In Celebration of the 5th David’s Liberation Day

Five years ago today, on May 19, 2009, David lost his last full-time job, at the age of 65. At the time, he was a Senior Tech Writer at Quark, Inc. It was the highest-paid job he had ever had.

On 5/19/09, he and several of his colleagues all lost their jobs with no warning and very small severance packages. It was literally “Out the door you go!” right away.

At the time, of course, it was very scary to us. There followed numerous steps and phases, both work-related and psychological. That is, over a period of at least three years, David went from seeking (but failing to find) more full-time work, to looking for (and getting) a few short contract jobs, to deciding that he would do contract work but only if he could fulfill the contract working from home, to deciding that he would do no more tech writing at all. He will still accept short programming (development) contracts, but again, only if he can fulfill them remotely. He hated office work and will never, ever, ever go back to that. Nor would I ever want him to.

Now, five years later, we see that 2009 job loss as one of the best things that ever happened to him and to us as a couple. That’s because it was the first step, albeit a forced one, on his long road to a far better life and much greater happiness than he had ever known before.

Now David is a very healthy 70, with the security of Social Security and Medicare (thank you, Democrats of yore!), the ability to sleep almost every morning until he wakes up naturally, the freedom to write and exercise as often as he likes, and the freedom to publish his own books as soon as he gets them written, thanks to self-publishing.

In addition, he and I have a thriving new career editing the books of other authors and getting them published via Amazon, CreateSpace, and Smashwords. Details: http://www.dvorkin.com/ebookpubhelp.html

Life is good, our 46-year marriage is happier than ever, and retirement from office bondage is WONDERFUL!

I just noticed, looking at David: He looks at LEAST five years younger than he did five years ago. That's what the lack of stress and enough sleep will do for you.

Happy retirement to any readers of this for whom that blissful stage of life is coming soon.