Sixchannel,

your story sounds a lot like mine. Add to it the fact that my place of employment is almost exclusively manned by people who are within two years of retirement, and no effort has been made to bring in young people to learn their jobs. The exodus of job knowledge that is about to happen is going to put enormous extra stress on whoever remains, especially salaried people like me who are ultimately responsible for meeting the company's goals. It makes me angry to think of all the 12 and 16 hour days I worked during the last 5 years of my wife's life. Now she's gone, and I can't roll back the clock to spend that time with her.

"Fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice, shame on me. " I don't want to repeat the unwise use of time I have left. There's no doubt in my mind that if I stay at work, the time they expect me to put in will increase exponentially, and if I allow it, the job will consume every breath that remains in me.

But I'm an idea person. I like to observe life and form ideas about what should work. I am eager to test my ideas about what I believe will be an increase in opportunities to play live music as the baby boomers retire. When they had too much time on their hands as young people, they filled it with live music. I think they will do the same with the retirement time on their hands. ALL of the live music I've attended in the past year has been overwhelmingly attended by boomers, which supports my theory enough that I am willing to take the next step.

So in a sense I don't see this as retirement as much as I see it as changing jobs from something that's slowly killing me to something that I enjoy.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ey71h8ep047758h/AAC12jNM0Hz9Q8zsh5iDeqNHa?dl=0