The View from the Far Side 1

Tales of Retirement

By Don Kellett
Software Sales Executive
Retired 2007

It feels like I’ve travelled along a tightrope to get to retirement.  Having retired in 2007, I’ve now arrived safely on the far side, but the tightrope experience is still fresh in my mind.

I had a long career in the computer software industry and, while I would like to say my progress to retirement was graceful and planned, to be honest, it was anything but.  However, the good news is that it all worked out and now, eight years later, I see that, even when it’s not fully planned, it can be done!

Career, family, music and wine

I graduated from York University in 1969 with a degree in Theoretical Physics, but my real interest was in computers.  So rather than getting a higher degree, I jumped into the computer field and built a career, going from technical implementation to client support to sales to management.  It wasn’t all work though.  From early on I maintained my strong interest in music, teaching guitar, and playing in bands, which helped pay my university tuition. When my career took me from Toronto to Vancouver, I reconnected with my father and we began making wine together as a hobby. In the early 1970’s I got married, and my focus on career was reinforced by the realization that I had a wife and potentially a family to support.

While I developed my business career and nourished my family, I never left my music and winemaking interests behind; they remained a part of my life so that, as I moved into management and executive roles at work, I maintained these interests outside of work.

Storm clouds

 In the late ’90s, crisis struck.  My father died from cancer, my career was in trouble (the company was foundering and, even though I jumped to other start-up companies, things didn’t look good), and my marriage was deteriorating. I had stopped teaching music and playing in bands and only occasionally played music at home for my own recreation. I was trying to find a graceful way out of crisis and into retirement.  But, as Robbie Burns says, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.”

As always in a sales environment – especially in the start-up world of software companies –storm clouds loomed.  In 2006, the company’s new sales VP laid me off.   It hadn’t mattered that I was the leading rep that year; the company was now youth-oriented. (It wasn’t all bad.  I received a great settlement – the third over my career in the software business!)  After a wasted year as a consultant/sales rep for a now- defunct company, and with the encouragement of my financial advisor, I decided it was time to acknowledge that I was ‘retired.’  I was 62 years old.

Leap of faith

Although being retired was a hard thing to accept for a while, I took time to pursue those things I’d always wanted to do. It was a leap of faith because I had all the reservations that most people do:  Did I have the financial resources to carry me in retirement? What would I do with myself without a job to consume most of my daytime?  Luckily, during the last 10 years of my working life I had transitioned from working out of an office to working at home; the routine of going to work at the office had already been broken.

Getting serious about playing

First thing I did was sign up for a music event in Hawaii, one I had always wanted to go to – the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Association Convention.  I had been dabbling in some local music groups, but got serious and started making that my focus. And, coincidentally, some friends started a ‘garagiste’ winery and asked me to participate as associate winemaker and part-time sales rep.   I spent two years working part time at the winery. With this flurry of activity, I found I was fairly active in retirement, although not as much as when I was working.  Most important, I was doing things that were personally rewarding more than fiscally rewarding. Looking back at it, I think this was a crucial step – being engaged in activities that are interesting and rewarding – and keeping busy.

The far side

Well, it is now 2015. I have been ‘retired’ since 2007, but I think of it as the second stage of my adult life.  In 2009, I married my musical partner. We have a very full life now playing music, together and in ensembles, making wine, and travelling locally and offshore.  I am playing in several bands – 16 gigs in March, plus practices, plus four gigs offshore in May – and the music seems to keep growing.  Life is full and, most importantly, those financial resources that I retired on in 2007, in spite of my drawing on them and the ups and downs of the market, are at about the same level as when I retired.

There wasn’t a plan – it all happened, and to this point it appears to have worked. Kind of like walking the tightrope without a net, I suppose. The biggest challenge was to find the passions that enabled me to keep moving forward along the tightrope and, even though I sometimes felt a bit shaky, I made it safely to the other side.  I think that it is more feasible than we all think it can be.  And, from all that I can see from the far side, retirement is very fulfilling if you can throw aside your work identity and take on the one that you always wanted. For me, I am, and have always been, a musician.  And, now I can afford to be one – full time.