5 Jan

With Dad gone, it’s time to begin Sober January, making today more like New Year’s Day than Jan 1 was. So Andi and I went on a 5.75 mile hike with Bruno in Pinkney Rec under a beautiful clear sky, and like always, the serenity of the walk in the woods without seeing another person on the trail was restorative. I was thinking about the new “Ten Things That Scare Me” podcast, and how I might like to list my top 10 fears here. But then, if you’re afraid of one thing, you can be afraid of everything: if all suffering comes from wishing things were different than they actually are, harboring fear is just another form of wishing, only that it’s a wish the fear will never be realized in the future. And I can say with confidence that one of my Top 10 fears would be that I would die before I ever figured out how to live without anxiety and apprehension. So fuck that, I’m not making a list of ten things that scare me and will endeavor instead to live in the present, fully accepting of how things are at any given moment. And obviously, abusing alcohol doesn’t count as acceptance.

Also on the hike, Andi and I discussed our retirement plans and worked back to the present moment. Retirement looks like keeping our home in Ann Arbor and having the ability to rent in a sunnier and warmer place out West from Jan-April each year. The next 18 months before Natalie graduates will be a crucial transition period. Either John Ducote retires and I relocate to take his job, or he doesn’t and I do something different. Inclusive of the possibility that John will retire, the priority order of preferences for my career after June 2020 are:

1. Take an expat assignment in a cool country with any company
2. Relocate to take John’s job as head of quality for Emergent
3. Work as a consultant or for someone else, but stay local (where local is defined as 3 out of 4 weeks in Ann Arbor and a commute of less than 35 minutes)
4. Take a position as head of quality (or equivalent) for some other company and relocate to one of the coasts.

There’s a bigger gap in preference between 1 and 4 and their adjacent numbers than between 2 and 3. The third choice is close to the second, and to pull it off, I will need to cultivate a network of potential clients, begin to establish a brand that focuses on quality management system development, deployment, and improvement (inclusive of data governance), and improve my skills in data analysis. With the clock ticking, I have to be very intentional about how I use my time.