It took me a few days to type up an email informing the rest of the staff that I'm retiring. Then there was some discussion about the timing, since we currently have some stuff going on with budget cuts and having to make tough decisions about open hours and potentially closing a branch or two. There has been zero discussion of layoffs, none what so ever, but staff and the public are constantly bringing it up anyway. What we did decide was that we will reduce staff by attrition, meaning that if anyone leaves, we will not refill their position.

My boss decided that my departure would be a good way to demonstrate that even management is not exempt from this. They will not be refilling my position after I leave. I wanted to do it on a Monday morning so I would be around all week to answer questions.

I managed to get an email together and sent it out right before the morning meeting yesterday. At the meeting, when I told everyone I'd be retiring in a few months, the room went stone silent for a few uncomfortable seconds. It looked like half the room was waiting for the punch line, and the other half thought maybe I had cancer or something. I could see the anxiety building on people's faces.

So to relieve the tension, I gave a brief rundown on what I'm doing to ease the transition after my departure, what's happening to the rest of the IT team that currently reports to me, etc. After that, people started talking again, and I did get a few “congrats” from people.

Another half hour or so passed, after the meeting, and the email responses started rolling in, all of them positive. I answered a few questions, but there weren't any bad responses, not in person so far either, which feels pretty good. One person just asked me if there would be a farewell party, which occurred to me. I won't be organizing anything myself, so I guess we'll see.

About two years ago, I hit a particularly low point in my life. The details are irrelevant here, but the gist of the situation is that I had far too much on my plate. Too much stress, too many people depending on me, no time or space to myself, and a complete lack of boundaries regarding doing things for other people. The more I've read and learned about my generation, the more I've come to understand that this is a pretty standard place for GenX to find ourselves at middle age (generally men more than women).

All that independence and dependability we cultivated out of necessity, starting around the age of nine or ten, has become a ball and chain the size of a Mack truck that we pretend isn't there. If we do acknowledge it at all, we get competitive about how little it bothers us.

It's not just people at work or the people in what little social circle we still have; it's also at home. In all of those places, we've slowly taken on more and more because we tend to be uniquely suited to problem-solving in a way that subsequent generations can't seem to even come close to. We're finally saying a word that has rarely entered our vocabulary over the last forty years.

“No”

We're discovering through necessity (again) that we can get along without them, without that social circle, without that job, and without AI. Those of us that are still employed are quietly unloading that workload we've been piling on over the years, and electing not to take on anymore, while coming up with increasingly creative ways to retire early and leave it all behind.

Another way of putting it is we're fucking tired of trying to protect people from themselves, and we're done. They're on their own. If the world burns, so be it. We'll sit and watch while roasting marshmallows and listening to Billy Idol.

For me, personally, once I understood that I had given away so much of myself to everyone around me that there was almost nothing left for me, I started taking it back. I started making decisions about who really deserves my time and found that the list is incredibly small.

At the start of the new year (2026) I declared a moratorium on new IT projects where I work. I'm in charge. I can do that. I cited cost and time, and the onslaught of federal funding cuts, but the real reason is that I knew I'd probably be leaving sometime in late 2026 or early 2027, and I need to wrap up everything I'm currently working on and start pumping out documentation on systems and software I designed and wrote. The next IT director is going to need it. I'm ready to leave, but I'm not going to screw my co-workers over on my way out. It's not that kind of workplace.

Regardless, this is far from unique. Article after article, video after video, newsreel after newsreel is bringing attention to this. As they do, they're inventing buzzwords around it like “quiet quitting”, “retiring in place”, and a few others I can't think of right now.

We, generally, don't call it anything. We're just walking away, and they can call it whatever the hell they want.

I watched Laure finally join me there a few weeks ago. Things at her job have finally reached that point, and she's too tired to keep rescuing people in other departments from their own stupidity. Holding out a few more years to get a bigger retirement check no longer feels worth it to her, and all she can think about is walking away from it.

She said this out loud one evening. Only a few days later, we signed an agreement with a real estate agent to sell our house. Things are picking up speed now, considerably.