How I Retired At 41 - Part 4

Picture it – September 2019.

Life is beyond busy and for the most part, I’m keeping my head above water. Barely.

I was coordinating projects for 8 different teams and traveling all over North America to meet with them.

I started taking a course on the weekends which meant flying back to Calgary from wherever I was on a Thursday night, going to school Friday and Saturday, home to do laundry on Sunday, then back on the road to do it all over again. I had a work wardrobe.

I would wear the same outfits each week so I just had to dump out my suitcase, wash the clothes, then re-pack them. Everything had a system. It was basically clockwork.

Until one night, my son came upstairs to my room to tell me his legs were hurting...

I told him to wait for me on the couch and I’d come down and get him sorted out.

Except it was 3 am, and my eyes were blurry, and the stairs in my new house (that was built in 1911) were very narrow.

I slipped down the last 3 steps, then hit the floor, seeing stars and almost passing out from the most intense pain I think I’ve ever encountered. (And that’s saying a lot – I’ve given birth – without drugs…)

I somehow managed to get my boy feeling better and back to bed – it felt like I was that mother on the news who lifted a car to save her trapped baby. I crawled back upstairs to my room in agony, hoping some rest would heal my body.

It didn’t. I called the boys’ dad to drive them to school in the morning, then took an Uber to the hospital. The kind doctor prescribed me some painkillers and an MRI, then sent me on my way.

My son felt absolute guilt for ‘making me’ fall down the stairs, but I made sure he knew it was a good thing. I’ve had back issues for many, many years and have never been offered an MRI to find out what was really going on. I told my boy that if I hadn’t fallen, I wouldn’t be getting the test and we’d never be able to fix the problem.

When I finally did get the MRI, it confirmed that I not only had a herniated disc, but that the fall had likely broken a piece of it off, which was now pushing directly on my sciatic nerve. The pain was agonizing - like having a toothache, but in your butt.

I could barely bend. My kids had to put my socks and shoes on for me for months.

And yet, I was still keeping the gruelling work and travel schedule. I would grin and bear it, not let it slow me down, even though my body was begging for a more relaxed pace.

I was sent for a cortisone shot in my spine to see if that would help dull the pain enough for me to function better, at least temporarily. It did nothing.

A second cortisone shot gave me a spinal headache – I was leaking spinal fluid from the hole the needle created when they gave me the shot.

I had to lie completely flat for 7 days, which only increased the back and leg pain because I was immobilized.

Before I realized that the spinal headache was not just the flu, I had attended a meeting with VIP’s from my company via Zoom. Immediately after I finished speaking, I put the call on mute and vomited all over my home office. That’s how committed I was to the job.

I needed surgery. In Canada, that can take a long time. So, after the second cortisone shot, my doctor prescribed me opioids and sent me home until I could get the problem fixed.

This was February, 2020. I was basically quarantined before it was cool. I felt terrible leaving my job behind. I felt as if I was an essential part of the work that was happening and walking limping away felt like a cop-out. But, I also enjoyed that little taste of freedom. I was practicing retirement, albeit high on narcotics.

Let me tell you, the narcotics were very helpful during our first lockdown when we had to homeschool…

Despite lockdown and homeschooling, I found myself with a lot of free time and wanted to make the most of it. I followed up with the people at the 3 day investing course I had taken 6 months ago and signed on for a year long advanced strategy course.

I called in to two webinars per week and studied and researched when I was feeling up to it. I learned to think about which companies I was supporting with my money and how to evaluate if they were good investments or not. I learned some trading strategies and figured out how to open a brokerage account. I used ‘paper money’ to practice until I felt confident enough to put any of my actual money in the ring.

Slowly, but steadily I started making good returns. I was enjoying this investing thing. The news headlines started making more sense to me. I was learning a new language that for my entire adult life sounded elitist and unreachable to someone like me, without a degree in finance or love of math.

I could carry on conversations in this new investing language and people were starting to ask me for tips. It’s not something I ever thought I would enjoy, but I did (and still do). And, this new knowledge helped me use money I already had, to make more money without much effort – my favourite kind of side hustle!

Then in late May 2020, I got the call that my surgery was scheduled for the following week. I had assumed I would be waiting until at least the end of the year with all of the medical resources being consumed by Covid. Instead of ‘yaaay, my back will get fixed, my first thought was ‘but I don’t want to go back to work after!’

I had been enjoying my time off – going for walks, working out with my trainer, sitting outside in the sunshine working on my investing research, reading, having more time with the kids. Jumping back into my office job felt less and less attractive.

The surgery was a success and after a fairly short convalescence, I was back on my feet. I walked a lot to get my strength up and returned to my personal trainer as soon as possible to get back into fighting shape. It took my body a few rough weeks to detox off the painkillers I had been prescribed. And then it was time to return to work.

I really didn’t know what to expect. By late July, everyone was working from home – me included. Which was always my dream, so I didn’t mind it that much. I thought it was funny that I had fought for so long for the opportunity to work from home and now all the cool kids were doing it.

I didn’t have much work to do. The projects I had been working on before my medical leave had either wrapped up or were being completed by someone else. I was told it would take too long to catch me up on new projects that were near finished. I was given data entry tasks and things I could have done with my eyes closed 15 years before.

The team was also different. I was used to being a ‘go to’ person who had all the answers, or at least a perspective that gave others pause before they jumped into the politics of the corporate snake pit. Now, they were wrapped up in their own assignments, not ‘working from home’, but ‘living at work’. They had no need to reach out to me because I wasn’t involved in anything they were working on. I felt forgotten and unnecessary.

Which, was actually a blessing for me. The company had also started a massive re-organization. There was a new CEO and a new mandate. Everyone’s job was on the line and people were afraid of being let go. I was afraid of having to stay.

I spent my days looking as busy as I could from home. I participated in the meetings I was invited to and I did the work I was assigned. By the time November rolled around, each employee was being notified whether they were in or out. I waited nervously for my turn. My worst case scenario would be to stay in a job that was unfulfilling. My best case scenario was to be let go, with a severance to kickstart the rest of my life.

You guessed it – my wish came true! That promise card I’d written back in August 2019? I achieved it a month early! My last day as an employee was November 30, 2020 – a full month before my goal!

It hasn’t been all rainbows and sunshine. As I said at the beginning of this 4 part post – it was a combination of intention, good decisions and Universal magic. Now I’m able to stay retired because I have no debt (other than a mortgage), I live simply and I’m making the money that I do have work for me.

The thing is I have the option of going back to work if I choose to, but I don’t have to. The thought of updating my resume, interviewing for a job and having a boss again doesn’t sound appealing to me right now. I don’t know what the future will bring, but for now, I’ll happily continue my weekly trade, write the occasional blog post and do whatever else feeds my soul. It’s a great place to be!