This day last month was my last official working day at the National College of Ireland - I can't believe how fast the time has flown, and how easily I am fitting into retirement. Of course, all my plans for travel have had to be postponed for another day, and the Lockdown has reduced options for things to do.
The best part of retirement so far is that I can now visit my parents Joe and Phil during the week as well as at the weekend. I have been stopped several times by the very polite Gardaí on the road to Carnew in Co Wicklow asking me the purpose of my journey. I usually have some dinner for my parents on the passenger seat to show them, and they let me continue. We have plenty of chat and we have not yet exhausted all topics.
Have I missed my work at NCI? Yes. I do miss teaching, but I am 100% satisfied at my decision to retire. I am so glad that I am not stuck at my computer working from home all day long - this must be hard for everyone. While I feel that on-line classes are here to stay, there's nothing like the classroom experience on a good teaching day.
At first, in the days after my retirement day there were so many on-line messages congratulating me on my retirement - I was overwhelmed! There were over 800 "Reactions" and 100 comments to NCI's lovely message on LinkedIn. I loved getting messages from past students and from people I had worked with in the past. This has now all dried up - the party is definitely over!
As posted elsewhere on this blog, I have been making some new YouTube videos to keep me busy. And plans for a series of videos on R Programming are well advanced - I hope to start releasing these videos in mid-January. I have also done a small piece of work for another third-level College, which I found really satisfying - it was good to feel useful again.
So far - retirement is good!
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