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.
