Retirement (2020-)

I’ve always wanted to retire early. My father took early retirement at age 50, then started a private surveying practice which lasted for a few years.

He’s always said to me it’s important to not work until I die, but to leave some time to pursue other journeys in life.

I tried retiring several times. My first attempt was 2014, when my contract with Broadspectrum expired. I waved goodbye to everyone, they organised a nice lunch for me, and I thought I would settle down and do more cycling.

Barely a few months into the “retirement”, I was offered another contract, this time to help out as a business analyst in a tender. A friend and colleague resigned just as my contract was about to expire, and I was asked to act in his role until they could find a replacement.

When I did find a replacement, I was expecting to retire, but the friend who had resigned then offered me a contract at his new place of employment. I ended up working there for 4 years.

I tried again to retire at the end of 2018, and had planned to do a lot of travelling. To my surprise, they offered to renew my contract, so I didn’t actually retire until the end of 2019.

I had planned on starting a new business to do photography tours around the world, and we had planned our first trip to Japan in April 2020. However, the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world, and we had cancel all bookings and refund the deposits.

I am now in the retirement phase of my life. I may work in the future, but for the moment I am focusing on other things. One of those things is creating this website that you are reading right now.