Two Years Retired

My dad encouraged me to learn to sail when I was about eight, as he himself was building experience and taking courses to allow him to fulfil his own dream for a sailing retirement in the coming years. I remember at about that time helping him to learn the International Maritime Flags which formed part of one of the courses he did.  It seemed like a colourful, exotic foreign language to me then!  Sadly, my dad died when he was just 48, and like many who die too young, his plans and dreams for the future were unfulfilled. 

Our decision to step away from our corporate lifestyle was strongly influenced by our desire to fulfil our plans and dreams while we are still young enough to be able to do so. I liked the ideal of doing so before I reached the age that my dad had died and that became the basis for our target.  I can hear the murmur – “48 years?!  But surely he’s not that old!”   That’s correct – I made a little mistake in my maths and planned it for when I was just 47.  Further, I subsequently had the opportunity to bring that forward a further year, so, I ended up “accidentally” retiring at 46.  Oops!  Anyway, I’m turning 48 in a few months from now, so despite poor maths, I’m not too far off target!

• 

• 

Our thinking about what life outside of the corporate hamster wheel could look like had already started to form by what I like to think of as our “first lap of the Indian Ocean”, which was our low stress response to both of us losing jobs during the Global Financial Crisis in 2009.  In short, we sailed a 6,000 nautical mile (11,000 km!) route from Dubai around the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Chagos, back to Dubai with two of the kids.  As you’d expect, it gave us an entirely different outlook on what our priorities were, should be, and would be in the coming years.  You can enjoy our blogs from that adventure here; 

Our Longest Passage

This whole “leaving the corporate world” got me thinking about the value that many of us place in our careers.  A few years ago, I was working in a corporate role that I loved – I had good relationships with clients, consultants and colleagues and knew that I was making a real difference on the hotel projects through the region that I was running.  Then quite suddenly and unexpectedly, I lost my job through global restructuring of the company.  I was devastated.  I even felt a sense of shame that I’d lost my job, that I was a failure, I wasn’t good enough, and I’d overnight lost my capacity as a provider for my family.  It wasn’t until a few months later when I was settled into an “even better” new job, that I realised just how ridiculous that reaction was, and how much importance and self-worth so many of us only see in ourselves based on the job we are doing, rather than the people we are.

• 

While we were both fortunate to have had successful careers in jobs we loved, this came at a price, and it was important that our new lifestyle would deal with some of the more unpleasant aspects of working life.  Looking back there are some key ones that stand out….

Stress:  Over my career I found myself accepting more stress than I now realise I should have.  Without a doubt, especially as I moved into increasingly senior roles, the majority of this wasn’t coming from challenging or complex projects; but from unrealistic deadlines, underperforming stakeholders, or just from petty office politics.  It’s a shame because I think that you can respond positively to constructive stress – for example, being forced to think outside the box by really challenging project parameters – but not so much to the others. They just wear you down over time.  In my last corporate role, I often found myself adjusting the rear-view mirror in my car to a lower position on the drive home, realising that my posture had slumped during the day.  Like other examples of stress manifesting itself, it doesn’t surprise me that this happened, just that I had come to think of it as quite normal.

• 

• 

Meeting other’s expectations: The odd thing in my generation of professionals is the expectation to progress up the ranks into ever increasingly senior roles.  This worked pretty well for me as I stepped into more senior and influential roles, until I reached a strange paradox.  I’d been in a role with a new company for just over a year and I was loving my job.  I loved working with some brilliantly creative people on a range of really interesting hotel projects – often the various project stakeholders would egg each other on, driving an even better end result.  I was good at this and so my projects were by and large running successfully, but most importantly, I was happy and felt valued.  Then as my line manager got promoted, he asked me to take over his old position – a senior regional role with more managerial reach, but less of the project work that I enjoyed so much.  I didn’t want it!  I was really stuck!  I ended up somewhat reluctantly accepting the promotion, mainly because if I didn’t, I was afraid of having “unambitious” stamped on my HR file!

• 

• 

Achieving a sense of meaningfulness:  I’ve always found business travel quite flattering – that my company and my clients value my input so much that they’ll fly me around the place.  For a number of years, I was doing what I can now call a “crazy” amount of travel – over a hundred flights a year!  At one point, I saw one of my close friends (who also travelled a lot for work) more in the airport business lounge than in “real life”.  I hate the label, but for sure I was living the high paid, high-flying corporate dream life.  But as Helen and I both became more interested in sustainability and living lives with greater meaning, it became apparent that some aspects of this “high-flying dream life” weren’t totally compatible.  The obvious example was the carbon footprint of that much travel.  Another was realising that the minimum room size of one of the hotel brands I worked on a lot was, at 44m², almost twice the living space of Aroha, with a bathroom larger even that the “floor area” of Cyril our camper!  The wonderful thing about working in luxury hotel design is that you’re creating spaces that many people aspire to spend their time and money in.  But, Helen and I (and the kids!) were starting to think it was all a bit too normal.

• 

• 

Of course, since leaving that life, we’ve had to get used to living on a completely different budget, but thankfully that is in line with our desire to live simpler, more sustainable lifestyles.  For example, two years ago I set myself a challenge to not buy any new clothes for two years – just to wear out the ones I already had.  I’ve had to break that a little, especially picking up some warm clothes when we came to NZ, but that exercise has proven that many of us need far less possessions and clutter than we expect.

Our original intention for the past year involved sailing on from India, spending a few months in Sri Lanka, before crossing to our mid-term destination; Malaysia and/or Thailand.  Once there, we’d planned to slow right down, calling one of these “home” for up to a year thus giving us the opportunity to have a base, maybe teaching English (Helen) or scuba (me), and maybe the opportunity to get involved in community projects.  Things have worked out quite differently and resulted in what has turned out to be more of a long-term vacation.

• 

• 

• 

It caught me off guard, realising when we got on the ferry back to the North Island that we’d spent the past five months on vacation doing a loop of the South Island.  Off guard, because although it feels like we’ve been travelling at a rather sedate pace and seen much of this beautiful island, yet at the same time it feels like we’ve barely scratched the surface! I remember the feeling when we crossed to the South Island at the end of last year, it felt exotic – so many exciting new experiences awaiting!

I’m working hard not to accept the converse; that returning to the more familiar North Island is the end of our vacation.  Generally speaking, the South Island is more conducive to touring – there’s more attractions, more nature, more quirky adventures – to the point where it is quite easy to fill each day and each week.  The North, less so.  We’re finding that we’re having to work a bit harder at it…

As we return to the North Island, we have restarted our thinking about what things are important to us, what we want our priorities to be and generally to refocus on the reasons we began this new lifestyle in the first place.

• 

• 

Although we don’t miss our old “over the top” lifestyle, it’s not to say we won’t work in corporate roles again, but if we do, it will be on our terms.   As for the ongoing evaluation of the direction we will take our lives in the future, we don’t have all the answers yet.  But we’re comfortable with that.  We continue to learn things about ourselves, we’re less hung up about making big plans and we’re happy to go with the flow; living with less, and appreciating more.

• 

Like and follow us to be notified of future blogs: http://www.facebook.com/ripeningnicely