasn't turned out quite the way I expected.

The company I worked for didn't survive the lock down we went through over here, so I decided to retire early. As a favour to my former boss I agreed to continue repairing security equipment for a long time customer as a bit of a hobby. I inherited some of the test equipment and tools so that I could work from home.

At first it was fine, less than a day of work per week and a bit of extra cash. Then a friend of my customer sent me a few things to repair, and then a friend of his, and another friend, and so on. Nowadays I normally have a full week of work, plus I had to open company to keep the documentation and taxes in order. I ended up buying all the spares stock from the old company too.

I had planned to go fishing, shooting and generally hooning around on my bike, but that didn't really happen. Just last week I went to Macaé to redo my certifications for offshore work, later this month I'm off to an oil platform to sort out a problem there.

On the positive side I get to keep all the profits, on the negative side I am working more now than when I was an employee.

I do still take the odd day off now and again, and I must admit I quite enjoy what I'm doing. My partner doesn't retire for another 18 months, so we are still limited by her job in what we can do together. Perhaps I will really retire when she does.

TTFN