On vacation

Recently I returned from a two-week beach vacation in San Diego. I say “vacation,” but I spent time during the trip thinking about whether the word really applies to what my wife and I were doing. Back when I was working full-time, vacations were special things for which I had to allocate time from the limited amount my employer allotted for that purpose. Our vacations were an opportunity to take a rest break from our jobs, and recharge our mental batteries.

These days, though, I’m what many might classify as “retired.” I actually use the phrase “semiretired,” since I still have obligations, including my blog, this column and our various volunteer positions. But given that those obligations are entirely self-imposed, and thus are things I truly want to do, I find the need to take a break — a vacation — to be far less imperative. That isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy my recent trip to San Diego — I very much did — but I was as glad to return home afterwards as I was to set out on the trip.

The value of a vacation would likely be even less if I was enjoying a classic form of retirement. I grew up thinking that I would work at one company for my entire career, receive a gold watch and then retire. Back then I pictured retirement as mostly sitting on the porch I imagined I would have, reading and watching the world go by. And for some, that picture was mostly true. My father-in-law, for instance, spent his entire career working for General Electric.

Approaching “retirement age,” GE offered him a lucrative early retirement package that he gladly snapped up. He then sold the family home and, with my mother-in-law, retired to a second home they owned in Sedona, Arizona. There he gave no further thought to what he had been doing for the past 40 years or so, and instead happily spent his time puttering in his woodshop, fishing in the lakes of Northern Arizona, spending time with friends, and doing some traveling.

By the time I graduated from college, getting ahead in the tech industry often meant switching companies. Thus, my career involved jobs at a dozen or so different companies. My choice to retire didn’t involve a gold watch, and didn’t involve an early retirement package — classic retirement plans being a thing of the past in the tech industry. It did involve a vacation of sorts, though.

I had always thought I would stop working for a salary and go out on my own at some point in my career, so when Google bought my then-employer, Motorola Mobility, and laid nearly all of the company off, I decided that then might be the time.

Thanks to a reasonably generous financial and benefits package as part of that layoff, though, I decided to first enjoy an extended time off: a vacation from my entire career, if you will. I figured that during the couple of months I intended to take off I would come up with a product idea, but knew that if I didn’t, I could always reenter the traditional job market.

During those months off, my wife and I spent time visiting family and catching up on obligations we had been unable to fulfill while I had been working. I used some of the time to examine our finances and reduce costs wherever possible, and we made some long-delayed improvements to the house. As time passed, I didn’t come up with a million-dollar idea, and we kept thinking of more things we could do with our free time. So, I kept extending my “career vacation,” to the point where my wife and I finally decided to just admit that I was retired.

I do enjoy some woodworking, and the very occasional round of golf, but I’m not into any hobbies that would consume the amounts of time that even a part-time job would. My wife and I both still felt the need to contribute to society; we couldn’t just sit in rockers on our front porch. That led us to driving for Meals on Wheels, and, soon after, volunteering with Friends of the Redwood City Public Library. Walking Redwood City — my blog — started as a casual thing, but quickly grew into a serious effort that today consumes a fair amount of my time. And that blog led to this column, which I’ve been writing for more than seven years now.

With all that I am doing, I guess a break now and then isn’t a bad thing. Is it a vacation when I continue to write my columns and my blog posts while I am traveling? Whatever it is, I enjoy the change of scenery, and I always return thankful that I live where I do.