Back to work next week after a sojourn to Mexico - but what next?

We arrived home from our holiday in Mexico on Wednesday, finally going to bed 33 hours after getting up at 0600 on Tuesday, Mexican time.

We had a wonderful two weeks in which we did lots of relaxing on the beach or beside the pools. We also achieved the dream of visiting the World Heritage Site, Chitchen Itza. But more of our Mexico in a future blog post.

I have a new to-do app, Omni Focus, and my note for writing this week's blog is 'Back to work next week—but what next?'

It's back to work time next Tuesday. Next week or the week after, I have my yearly Personal Development Review (PDR). It is a known fact that at 62, I'm not really into personal development—well, not at work. This version of a PDR wants you to write goals. My goal is to get to retirement in one piece, and that's what I intend to write about. It will still get me to write a goal for the forthcoming year.

I had intended to retire at 60, but that wasn't possible due to the combination of the 2010 bank crashes, when I was made redundant, followed a few years later by the debacle of Brexit and a Global Pandemic. Baffling government decisions make my state pension age 67 five years away.

I have been fortunate to have received my MOD service pension throughout this time. I am building up an NHS pension, and I need to reconnect with a pension pot I contributed to when I worked with BAE Systems. Unfortunately, that is proving more easily said than done.

But what do I do next? 

We have plans to travel later this year and next, and continuing to work is the sensible thing to do to support that.

I have the option to request flexible working hours with my line manager. Currently, I work 37.5 hours 5 days in 7 days and one weekend in four, for which we receive 'enhancements'. 

I could suggest reducing that to 30 hours and keeping the weekend work. That will give me an extra day off in the week to devote to writing. That would be productive, and getting my novel(s) into publishing could also be profitable.

The downside would be less annual leave pro-rata, but with some creativity, the extra day off could compensate for that at times of leave. There are pros and cons in every decision.

That is what I'm thinking about at the moment. The delightful location of our Mexican holiday was relaxing, but it also made me think about the future. It is time for more me/us time. After all, we're only young once.

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