On Sun, 14 Jun 2026 at 02:54, Sandhya via Silklist < [email protected]> wrote:
> Are you retired? > Yes, fully retired almost 10 years now - when I was 59. > What are you doing post-retirement? > Same thing we do every night Pinky! Since high school my goal has been to travel the world, live in interesting places, meet interesting people, and learn how other people live. Since early adulthood I added "eat delicious food." That's what we're doing. Currently in Chiang Mai, I took a two week intense cooking class from a guy here who teaches professional chefs. I now feel like I understand the "architecture" of Thai food a lot better. I've also said consistently about programming computers "I'd be doing this even if they didn't pay me to do it - good thing it pays so well." Sure enough I'm still programming computers, though I saw the LLM writing on the wall fairly early and jumped on the AI coding agent bandwagon. I am so glad I did. I cannot imagine trying to write code without AI assistance at this point. The other side of that is that I am *loving* coding again. I am tackling projects that have much larger scope and require much more specialized knowledge than I would have before. Coding is *fun* again. I'm making ceramics. I've always had a passion for functional pottery, but I have a very specific aesthetic. I like reduction fired stoneware with shino or tenmoku glaze (two very old Japanese glazes both notoriously temperamental and unforgiving but so beautiful when they work.) I'm poly, kinky, and queer, and I've been enjoying finding community wherever we go. > On hindsight, would you give your younger self some advice about what you > would do differently? > Retire sooner. Don't stretch it out just because you aren't sure you're ready to make the break. You aren't going to find part time or consulting work that you love enough to make it worth the annoyance and friction. You don't need the money, you've got enough. Hold on to your connections and your friends - you're going to find them more and more valuable as time goes on. — Charles >
-- Silklist mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
