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.

After a very hectic week getting our house into showing condition, the photographers came in yesterday and took photos of our house for the listing. We celebrated by taking the evening off, which is a big deal because we've been working constantly, getting considerably less sleep than we should, for weeks now.

In a few days, our house will be on the market. Our agent says she already has interested buyers, so we'll see what happens. It's normal for houses to take a few months to sell, so we're trying not to get too excited.

We expect to put our house on the market some time in the next couple of weeks. Our real estate agent already has prospective buyers, so the time frame might be moving along faster than we thought. We're currently in the process of going through our house, room by room, and separating everything into collections of “estate sale”, “taking with us” and “maybe take with us”. That last category being stuff that we'd like to bring along, but we'll have to wait and see how much room we have and what can be shipped separately.

It's been tougher than I expected, going through possessions I have a sentimental attachment to and trying to decide what stays and what goes. There are a few things that there is simply no way to take with us, which I'm already having a difficult time with.

Going through our closet last night, we came across my old Class A army uniform, my “dress greens”. I don't have any particular attachment to that uniform, or much of anything from my time in the army, which surprised Laure. I pulled a single medal from the jacket and decided the rest could go. She did a little searching online and found that there is a market for old military uniforms. That style of Class A uniform was in use from the 1940s all the way to the early 2000s, and each piece could fetch $100 or more.

Of course, she had to try it on just for fun. I'm about thirty pounds heavier than I was the last time I wore that thing, but she swims in it. Still, it looks better on her than it ever did on me.

We've already ransacked the living room, our bedroom and bathroom, our closet, and we're getting started on the downstairs livingroom/hobbyroom. Next will be my office, and then we go out and start the enormous process of digging through the garage and attic.

I'm not particularly enjoying this part. It's oddly emotional at times. I keep reminding myself that building it all back up again when we get there will be a lot more fun.

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.

I haven't had a whole lot to post lately. We're still packing, painting, repairing, and selling like mad, getting the house ready to sell. We wanted to get it listed last week, but contractors have turned out to be difficult to nail down.

It's all coming along, though. The market is beginning to dip, but things are still looking good for us. Our real estate agent already has people lined up to view the house, and that's very promising.

We're also getting ready for our trip. We fly out in a little less than three weeks, and I'm going back and forth with a real estate agent in Costa Rica right now, getting some appointments set up while we're there.

Winter is beginning to set in here. It snowed a little over the weekend, but it didn't stick. The first few snows rarely do. We're all definitely over the winters, though. All we can think about is waking up to warmer weather, on a regular day and night schedule that doesn't fluctuate wildly throughout the year.

That's all for now. We'll be posting some photos and video soon.