On May 15, 2025, I retired from the SHAZAM Network where I had worked as an IT professional for thirty years minus a 15 month foray in 1998 for Y2K consulting money. I will turn 56 this September, and feel highly fortunate to take this leap into early retirement.
Origin Story
I did it for two main reasons: I wanted to dedicate my time to writing and because life is too short.
I have thought of myself as a writer my entire life. I believe writing is a way of life regardless of word count or bibliography. It is a way of organizing your thoughts, experiences, and a response to life. It is a part of my soul whatever that is.
I grew up through a couple phases. The first was a directionless one where I took time for granted, wrote when I felt like it, and somehow thought “it” would just happen. The second was an intentional decision of where to place art in my life. I think this is a decision all artists have to make and there is no right or wrong answer, but I chose to put art in the background to “working for the man” and to supporting my family. I chose to never be a “struggling artist.” This takes away pressures of making art to make money, but depending on how far in the background you put art, you can feel “less” like an artist.
When I became an empty nester, when I met Kristy, when I advanced to a certain state in my IT career, I was able to bring art closer to the foreground. A pivotal moment occurred in 2013 when I first went to the Iowa Summer Writers Festival. I got encouraging feedback from my teacher Mark Poirier that also included a suggestion of going to low residency MFA program. I had to decide again: where would I center art in my life? We decided leaving IT didn’t make sense for my situation. Instead, I would dedicate to a DIY MFA regiment and I would take advantage of SHAZAM’s pension and the goal became early retirement at 30 years into the pension which would have been October 2026 when I would be 57.
And then the “Life is too Short idea” took center stage. My dad, somewhat unexpectedly, passed away in 2020. Kristy had a mystery illness that took us way too many tests and trips to diagnose before ultimately having two brain surgeries over the last few years. This was a long challenging road that landed on a cure and a clarity to both what had been happening and what we wanted to happen. Right before I turned 55, I learned in a casual conversation with a co-worker that 55 was a landmark age of potential retirement. Always focused on the 30 years of pension, I had lost that significant data point. A conversation on a bus ride to the Iowa football game with my, at the time, soon-to-be-retired brother and former financial advisor crystallized the idea: why not retire now? This became a message I was hearing from many people: If you can do it, do it. Why wouldn’t you? I met with my current financial advisor and the models confirmed it was up to me. I had the freedom to say when. Once that door was opened, I could not close it. In November of 2024, I decided to pick May 15, 2025, as “the” date because it is the 30th anniversary of my starting at SHAZAM as a Programmer Intern from DMACC.
Two of my mentors died soon after they retired. I worked with Al Hansen back in the Y2K consulting days. He was a grinder. He would work as many hours as the projects would let him. He constantly talked about retirement, something still highly abstract to me still in my late 20’s. Shortly after I went back to SHAZAM and Y2K passed, so did Al from an aggressive cancer. Shortly before I solidified my plans, a SHAZAM mentor passed early too. Lisa Hill had been a lifer at SHAZAM and had retired and the reports of her enjoying retirement quickly changed to her facing and ultimately losing a battle to cancer as well. This solidified the core idea: Life is way too short. I’d rather retire too early than too late.
The Questions
One of the downsides to giving SHAZAM such a long transition timeline was it put me in a lot of conversations about my retirement. What are you going to do with your time? Do you have any big trips planned?
I’ve got easy answers to these questions. Good answers even. But the time one seemed to invite more questions and need more detail than I felt was right for work meetings. I’m going to write felt weird to say and I spent that time leading up to retiring inspecting why. There’s a part of it that feels like imposter syndrome. The feeling of internal resistance writers have to continually squash. That my writing is worth the time. There’s a part of that I like. Now it’s time for me to prove it. I need to get the work done. The work needs to get better. There was also a part that I just didn’t want to talk about the second or third question that happens when you tell someone you are a writer. So sometimes, I just answered other things that were also true: I’m going to spend time with my grandkids. I’m going to golf. I’m going to enjoy not working.
As to travel, we absolutely want to do that but it wasn’t my main motivator. It’s not the first thing I wanted to do with retirement. I wanted to get used to the new norms first, the way time is spent, the way money is spent, and then travel. So travel soon, but nothing specifically planned yet.
The Opposition
Another funny response I saw was people who shared opposition to the idea. They were horrified by the idea of not working. One example was a guy I was playing poker with who didn’t know me at all. His response was not personal but it showed his stance on it for sure: retirement equalled death. It equalled boredom. It equalled giving up on life. Even if he didn’t know me it’s a pretty funny thing to share with someone who was a week or so away from retiring. But mostly, it’s kind of sad. What have we done where work is looked at this way? What kind of life wouldn’t be better with more free time? It also made me happy. If there’s some part of this that is “revolutionary”, twenty-two year old Al would have been proud of me.
That’s what I want to mix: the 22 year-old me, sitting in my duplex listening to new Pearl Jam and Nirvana music, without a job because I didn’t have to have one. Mix that with the 55 year-old me who knows how to dedicate this time to productive writing. Mix that freedom and discipline.
The Start
The first week has been awesome. There is so much value in time.
I got my office cleaned up. Piles organized. Art work hung. I made a project list and I have 5 or 6 main projects I’m working on. I submitted a new story to a lit journal I haven’t submitted to since 2020.
I’ve got a basic schedule. I still wake up at the same time. I still start the day in my office, with a glass of Chai. But I work for myself. I’m writing, I’m reading, I’m still putting time in on the DIY MFA. I always will be.
I thought the early days might feel like vacation but they feel more like what I hoped they might: permanent writer retreat.
The obvious reason it doesn’t feel like vacation is every vacation has a looming date to it of when it’s over, when you will have to go back to work. But at one more granular level, it comes down to the hours. The 8 to 5. I remember work’s presence even on days off. When 4 or 5 pm would hit, it psychologically was the end of something. The end of the personal time off and the move to what would have been the normal end of a work day. Now, it’s just an hour closer to dinner.
Thomas reclaimed his scratching post that I had been using as a standup desk for work zoom meetings:
The Real World
One thing I had to face during this decision making was the volatility of the political world. Part of that felt like the worst time to retire. I described it once to Kristy as running outside in flip flops and a tank top in the middle of a hurricane. Part of this felt like the exact time to retire. Is the world changing as much as some of us feel it is? Is it ending? All of these various worst case scenarios just support my idea that life is too short. That the focus should be on the most important use of time.
One idea that did give me peace in the uncertainty: one thing that “could” change my equation is health insurance. “If” there would be disastrous changes to ACA, to the market place, I gave myself license to pre-approve a scenario where I might have to return to work. To mentally allow this in. That won’t be disaster. It will just be something different. It doesn’t even have to be IT. It doesn’t have to be the measure. It could be whatever size I want it to be. And it’s not here yet. Retirement is.
I plan on making occasional amendments to the journey on this page.
Al Kratz 