Decision Day

To INFINITY and BEYOND!

When do you know?  I have asked this question many times over the past few years.  As one by one friends and family members retired, I waited for an opportune moment and then quizzed them.  Great answers one and all!  But no one could tell me when I should retire!  If you know me well, you will know that my laptop is filled with worksheets and numbers - almost as full as my head is!  I played games with crazy numbers that jumped all over the place - escaping from my spreadsheets, hiding in the tool bar on the screen or bouncing off face book pages or other blogs with similar topics.  I inhaled gargantuan meals of information that gave me mental indigestion and insomnia!  But slowly, I was able to bring order to my thoughts and corralled those numbers into logical columns.  Now, only the occasional one creates a hiccup!  

A close friend and colleague advised me last year at her retirement party that retiring is like planning to have children - if you wait until you can really afford them you will never have any!  I took that to heart and incorporated a more realistic equation into my spreadsheets!  This winter I spoke to a new acquaintance and asked my "question".  She was wise in hind sight and indicated she knew when she felt she had reached the top of her career and her future role was shaping itself through family and life events.  I added that into the calculations and finally my spreadsheets started to make more sense.  With a little more fine tuning and a majorly freezing winter nipping at my nose and toes month after month, and the decision became a reality.  I breathed deep, re-read my letter of resignation over and over and took the leap.  Four months and I will be sitting on the beach, digging in the sand, sipping the local wine and checking out the seniors recreation centre in the sunny Okanagan! 

I did not have that final piece of the puzzle until a few weeks ago - funny how the last piece falls into place when the timing is sorted out.  Once again, the exceptionally cold winter held some sway in the timing!  So now this - my LAST Q3.................

.....can become this - summer in the vineyard! 

AND THIS!

WATCH MY COUNTDOWN BEGIN!