It's been a strange week - my latest career reinvention is coming to a conclusion, and in a few months it will be the first time I've not worked or studied since age sixteen.
A friend in a similar position had informed me at the start that the average tenure of such jobs was roughly 5 years, and he turned out to be precisely correct to within a week. The end of this position, while something I've anticipated for at least a year, arrived in the time period I'd predicted but with an unexpected twist.
I am trying to keep things classy, and to resist the moments of disappointment that bubble up. The people I work with are top notch, I will miss them, and I am trying to provide a warm handoff to my successor (he's a friend, which makes it awkward but also easier) so that he can do the best job possible under the circumstances.
I've spent some time doing financial modeling using Claude, and while I am on perhaps the twelfth iteration of my plan, I have been extremely impressed with the tools that it can bring to bear. I now have a blueprint for starting 72(t) withdrawals and performing Roth conversions mapped out between now and age 90, so that if I don't work for money again I feel some reassurance that we'll be okay.
We just completed an intense and wonderful weekend at my wife's college reunion, which is where our eldest is now in college. There were moments of deep connection, vulnerability, joy, summer weather (I felt like I was getting away with something wearing shorts and sandals in October) and many updates.
One new friend entrusted me with the story of his post-career spiritual trajectory. Another informed me of a life-changing health diagnosis (these days we are more acutely aware of the bullets flying and striking those near to us, and the sense of fragility it imparts). A third offered to connect me to his ayahuasca guy. I met an accomplished attorney who spent several decades living out his father's dream before pivoting to film, his true passion. Another new friend and I waxed enthusiastic about the wire sculptures of the late Ruth Asawa. It was a nonlinear weekend.
There was an entirely separate family dimension as well - we got to see our daughter in her new natural habitat. She is an intellectual who felt hungry to find for similarly curious minds in high school, and college has blown her mind - she is surrounded by people she routinely stays up into the wee hours talking to about politics, philosophy and science.
Our high schooler son spent the night in her dorm to get glimpse of college life, and he was overwhelmed. He saw the flooded aftermath of a dorm fire (no one was hurt, fortunately), ran into a group of emotional support llamas on campus (?), and saw the sister he's missed living her best life.
We were floored at how she is blossoming - from a somewhat reserved kid with a solid group of friends to an extrovert who can't walk from her dorm to the library without stopping to talk to ten people she runs into on the way.
At one point in the weekend, while we visited her dorm room, more than a half-dozen kids were summoned to come meet the parents, and they were delightful and interesting and unafraid to let us know what they were about. I would have been mortified to do something similar with my friends when I was her age.
It's a weird stretch of time, with a compressed deadline to hand over the reins of my job to another; the financial psychology that accompanies moving from accumulation to decumulation; the absence of our eldest from home superimposed on her immensely happy life in college and our son's contentment during an academically challenging slog year in high school.
Add to this backdrop an end of days weather pattern in California that is battering beaches and bringing heavy rains, and it leaves us at this moment. I wake up without an alarm before dawn, and head out on my bike hoping to beat the rain predicted for mid-morning.
It is a spectacular dawn - pinks and oranges, layers of different clouds forming a collage overlooking the channel islands. I seldom stop on my morning rides, but I pause three separate times this morning, trying to absorb the clarity of the scene, the quality of the clouds, the crispness of the air and the angles of the light.
Sharing a sky like that is exhilarating. It clears the mental clutter and returns a primal sense of awe at the world. We get to experience this. What tremendous good fortune to be alive.