Day 1 - First day of semi-retirement

 A good friend kept suggesting that I would be good at blogging.  I am creative and at times even funny.  However I didn't feel I had enough going on in my life even to tweet anything interesting let alone blog.  My daily routine would be get up, eat breakfast, go to work and come home and hang out with the fam.  Even stuff at work was already being covered by Scott Adams' Dilbert comic strips.  So I was left with nothing.  Until today.

Today would have marked the start of my 29th year at Intel Corporation. To put it in perspective, I started working the year that California last voted for a Republican presidential candidate and the Internet's first website would not be up for another two more years.  A couple of months ago Intel announced it wanted to reduce headcount and offered me an enhanced retirement package which I took and as a result am currently unemployed and typing this in my bathrobe. [TODO - remove last part]

Being that Intel has been my only job since leaving college, I figured that blogging about post-Intel life might be interesting to me and others who may be following my path shortly.  I can provide them what to expect in their post-Intel life "You have to pay for your own coffee." "You'll need to get a non-Intel email address" and "That yellow thing in the sky?  It's called the sun.  Don't stare at it".  It can also be used by psychologists to see my progression into madness.  

My therapist advised me that I need to maintain a routine to avoid falling into a depression.  I think it's analogous to people being freed from prison after being incarcerated for a long time and having trouble adjusting to life "outside" (reference: Shawshank Redemption).  This makes sense since I have spent over half of my life working at Intel.  Instead of 'yard time' as part of my regimented schedule, I had project meetings and 1:1s with my team.   

Having Intel in my blood, I decided to do some goal setting to keep some routine in my life.

Long term goals (6 months and beyond)

• Decompress - after all I earned it!
• Stay sane/undepressed
• Stay solvent financially (the package I received from should last me a year so I'm not worried about that yet) 
• Figure out what I want to do in my life 
• Get caught up with Game of Thrones

Short-term goals 

• Set weekly goals aligned with long-term goals.
• Blog
• Know what day of the week it is
• Shower
• Change clothes
• Eat three meals
• Interact with a non-family member to maintain connections with the outside world.

So let's see where this journey takes me.  Also please forgive me with the format of the blog.  I'm still getting use to this whole blogging thing.

[TODO - Insert inspirational 'starting on a journey' quote]
[TODO - Insert 'Concerning Hobbits' music from Fellowship of the Ring]