I knew three days before I left for Montevideo that my job was eliminated. That sucked to eat right before vacation. That is a special kind of junk punch when you still have to pack, still have to smile, and still have to pretend you are not doing payroll math in the TSA line.
Montevideo was still Montevideo. It gave me what I needed. Good air, good food, and the Rambla doing what the Rambla does, reminding me that life can be calmer than whatever nonsense is waiting back home. But there is a weird taste to a trip when you know you are coming back to a new reality. It is like eating a great steak while you are already thinking about the bill.
The bill hit the second I opened my front door.
Leaving for vacation with that news was one thing. Walking back into a huge empty house with only a cat and silence waiting on me was completely another. Since returning, I have been on the struggle bus. No destination. No schedule. Just me, my thoughts, and way too much dead time. It also did not help that we had the worst ice storm I have experienced in Tennessee and the entire city was and still is on house lock because of the roads. Cabin fever on top of all of that is brutal. Nothing like being trapped inside with your thoughts while the world outside looks like a skating rink designed by someone who hates insurance companies.
I do not know about y’all, but boredom is a mental health mountain when you are looking for work. Dead time lets you get into your own head. You question everything. You start replaying conversations like you are on trial and you are also the judge. I know those spirals well, which is why I tried to prepare for them before I left. It turns out preparation is not the same thing as immunity. Controlling your emotions when your career feels like a scoreboard is a tall order. Suddenly not having a career can cause some serious system malfunctions in the brain. That is my reality.
It is not all bad news, though. I am much happier without TireHub in my life. I could go into details, but honestly that lets TireHub live rent free in my head, and they do not get that luxury anymore. The similarities between seven years of marriage and seven years at TireHub are startling. Both left me unfulfilled, angry, resentful, and with less money than expected. TireHub just did not have teenagers driving my cars. However, it was not all bad. There were some good people, and I did some really solid work that will translate to whatever I do next. Mostly it was the people I worked with who kept me at the job. I seem to always pick up a few people at places I work and keep them in my life. Hell, some of you are reading this now.
Fortunately, one of those amazing friends reached out and threw me a lifeline. Not a job, just a chance at one.
Yep, you guessed it. I am going back to tires again. Here is the funny thing. I hate tires. They stink. They have that mold release grease that gets on your hands and clothes, and they are heavy as sin. You cannot unload them mechanically. They are all moved, every time, by hand. Thousands of them. One at a time. It is the perfect product if your goal is to underpay low level career individuals to physically wreck themselves for your EBITDA. Or at least that was how it felt at TireHub.
I have accepted the position of Operations Training Manager, West Coast, for TireCo, and I could not be more excited. Not only do I get to continue working with my friend and others who have migrated to TireCo, but I also get to go back into the area that really makes my heart sing, Learning and Development. The company has holes in their training and programs that they want to fill quickly, and I just so happen to be good at that stuff. I get to create and build and teach and train and do all the things I have spent many thousands of dollars on learning how to do over the last seven years.
It is not all gravy. The job comes with a big travel component, seventy five percent travel. That number did not exactly make me do a cartwheel, but at this point I am a traveler level expert. I keep reminding myself it is called work, not “happy fun play times,” and definitely not “Q gets to do what he wants times.” It will keep the cat food full, and that is really all that matters, or at least so says Mazie. I start on February 22, and I am already nervous about learning a new company. It has been a hot minute since I have had to do that. Travel can be irritating, but it is probably for the best. Otherwise I am at home, bored, alone with my thoughts, and making questionable choices involving ice cream and Star Trek reruns.
What does that mean for my plan to move to Uruguay, retire early, and send y’all pictures that make you jealous.
This is where the fail without failure thing shows up. It was very hard for me to start telling my friends and family that the plan I had made for multiple years, the plan I would not shut up about, the plan I was confident was going to work, was ultimately not going to happen the way I thought it would. That is the fail in my head I have to negotiate. Ultimately it is not a fail, but any time we have to change plans on something we shared with our circle, it creates that feeling anyway. Your ears burn. You get embarrassed to talk about it. You resort to self deprecating statements to distract from what you really feel.
Let me be clear here, I am NOT giving up on living outside the USA. Most of you know that has been a dream of mine for most of my adult life, and I am not throwing it away. Life is too short to stay in one place, and I have learned more about the world and people from my travels than I EVER learned in school or living in the USA.
“But Q, the USA is the greatest country in the world.”
That is perspective, opinion and hyperbole with a little confirmation bias thrown in. Think for yourselves my friends.
The original plan was simple. Cash out home equity (thanks covid) and use that money to do two things. First, pay off all my student loans, which I truly believed I would die with. Second, use what was left to set myself up in another country and bridge the gap between now and 59.5, when I can fully retire. But the real estate market has been volatile, and the value of my home has dropped enough that I will not have the cash to bridge the full term until retirement. The moment it really hit me was in Uruguay, doing the cost analysis and realizing, sure, I can go, but I only have about five years of cash. After that, it gets foggy. Uruguay is not a hotbed of expat jobs for someone who would be pushing 57 or 58 by then.
What is a boy to do? Flip the whole damn plan upside down of course.
Instead of starting in Uruguay, I will start in the USA and build out my forever home here first. I can buy the Uruguay condo with my first full retirement distribution. The plan has always been to split time between the USA and wherever I ultimately land, and Uruguay still fits that dream perfectly because it offers the closest thing I have found to a perpetual summer, and y’all know I HATE cold weather. Uruguay is still in the plan. It just moves to the back now while I build the USA side correctly. The new plan is this. I work at TireCo. I look for land in north middle Tennessee. I build exactly what I want, most likely a barndominium. Think one bedroom loft and a big ass garage. If done right, I think I can even do it with cash and have my home base paid off prior to that 59.5 year old leave date.
There ya have it, my full plan. Build in Tennessee, work at TireCo, and count the days till full retirement is available. A failure without the fail. I am sure a few of you are happy about that. Now I just have to convince myself there is a win in there.
Thank you to all of you who reached out, called, emailed, or just wasted hours on the phone with me to help me keep my sanity and focus in the right areas. I feel very lucky to have a supportive group of people from all walks and all times of my life.
Y’all rock.
Q is a meat Popsicle living in Nashville with hopes and dreams of running away to retire earlier than all his friends. Skilled in the witchcraft of not giving a damn about the Jones’ and filled with a did it or damn it mentality. His thoughts are his own, and he is no role model.
