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Thanks for sharing your work experience. I'm glad to hear you had a satisfying career, and can talk about it so positively. I spent my career working in uniform in NY State's prison system. It wasn't one of those jobs that you could go home from every night, and feel like you accomplished anything. That's the main reason I went back to college, and finished my bachelor's and then my masters degrees. It helped keep my sanity and kept me focused outside the job. I never used my degrees to move on to something else. I had too much seniority invested with the State in the position I had. I basically did it as a challenge to myself to see if I could do it.

I'm in my 22nd year of retirement. Never thought I'd live this long. I was at a funeral service yesterday and ran into one of the officers I'd worked with. He had just retired as a Sergeant like me, after working 35 years. God bless him. I was old enough in 2003 to retire at 56 with 25 years when I went out. The system was bad when I left, and it's gone terribly down hill even more since then. They can't find anyone to take the Civil Service Test for the position anymore. They start Correctional Officers now, at basically the amount I retired at, as a Sergeant.

"I was there for the entire transition from analog to digital."

Some people have a problem with change. I was a long-time patient of a rheumatologist. During one of my visits I discovered that although every doctor was required to use a laptop to record visits, he didn't seem that familiar with the behavior of computers. He walked into the room, looked at the black screen on the laptop, and said "Well, that doesn't look good." I asked him what he was talking about, and he pointed to the laptop on the desk. I told him that it was just asleep, and all he had to do was touch one of the keys, and it would wake back up. I pressed down on a key, and he was delighted when the screen returned to normal. He actually thanked me for fixing his computer. Yikes! I asked him if he had a computer at home, and he said yes, so I wondered why he'd never come across his computer going to sleep on him there. It wasn't long after that, he discovered that the healthcare network he was working for, was going to be installing a new computer system, and that he'd have to take classes to learn how to use it. He was so scared of the whole thing that he retired. Never did get around to finding another rheumatologist. One less co-pay to come up with.

Thank you for understanding my lengthy response-I am only a few weeks out, and it hasn’t sunk in yet. If I live long enough to last 22 years after I retire, I will be 90! (My parents both passed in their early-mid Seventies, so that would be icing on the cake for me-I think! Or, I hope!)

Funny. For a long time, I could never imagine myself living past the age of 30. It was just black future, nothing I could even imagine. Then, when I entered my Thirties, I could visualize myself as an old, grey guy.

I am sometimes astonished I had the job I did, because I was NEVER an agent of change. But I had to do it, and I had to provide the leadership to do it, so...I had to do it, even though I hated change.

Now? For the last several years, I have been becoming anti-technology. Well. That has all passed me by now, I can be whatever I want...:)

Nice talking to you, FRiend!