I have a spreadsheet at work that I have been using to countdown for the last 3 years. Besides a countdown calendar with one cell for every day until my FIRE date, it has everything else on separate sheets that I have thought of over the years: a PTO accumulation sheet, a tax-deferred contribution sheet, a master plan calculator with years until I am 105, a pension future-value strategy calculator and etc. It is a bit of a time-waster at work, and it is both my secret joy and secret suffering because no matter what, time at work keeps passing so ridiculously slowly. (I do not recommend a countdown spreadsheet to anyone that has a significant amount of time left. It is too painful.)
Anyway, today I have 125 days until FIRE. Next week, we will put February 2018 to bed and I will have 4 months left. I have been thinking lately about the decision to leave work. I know lots of people at my job that could do what I am doing. They have been working 20+ years and have been contributing to retirement funds and college savings plans and etc., but they are stuck on the notion that they should work tirelessly until the kids are out of college or until they are retirement age. I don't think they have spent 1 hour of their lifetimes thinking about what else they might do if they were to stop working.
I also think about the old people that I have encountered. I mean the people at the end of their lives. I work in medicine so I am seeing them often in the worst of circumstances. Regardless of health status though, the thing that eats at me is that they seem so disengaged and uninterested. They look like they have been watching television for too long and making the same tired conversations for decades. I recognize that these are my subjective impressions and may not reflect anyone's reality but mine.
But here is why these two observations - even if only my own subjective impressions matter to me. Work has shrunk my life to what fits around the edges of the 40+ hour workweek. It is not a bad life, but I notice that weekends and week-long vacations are too short. It is something I cannot put my finger on exactly, but I notice that because weekends are too short, there are things I don't do, and a sense that I must rush to accomplish what I can. Because my life has this 40 hour week most weeks of the year, there may be thoughts I don't think (e.g. dreams I don't dream), and feelings I may not feel. I want more. I just turned 56 last month and I could work another 5 or 10 years, but I want more. I want to invest my healthy weeks and months and years into growing my own life and my own interests. I want to be an 80 year old with relationships to more than the television.
When people ask about my pending retirement "What are you going to do?" this is what I would like to tell them. Instead, I tell them that I plan to be a SAHD and be present in the lives of my high school-age children while they are still home. That is true, but only partially true. The truth is I want to live a life that spreads out over time, and flows into the container of a life without the walls of a work week. I do not know what it will look like, but I feel like it is at once a fulfillment of this life that I have now and an investment in the life I have to come.
Best wishes to you all, aperture.
Hang in there, ap. I know it seems like time is dragging right now, but those four months will be gone before you know it. I gave notice at the
three two month mark, and after that it seemed like I was finally able not care about anything other than tidying up a bit so my successor didn't have to walk into too much of a shit storm. I noticed time passing a lot faster during those final
three two months than during the preceding
three two months.
And I know what you mean about wanting to let your life expand beyond the confines of the time that is left after you put in your time at work. That was my main reason for FIREing also. I'm only a little less than two months in right now, but the funny thing I'm discovering is that I still feel like I'm not able to get as much done as I want to do. Only now the problem isn't my time, it's the fact that I'm waiting on the time of year to be right, waiting on the weather to improve, waiting on someone else to do some prerequisite activity, etc. Paradoxically, I find myself with a lot of time on my hands, but I'm still not accomplishing everything I want to do. I take solace in the fact that if I don't get it done today, I have tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and so on. So I fill idle time with reading, going for walks, napping, etc., not to the point of sloth, but just with the understanding that whatever it is I need to do, it generally is no great emergency.
I'm also thinking about taking up something (not sure what yet, maybe volunteering, maybe some hobby) that will get me out among people a couple of days a week. But I'm not pushing too hard to establish a routine yet, given that spring hasn't arrived, and I anticipate ramping up the outdoor activities and short outings once that happens. Don't want to commit to something that doesn't leave me enough time to do those activities.
So I guess my advice is to focus your last few months on getting your house in order, and don't worry about how slow the time seems to be going. Before you know it, you'll have all the time in the world to do what you want to do, and all the time in the world to figure out exactly what it is you want to do.
(Edit: I gave two months notice, not three. How quickly memories fade when we move on to a new phase of life.)