According to Ellen Goodman

Today I celebrate 2 years of retirement from the Coors Brewing Company.  This may be my most serious posting to date.

I recently ran across the this writing of Ellen Goodman.  I believe she expresses my feelings perfectly.

"There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over — and to let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives.

"It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on rather than out."

"The trick of retiring well may be the trick of living well." 

 "It's hard to recognize that life isn't a holding action, but a process. It's hard to learn that we don't leave the best parts of ourselves behind, back in the dugout or the office. We own what we learned back there. The experiences and the growth are grafted onto our lives. And when we exit, we can take ourselves along — quite gracefully."   Written by Ellen Goodman

http://www.twincities.com/ci_14103608

1/25/2008 Wanda & Pete Coors @ Wanda's retirement bash

Retirement is, without a doubt, the most wonderful time of my life, but it follows 31 years of great fun; serious responsibilities; tedious rules and regulations; challenging troubleshooting opportunities; day in & day out relationship management; productive and non productive hours spent at the computer modeling the what ifs; leading and being lead; quiet moments of thinking through problems; building life long friendships; frantic hours of scrambling to find an idea to fix big problems before we lost product; working on changing behaviors, my own & others;  learning that business doesn't always require friendship; sharing the success; appraising performance and being evaluated on my own results; worrying about the failure; loving our product.

I loved it all at the time, thrived on the challenge, delighted in the high times but I find that I just don't miss it.

Of course, I still love the product, that won't change.

Forever, I will miss the dear friends.

Every day is a gift, 

Amen