oliviatamccue

Three years ago, I took an early retirement.  At that time, one kid was in high school, and the other was in middle school. Three years later, I am back to work, one kid is in college and the other is in high school.

If someone told me ahead what has happened since, I probably would have no idea.  It is not that the past three years have been dramatic; just that the daily drudgery sometimes limit our imagination.

Such is that there is some satisfaction in looking back the past 3 years for experiencing different things – “retirement”; blogging, jogging 5k; meeting new friends; volunteering; working as a contractor; working in health care; working in high tech; and sending kid to college.

Inertia resists changes of course – experiencing new things is actually not always comfortable; and at times, it is uncomfortable.  Changes are our bets. On the good side, it can motivate us to stay fit both physically and mentally; a good rhythm in exercising does away my allergy for the last two years.  And I am lucky to join a company with so many smart people as well as people with passion.

I am raised in a culture that “helping others is the foundation of happiness”.  Serving on a non-profit school is both a learning experience as well as rewarding with the chance of making an impact.  Seldom do people say “volunteering is not rewarding”, yet, volunteer rate was reported to be 25.3% in US in 2013.  It is a mystery to me.

For a year or two, my daughter has pretty much only one requirement for college, other than she wants to get into a good college – she wants to go out-of-state and experiences something new.  This fall, she gave up her in-state college admission and went somewhere that took more than 5 hours of direct flight.   I wish that she will be equally successful in all of her future dreams.  For parents, seeing the kid off to college is a major milestone – our life with kid first start off as a single entity, then two entities with lots of overlap, the overlap becomes intersection and then one day, we suddenly realize our kid and us has become two separate entities, with just occasional intersection.

So that is it.  The good thing is there are still so many things around waiting to be discovered.

Posted in Misc.