Retiring in a Rona World

Greetings from Fort Livingroom.  I am now 35 days into my terminal leave (well 20 days PTDY and 15 days leave).  I have decided to forego the “Freedom Beard” for right now (my wife threatened me with divorce) but my hair is rapidly approaching hippy level.

I have to admit that as odd as transitioning is, doing it during the time of “Rona” is a whole new thing.  My VA claim is way behind schedule.  I turned in my claim and everything on time, but because all of the medical offices have been closed for the last 3 months, I haven’t even been contacted yet to make my appointments.  Talking to a few other friends who have similar timelines as I do, it appears that we’re all in the same boat.  I’m sure I will get my appointments eventually, and get my disability rating, just not on the timeframe that I had originally planned.

Likewise, my job search has been slightly complicated.  Prior to Rona taking hold in the use (and even shortly after it started), I had a variety of job offers.  A number of those were put on hold because of restrictions related to working in the office and other things like that.  Fortunately, this wasn’t a huge concern (just yet) because I don’t actually retire until Sept 1st, and because of the law, since most of these were government contracting jobs, I wouldn’t be able to work until then anyway.

Out of the blue, I was approached by Northrop Grumman about a position on a non-government contract leading a team of network and cyber security engineers.  I went through the interview process and was eventually offered the position.  After a little bit of negotiating, I am proud to say that I now the third week into my employment with them.

The process is not at all what I expected.  While my office is about 20 minutes away (and I actually have my own office….score!), I have only been to it once on my first day so that I could fill out some paperwork.  The rest of the time I’ve been working from my kitchen counter (I’m working on moving into my home office but I have to get my kid some technology first or he will drive me crazy).

I have to admit, this transition hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be although I highly suspect that a large part of that is given the dumpster fire that we’re all living through right now.  Truth of the matter, even when I was still wearing my uniform, I was barely working from my office since this all started because we were working reduced manning and since I was on my way out, I wasn’t essential. 

Ok, short post and more to follow about retirement in the future but there you go.

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