Recording the first steps of my retirement is the primary object of this blog. It is an exercise in self-sponsorship, for I must at the outset declare, ‘my name is Austen and I am a workaholic’.

I went dry for a couple of years in midlife, supported by the state, but at the mere whiff of a job, I was again hopelessly enslaved by my addiction. In the quiet watches of the night I assign two major causes or springs that feed this consuming obsession for the daily grind, as follows

1. Work keeps me free from depression because I don’t have time to dwell on my own problems
2. Work grants me a job title that stands in place of my identity. I don’t have time to worry about who I am because I am a <put job title here>.

The way these beliefs act on my professional presentation, from an employer’s point of view, produced an extremely enthusiastic worker who rather jealously guarded and over-did the role assigned.

In my last assignment I was extremely fortunate to find myself amidst a well-led group of engineers. Because of the way that they were led, their natural tolerance of colleagues who are a bit whacky, and their instinctive acceptance of everyone’s honest contribution were, in the main, given free rein. I clamped myself to the side of this group and I was happy for ten years, taking me past the traditional retiring age.

But now at last I feel it is time to make a new effort to come to better terms with myself. I must find and adopt the ‘twelve steps’ that can repair my personality so that for a brief period, I can enjoy the fruits of my labours.

My first move in this campaign is to return to the sea, a restless element in which I formerly thrived, and may do so again. This blog is an account of that return, and the adventures on the way. It shall culminate, I trust, with a description of the successful outcome: a last great flowering of my life before the final states of ‘slippered pantaloon’ and worse!