A Light In the Lowlands
I heard a song that was taught to a baby
And it made the mountain sing
I knew a gift that was given to my lady
It was hidden in a dream
And there’s a light in the lowlands
And a river that runs so clean
I’m a poor man feelin’ lazy
And the lowlands are callin’ my name
I knew a man who said he was a stranger
’Cause his heart he could not trust
I knew a man who could not face the dangers
Even though he knew he must
And it’s hard in the lowlands
And the grasses will turn to rust
But the sun is a fountain
Flowing through the lowland’s dust
Lowlands, Ozark Mountain Daredevils
I think about retirement. Not often, but more often lately than I have in quite awhile. I could have retired seven years ago — and any time between then and now. I’ve been eligible to retire with a pension and my 401K to fall back on, since October, 2010.
I never once even thought about retiring until April of 2013, when Kathy got laid off from her job of sixteen years, and was worried what we would do if she couldn’t find another job in time for us to be able to keep up with all of the bills, and continue to manage the high cost of DC-area living.
Just for the hell of it, I checked with my favorite benefits lady in Minneapolis, Marcie, to see what my retirement income would look like if I just retired. Kathy and I considered what it would look like if I retired, and we sold everything off here and moved down to the lowlands of South Carolina. That had become our home away from home over the years, where we’d go down to visit Mom three or four times a year, plus our week or two with my whole family in early July every year.
I expected to laugh and choke when Marcie got back to me with my numbers — instead, I was delightfully surprised. The numbers, then, were good enough that we could have easily lived on my retirement income alone, living simply down in the lowland country we loved so much.
It was a time when I did not like my job, and the freedom that simple knowledge gave was so sweet. I could leave at any time. I could tell them to take this job and shove it. Somehow, just that knowledge made the job so much more tolerable.
Next thing we knew, Kathy got a job right down the road from us, a great job that she loved, with a commute that was much better than her old job had been. It was a mere three miles down the road, and did not involve driving on the Beltway at all. That alone was worth the pay cut the new job would represent.
Then, a departing CFO recommended me to go fill in behind his deputy, who would fill in for him, until they found a new CFO. That lifted me out of the job I so disliked, and away from the people I didn’t much care to work for, and so all thoughts of retirement went back on the shelf, albeit with the knowledge that they could always be brought back down off that shelf, dusted off, and reconsidered.
After eight months in the Deputy CFO job, I applied for a senior executive position in the office of investigation, enforcement and audit. I didn’t get the job, but they brought me over there on a detail to be the acting deputy executive of the program. I acted in that job for as long as a non-executive could act in an executive job, then I moved into the director of the Compliance Investigation Division. After nine months in that job, I finally got selected to move into the Deputy Executive position, as an executive, this time. It was a permanent position.
I enjoyed each of these positions, and work became much more vital and challenging. For four years, I’ve never felt the need to pull those retirement thoughts down off that shelf to reconsider.
Last April (2016), I was moved into the highest executive level, to run the office of management for the agency. I’ve been here, now, for a year and a half. It’s been one of the most difficult, challenging positions I’ve been in, and most of the time, the level of challenge and the successes I was able to achieve, as I turned the organization around from being a very dysfunctional program with extremely low morale, to what it is today, a highly functional outfit in which many are excited to work, I find myself at the end of my first full fiscal year, thinking about retirement again.
Why? Well, despite all that’s been achieved under my watch, and the significant progress that’s been made, I can see that it’s never going to be enough for the powers that be. As we reach the end of our first fiscal year under a new Strategic Plan, one that I didn’t really get the opportunity to develop our measures and objectives for, since most of that work was done before I arrived, I’m getting raked over the coals for a couple of numbers that have been missed.
My predecessor focused on numbers, but let the organization go to crap, didn’t care about the customers, just made damn sure she met the numbers in the strategic plan. I took a different approach. I focused on doing what needed to be done to keep the customers satisfied, and to feed and nurture an organziation that was clearly suffering from organizational PTSD. That turn-around now seems to be yesterday’s news, and now all my leadership seems to care about is the numbers we missed. They were bad numbers to begin with — unrealistic numbers, numbers pulled out of thin air by my predecessor that were unachievable, almost as if she wanted to set up her successor. That’s one reason I’m thinking about retirement now.
The other is, I don’t know how much longer I can keep going, and keep up with the politics that I have to cope with. The politics of the position are really beginning to wear me down. I’ve seen it happen to better men than myself. It seems that this position, especially, is prone to that dynamic.
I might just need an effective exit plan. Find another position, somewhere else, that doesn’t have the same level of politics as this one, a fresh start, something that I can really get into and get excited about. Some of the things I have had to do in this position have tempered my excitement about what I’m doing, here. It has bothered me enough that I have found myself souring, a bit, on my continued presence in the position. Right now, it just doesn’t feel right.
So, what to do? Retirement is one possibility. I could retire, then go do something that is more in tune with my spirit. I’m not sure, but I think, between my pension and what my wife is now making in the job that she still loves, we could now keep living here in Northern Virginia, meet the mortgage payment, and pay all of the bills. In order to have anything extra, I would have to do something else on the side, but I don’t mind working — I just really mind the politics of the current job I have. It’s really burning me out, and I feel like I’ve reached the point where I am going to have to do something about it, sooner than later.
Maybe next week I’ll change my mind. I’m not going to do anything rash. But, I am definitely back to considering my options. It might be time for a change. The lowlands are calling my name. (At this point, I wouldn’t see us moving there — but, with a little more time on my hands, I might be able to get down there a little more often than just the once a year that we do, now.)
