It’s been over a year since I coded for a living. Now all I do is apparently ferry kids around, cook, and do laundry: all for no money, and rarely any thanks. It’s been a riot of a year, with lots of changes, very few which I would’ve predicted when I jumped ship. For starters, I didn’t know taking care of kids would be so time consuming. I know, who would’ve thought ;-). I knew it would be work, just not all encompassing. I really don’t know how people with jobs do it. Seriously, chapeau. That being said, even though things are busy, everything’s easier when you don’t have to juggle work. We still get to play with Lego’s before school, and we do stop on the way back to look at snails, collect rocks, and smack things with sticks. Now instead of one boss, I have 3, and an endless list of tasks. And to top it off, I no longer have work as a mental escape valve. Interestingly though, I don’t miss any of the things I thought I’d miss from work. Instead, I miss all the things I despised about work.
Continue reading Reflections on a year of voluntary unemployment →

During the initial weeks after retirement there was a flurry of activity on my end. I thought I’d have all this free time, and I needed a way to maximize it all. I set up an independent mail server for my project needs (i.e. the plethora of mailing lists I would undoubtedly be able to keep up with). I read Getting Things Done. I read the follow-up to Getting Things Done. I set up an incredibly intricate system to keep track of projects, TODO lists, etc. Ahem, Org Mode. And of course, as in all things emacs, I read copious amounts of documentation so I could write an enormous amount of lisp code to tweak every conceivable feature to save me 5 minutes every 2 weeks.  Ah…free time, how I missed you! Continue reading Early retirement or how I traded deadlines for diapers. →