Retiring and the excitement it brings?

I have decided to chronicle the journey that I am now traveling during the years we all call the “golden years!”. I will write a series of short essays recording the progress in this but very interesting part of my life.

I am 70 years old and feel like 40 years old. Retired several times since 1993. But each time; I find retirement so difficult and different. One looks at what your younger contemporaries are doing and as soon as you try to do the same; that is when a serious reality check kicks in and you find you now have limitations mostly physical. Mentally you are still 40 years old. So now you have to reschedule your life differently and find employment that will be both challenging and will give you a reasonable target and satisfaction, and of course something that will suit your personality and hopefully give you a few extra dollars in your pocket (and that is a separate issue – everyone wants your money if you have any and if you do not have any they still want what you have).

In 1994 I retired for the first time and decided to start a manufacturing business. Building boat anchors that was reasonably successful. However, my partner in this venture was a person who was brilliant at making anything, his design for the anchor unbeknown to me was a copy of another anchor made in another country. Suffice to say we ended up in court on patent infringement suit and settled with out and damage to either party. But all was not lost, because I had already completed the design of our own anchor with a better performance and was more economical to manufacture. I patented the new anchor but once again we found ourselves in litigation, this time they decided to destroy our little business. Well it did not go as planned for the BIG company and it was ultimately proven that we had every right to manufacture our design.  After $400k in our legal costs we could market and sell our anchor to any one who wanted one. the business thrived, and our anchors were in demand until the company suddenly morphed into a water jet cutting company, by accident.