“The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”

I recently decided to retire at the relatively young age of 56. It is quite a big transition for me as I have been working in one capacity or another since the age of 10 – the last 34 years were spent working at a respected high technology company.

I always envied my father who worked a city government job and was able to retire at age 57 with a guaranteed lifelong pension. I watched him enjoying a rich and active retirement lifestyle which encouraged me to set a goal to be on track for my own early retirement.

Because my job in the private sector did not offer the benefit of a pension, I had to achieve my early retirement goal by making sacrifices through the years to limit my spending, increase my savings and consciously deciding to live below my means.

I will be forever grateful to my employer whose work made it possible for me to take care of my family over 3 decades; who provided me with interesting and challenging work to do; who gave me the opportunity to travel and see the world; and who allowed me to establish myself as a key contributor to the company’s products and to become a respected voice in the greater electronic manufacturing test industry.

In return for all of the above I gave the company the majority of my life energy for the better part of 34 years – the prime years of my life. It was an exchange and a bargain that I don’t regret but it does make me think about this joke Lily Tomlin once made about work: “The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat”.

I do consider myself as having won the rat race. By all measures I was successful at the various roles I was given in the company and I was able to leave on my own terms after achieving all of my goals.

Despite all that I achieved and even though I liked the work I did and the people I worked with – in the end I was still a rat. I had to endure 3 hour daily commutes on some of my state’s most congested highways; my marketing and operations support activities for our global company often called for 24 hour/ 7 day a week availability which cut into personal and family time; I missed family events because of frequent business trips; I put off doing things that interested me because I did not have time.

I know that lost time is not found again, but I am excited to see what lies ahead now that my time is now my own. I look forward to spending my remaining life energy pursuing the many things that interest me and the activities I have put off over the years – while I am still healthy and physically able.

I hope it will be said of me, unlike those aging athletes who continue to play too long past their prime, that I left at the right time when I was on top.