Getting ready to speak about procurement opportunities for M/WBEs and small business owners at the New York Build 2020 Expo, March 3, 2020, Javits Center,

The one year anniversary of my retirement is coming up at the end of February. Not that I’m *that* old, but it was time to hang up my shingle so to speak from working for the City of New York in a variety of administrative procurement leadership roles. What you say? Procurement? A civil servant?  I know. Perhaps a bit incongruous from my boxing and writing life, but, hey, bills had to be paid, and I have to say, I never felt prouder of any profession than my years with the City.

With the retirement anniversary looming, I’m trying to figure out what exactly this year has wrought, other than figuring out pension filings, social security, medicare, and all of the other pensioner-life experiences that have been by turns frustrating and surprisingly easy.

I admit that I didn’t have a plan, per se. It was just time to move on and of course, Jed’s struggles were certainly foremost in my mind. The pandemic also played a role. As I ponder its meaning, I own to having been caught up in the sociological phenomenon of the The Great Resignation.

Looking at time through the prism of retirement has brought me to the realization that I live mostly outside of industrial constructs of time. No. I don’t need to get up at 6:15 AM in the morning for an 8:00 AM start to the day. Or go to bed by 11:00 PM. Or live by endless meetings on a calendar, or deadline dates for this or that report.

Time is my own. My own waking and napping and sleeping. And much as a spoon embracing another, I meld myself to Jed’s time. To having breakfast, and pills out to swallow, and coffee made. But even in that, there is no have-to. Just that it’s there within a window that is morning, as distinguished from later in the day.

Feeding the cat is kind of the same. Our new guy, Sugar Ray, waits patiently. Just needs my attention once I stroll into the kitchen area to set up his morning can of something tasty. And of course some pets and a bit of play, but no alarm needed.

I think it was late June before I grasped that I didn’t have to do anything. That my rigid plans for execution of this or that set of chores was no longer necessary. Rather, I could sit with a coffee and watch the plants. Watch the way the clouds swirled to the left of the Brooklyn Municipal Building (The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Building I should say) as I cock my head to the right looking out the window.

And then the writing started to come.

I’d started Journaling on Saturday, February 27th. By summer it was pretty much every day in some form or another. I journaled, wrote haikus, posts for the blog.

As the summer moved forward, little bits of real writing started to come through.

That practice has nods to time in that I try to set aside segments of the day to write, but even with self-imposed deadlines, there is an ebb and flow to it that seems outside of the world of work. The impositions that trading time and energy for the cold hard reality of a pay check can bring. Those have-to moments, when perhaps you don’t have your heart in it, but have-to anyway. Face getting reprimanded in one form or another for not adhering to the schedule of nine-to-five work and all of its incumbent responsibilities.

I see that most clearly in the changes to relationship. Where folks who formerly worked for me can now be friends. How the static of “boss” has taken some time to unravel. Almost as if we have been collectively taking a hatchet to the fences around us, as so many booby traps to our communicating in any real or meaningful way. This year has brought me the understanding that I can freely roam in my own thoughts and on my own tangents without owing anyone anything. Yes. I get up in the morning, but the clock is internal. And while my writing projects, and such things as the WAAR Room podcast have certain time constraints, each moment seems ripe with possibilities.

My life has become a series of wonderful options and opportunities, and for that I am truly blessed.