Friday, October 31, 2014

Back on the Transition Trail

The drama of the Dragon has finally subsided.  Having fulfilled my Cincinnatus role, I'm finding that I am able to "go back to the farm."  Meaning I'm getting into fully my semi-retired state. 

Like that term, "semi-retired"?  It is a term that seems to fully capture where I'm at.  Initially I used the term that I was "transitioning" because I was unsure of what I would be doing, wanted to still work but just not as much.  Unfortunately people couldn't relate to what I was talking about at all.  I would say, "I'm transitioning out of full time work into doing less, blah, blah, blah", with all kinds of explanation.  And at the end they'd ask me, "So when are you retiring?" 

After quite some time of that, decided to give up and tell people that I was retired.  That's pretty straight forward.  Then they'd say, "But you're still working?"

I just fell into the term semi retired in the last couple of months and for whatever reason everyone gets it.  "Oh you're only working a little bit.  Cool."

I probably put in about half the time I did before.  During full bore build business days, I would work around 50 to 60 hours a week and now I'm at around 25 to 30.  I'm very selective about what kind of business I want to take on so I not having to be out there pushing and selling so much.  That has opened up another day during the week that I can hike.  This is all very new so we'll see how it all plays out.  Right now I'm hiking on Monday and Friday mornings which is great because there's normally very few other folks out then.

I'm also finding that with the much, much more relaxed schedule that I've had time to build much more physical fitness stuff into my schedule.  A few months ago I added some upper body work to my yoga, core muscle routine (I've hated upper body work my entire life).  A side effect of his was finding that the arthritis in my shoulder was bothering me much less.  So I've decided to make use of the same principle when I hike to try and lessen the effect of the arthritis on my knees.  I choose trails that are short and demanding in terms of climb.  I treat the hike as a workout more than just going into the mountains.  I focus on the rhythm of my pace and my breathing to get them in synch so I can optimize the pace I can go.  And I really consciously concentrate on working the muscles in the thighs and calves with each step...especially when I'm stepping down which is when the most stress goes on the knee joint.  It's pretty new so I don't want to jump to conclusions, but so far I'm seeing a big decrease in the knee pain post hike.

We've got lots of family travel coming up in November.  We're going to Pulandia next week and we'll be at the One's for Thanksgiving.

2 comments:

terri said...

I think "semi-retired" just registers with others. We can relate to the concept of "semi" much more clearly than "transitioning" which seems to imply that some big change is imminent. And that doesn't seem to be the case with your situation. Glad you found a description that works!

I can relate to your hatred of upper body exercises. The few times I've tried to really get into it, I seem to have strained my back. Maybe you'll inspire me to keep searching for something that works for me.

alexis said...

I have definitely heard the term semi-retired before, I think that has a lot of traction in the current era where many folks can't fully retire even if they don't want to!

Always glad to hear that pain is going away!