The Global Slowmad

Stuart here. It’s been almost 18 months since I officially left the corporate world behind. My original early retirement plan was to work until sometime in 2024, when I was projecting to hit our financial independence (FI) target, but I had begun to realize by early 2023 that I needed to accelerate that timeline.

The work-from-home phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting return to office drama had taken a toll on my mental wellbeing, which was exacerbated by some difficult personnel and cultural changes at my company. I was required to carry out a series of layoffs and demotions in my department as part of a major restructuring (I didn’t agree with the decisions then and am still bothered by them now) and felt that my own job security was under constant threat. At the same time, I had been tasked with a major technology initiative and assisting with a significant corporate acquisition.

On a personal level, our son was about to leave for Japan for five months to study abroad only a few months after having been the resident assistant on call for an on-campus suicide. My mother had just been diagnosed with ALS, after previously having been diagnosed with lymphoma in January 2020 and undergoing two knee replacement surgeries in the interim. I was only about 6 months away from being eligible to retire, so I knew that I had to figure out a way to keep it together for just a little longer.

I was stressed beyond my personal limit, and it all culminated in a serious health scare in March 2023.

Alone in my office on a day when only officers were in the building (another strange quirk of the return to office era), everything in my field of vision suddenly went bright white, similar to having your eyes dilated. I went into sensory overload. My heart started racing, and I began sweating profusely, experiencing sharp pain behind my eyes and temporarily losing dexterity in my left hand. It’s hard to say exactly how long this lasted before I was able to resume basic (albeit far from normal) functioning, but it was at least a few hours. For whatever reason, it never occurred to me while this was all happening to call a doctor. That came a couple of days later, with much encouragement from Darla.

The strangest part of the whole experience was that, for more than a week later, my eyes frequently and without warning would lock into a fixed and somewhat painful stare but entirely out of focus for what I was trying to look at. And while the world was not bright white anymore, I was still very sensitive to light of any kind. It was a huge relief after a couple of weeks when I finally could focus my eyes normally or keep my eyes open in a room with the lights on.

In the days leading up to the event and immediately after, my “resting” blood pressure was really, really high — at “go immediately to the ER” levels per Doctor Google. I had stopped by our onsite clinic the week before the event and was prescribed medicine for anxiety based on the assumption that the high blood pressure was merely a stress response. Fair enough.

Darla encouraged me to consult a new doctor, who eventually diagnosed me with hypertension, advanced coronary artery disease and overall poor health. He put me on an aggressive panel of heart medications to get my blood pressure under control, which contributed to my fasting glucose levels jumping from pre-diabetic to fully diabetic for a brief period. He referred me to a cardiologist for what would become a long series of tests featuring seemingly every possible medical acronym. (He also prescribed some meds for anxiety and depression, but that was nothing new — I was already seeing a therapist about those lifelong companions.) When I met with an ophthalmologist a couple of weeks after the event, he said there was evidence of a lot of blood and pressure behind my eyes, consistent with someone who had experienced a stroke, but we still don’t know if that’s what it actually was. Another leading theory was recurring migraines related to serotonin syndrome. Could have been a panic attack. Maybe all of the above. Who knows.

The exact diagnosis really doesn’t matter. Clearly, the combination of a toxic work environment, personal stressors, years of poor nutrition, a growing sleep deficit and a shamefully non-existent exercise regimen had created the physiological equivalent of a ticking time bomb.

Fortunately, this was precisely the wake-up call I needed. I immediately started exercising almost daily and watching what I ate. I began scheduling my personal life around healthy sleep patterns. I started leaving the office at a normal hour and stopped working after hours at home. It was making a difference: I lost weight, gained muscle and got my blood pressure more or less under control.

Unfortunately, though my body was steadily recovering, I was no longer mentally engaged with my work. I gave it another seven months of going through the motions of corporate life before ultimately deciding it was time for me to go.

Leaving was awkward and difficult. I still treasure many of the personal relationships I developed at work but really didn’t want to talk to anyone during my last few weeks at the office and actively disengaged from my former colleagues for several months after, as I didn’t want to be reminded of prior trauma. In fact, I only mustered the willpower earlier this month to finally read through the kind comments my co-workers shared in a farewell card on my last day.

Even this far removed, my heart begins to race merely from thinking about my prior work life. I always felt like an actor putting on a work costume and getting into character each morning, as the image I felt I needed to portray professionally rarely aligned with my natural persona. Hence the title of this post. It was exhausting.

But I’m so glad that I left when I did. Here are a few of the moments I was able to be a part of last year, in large part because I was no longer working:

• Darla and I finally took a long-dreamed-of, three-week road trip to California with our aging dogs to show them the Pacific Ocean and pretty much every dog-friendly beach between Los Angeles and San Diego.
• We attended Alex’s graduation from Pitzer College in California and met him in Las Vegas twice – once to attend the EVO gaming convention and once to attend a Formula One race.
• We also celebrated Thanksgiving with Alex in Malibu and visited many of our favorite places from my law school days (some of which have since burned to the ground). The news coverage of the Palisades fire earlier this year was surreal.
• My mother had a serious fall less than six weeks after I retired, and I would not have had the opportunity to spend ANY meaningful time with her before she passed away the following month if I had worked until my original target retirement date.

The last one hit hard. I regret not having been able to spend more time with my mom since we moved back to this part of the world. But it really terrified me to think that I almost worked through her final weeks on earth. Time is precious.

So what am I doing to maximize the time I have left? Darla and I will be spending the next nine months in Europe as a trial run for what I hope will become a long-term global slowmad adventure. For perhaps the first time in my adult life, I am prioritizing my personal happiness. I’m alive AND I’m living.