{"id":1694,"date":"2024-09-22T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T05:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/?p=1694"},"modified":"2024-10-01T22:06:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T05:06:15","slug":"retiring-for-a-year-or-two-or-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/retiring-for-a-year-or-two-or-forever\/","title":{"rendered":"Retiring for a year or two or forever."},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve always had a flexible relationship with work, working myself to the bone, and then taking off large chunks of time to recharge. More often than not, though, I end up realizing that I absolutely love my job, and come back early from sabbaticals<\/a> to go at it again. This has frustrated the Mrs in the past, especially when she realized I was hacking on patches during at least one of the past two paternity leaves. However, a funny thing happened in the last leave. Last year we spent 4 months in Canada, as Alba collaborated with U of Ottawa as part of her postdoc. We didn’t have day care so I took a leave of absence. This turned out the be the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I spent all day with a 1.5 year old, taking him to parks, lakes, going on bike rides, and coooking a rather repetitive menu of rice and beans.<\/p>\n

After about two weeks I settled into a nice rhythm, not missing work one bit (no pun intended). This was a first. A week into our Canadian excursion, we found out Alba was pregnant (again) and I started wondering how on earth I’d find time for work, cycling, and kids. I had been pondering early retirement<\/a> for a good decade, but this was the first time I seriously entertained it. Knowing full well my history with failed sabbaticals, I knew this feeling would pass. But, returning to work after Christmas was a different beast.<\/p>\n

I remember coming back the day after New Year’s, bleary eyed, coffee in hand, and wondering\u2013 what the hell am I doing here? I would much rather have a croissant, and go to the park with Mai, than sit around looking at ones and zeroes. This nagging feeling didn’t go away after a month, and I had a serious conversation with Alba: “I can’t do this any more. I need a long break, not just a quarter”. Since paternity leave was right around the corner, I decided to stick around a few months, take the leave, and see if I could cut it when I came back. Well, I couldn’t\u2026<\/p>\n

After spending another 3 months with the kiddos, I just couldn’t see myself doing the Monday through Friday thing, especially not with Mai in this super fun stage (ok, terrorist twos but I’m a glass half full kinda guy), and Lola in the\u2026well\u2026 they’re all a blob of meat the first 2 months, but she has potential, I can tell.<\/p>\n

So I sucked it up for 2 more weeks to see if this was Daddy brain fog from lack of sleep. After all, I had forgotten to secure Mai’s bed railing twice in the first week, to find him crying on the ground, so I knew I wasn’t at 100% mental capacity. Well, a fortnight came and went, and I decided it was time.<\/p>\n

After 24 years at Red Hat, I mustered up the courage to tell my boss that I was leaving. This was immensely difficult, not because I was jumping into the unknown, but because this was more akin to breaking up with a girlfriend you love, because you’re going away to college or some other unforseen adventure.<\/p>\n

I have nothing but good memories at Red Hat. It has been one of the highlights of my life, if not the<\/b> highlight. But that highlight is rapidly being eclipsed by the bright, incandescent light you only get from front row seats to the greatest show on earth\u2013 a tiny human learning to navigate life.<\/p>\n

Ultimately I don’t know if I’m taking a couple years off, quitting, or retiring. Let’s just call it retiring for two years, and see where it goes.<\/p>\n

p.s. I’ll still be involved in the free software project<\/a> I’ve devoted the better part of my life to, but without pay. Yes, I am a genius!<\/p>\n

p.p.s. With my copious free time, I’ll try to revive this blog. I’m aiming for one post a week, with you know, the things you wish you could say if you didn’t have a job. Yeah, that. \"foo.jpg\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve always had a flexible relationship with work, working myself to the bone, and then taking off large chunks of time to recharge. More often than not, though, I end up realizing that I absolutely love my job, and come back early from sabbaticals to go at it again. This has frustrated the Mrs in … Continue reading Retiring for a year or two or forever.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1694"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1707,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694\/revisions\/1707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}