Ten Year Plans

Tonight I am on the eve of my retirement, and I've been reflecting that this was a plan ten years in the making. I first heard about the concept of early retirement in 2012, on a blog written by a "Mr. Money Mustache." Before long I was trying to convince my late husband, Andrew, that this was something we should do. He was intrigued by the idea of financial independence, but I could only get him on board by promising that he'd never have to retire (like many physicists, he viewed doing physics as the fun part of life that you should never stop). 

A decade passed. I reduced spending, saved more. My location, lifestyle, and family changed dramatically, but the plan worked. It worked even faster than expected actually, since my income grew, my spending didn't, and I found a cheaper country to live in.

I might even consider this my second ten-year-plan, because when I was twenty-five, I decided that working a not-quite-minimum-wage job as a cook in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. I wanted to be a physics professor, and all that stood between me and that dream was... another bachelor's degree, getting into graduate school, passing my qualifying exams, and seven years of research.  A mere ten years later, I was a PhD physicist.

I hope that I can have a few more ten-year plans in my life. I don't know what those plans will be yet, but free time will help me find them. And here's pictorial proof of my new free time.

 Above is my weekly calendar while working. The green is fun stuff, and the blue is meetings. I had a *lot* of meetings every week.

This is my new life. I'm doing a tiny bit of consulting, which explains the blue, and then the blank space can be filled in with new, fun, green stuff.