Welcome to My Blog!

From "Real Job" to Writer: A Post-Retirement Journey, Leaving the Structured World of Nine to Five for the Chaotic Realm of What Comes Next.

Hi there!

I'm Bernard Doucette. For nearly thirty years, I worked within the staid and steady field of finance and accounting, but never truly felt at home. At fifty years old, I took a huge leap, leaving the consistency and security of a job I knew well to find something more inspiring.

With this blog, which I hope to update weekly, I'll be providing an account of my journey from C.P.A. to professional writer. I hope you'll find these stories funny and entertaining (and maybe a little informative).

As of the date of this post, I've written five novels. My first one, Blood Moon Over Betonville, a supernatural horror thriller, will soon be released by Solstice Publishing.

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Episode 1, The Early Days

Shortly after retiring, I began jotting down my daily activities with no particular goal in mind. To some, it might not look very purposeful, but it was what I needed at the time; I was content just being. I took the scenic route to writing; this was the start.

I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything I thought it could be.

~ Peter Gibbons, Office Space

Monday 6:30am

Squinting at the alarm clock, I come to a bleary-eyed realization: I’m getting up at the exact same time every day. I haven’t worked in months, but I’m still programmed to get up no later than 6:30. I stare at the wall, tracing a crack with my finger, formulating a plan for the day. The plan seems remarkably similar to yesterday’s.

First on the agenda: making coffee. No more mad scrambles out the door followed by a soul-draining commute; to that end, the instant coffee and k-cup pods were unceremoniously tossed down the garbage shoot. Now, nothing less will suffice than freshly ground, dark roasted arabica beans in a French press; I’m a budget, but I’m no savage.

6:45am – 9:00am

Sipping my brew, I flip between morning shows. The local news, highlighting acts of extreme barbarity, five alarm fires, and vehicular calamities, leaves me numb. The national news is equally depressing, but in a different way, hyper-focusing on partisan politics.

The stock market watchers on the business channel are usually good for a few laughs. The guest commentator speaks very authoritatively and eloquently, injecting tons of indecipherable jargon, making bold predictions about the direction of the market. Guessing what the market is going to do in the future is like trying to predict if it will be sunny a year from now, but he acts like it’s an exact science.

9:00am – 9:30am

There’s a meeting of the investment committee (my wife and I). After reaching a quorum to make some portfolio changes, I enter the trade orders online for execution at the market open. It’s nothing fancy. Just some reallocations to ensure we maintain a few years of readily accessible funds in safe investments.

Post-Retirement Lesson Learned 1: Reading Burton Malkiel’s A Random Walk Down Wall Street was a game changer. Malkiel’s main assertion, supported by a mountain of data, was that most of the investing strategies employed by the professionals fail to consistently outperform the market. That’s why we invest primarily in index funds like the S&P 500; if you can’t beat the market, join it.

9:30am – 10:30am

Trudging down to our building’s gym, I found it dismayingly overcrowded. To provide some context: the gym has six treadmills, four stationary bikes, five elliptical machines and nine weight-lifting machines, not to mention a whole separate room for free weights; there’s one person on a treadmill and one on a stationary bike; I was planning to use neither piece of equipment.

My workout is a model of efficiency: thirty minutes of weightlifting, covering the major muscle groups, and thirty minutes on the elliptical. Certainly, I could spend more time there; but again, force of habit.

With headphones burrowed deep in my ears, in noise-cancelling mode, I set the playlist, aptly named Upbeat, to random shuffle. This collection of hits from the ‘80s would have drawn intense scorn and mockery from my childhood friends, which is why they’ll never see it. Here’s a sample: Loverboy’s Working for the Weekend, Prince’s Little Red Corvette, Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger; you get the point.

After the elliptical, I walk over to the weightroom. A guy doing curls does a double take. Does he know me, perhaps? Nope. As his look of shock morphs into abject fear, I catch my reflection in the mirror. Yikes.

Post-retirement Lesson Learned 2: I had determined my appropriate hair and beard length should be right before a store employee says, “I’m sorry, sir, the bathrooms are for customers.” Mental note: err on the side of caution; set the threshold well before that point.

11am – 11:40am

After a shower, I don my usual post-retirement outfit: t-shirt, hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers. I’m leaving the apartment, otherwise I would have stayed in sweatpants. For some reason, wearing a complete sweatsuit outfit outside the home feels like I’ve given up; that was the apparent line.

The original agenda is revised slightly to include a haircut. After that, I bring food waste to the town recycling center for composting, deposit checks at the bank, withdraw a little money from the ATM, buy some fruit at a local shop, and pick up an afternoon Americano from my favorite coffee place. I know, it’s a lot.

Dumping the food scraps into a rancid-smelling blue bin, I visualize my older son waving his hand dismissively and saying, “Ok, boomer. You go save the planet.” He knows I’m not a baby boomer, Generation X actually; he just doesn’t care.

12pm – 4:30pm

Now we arrive at the heart of the day. After a quick lunch, I’m back in sweatpants. I practice guitar for a while on my Fender Stratocaster American Professional, applying the Rock God setting on my Marshall amp, naturally, and wearing headphones so as not to violate my lease.

I’m refining my version of the solo to The Knack’s My Sharona. In my humble opinion, Knack guitarist Berton Averre is grossly underrated and his solo at the end of My Sharona is among rock’s all-time best; the full-length version, that is, not the one butchered by radio stations.

Next up, Rush’s Spirit of the Radio. My rendition of the solo is weak, and I’m too lazy to hook up the wah-wah pedal to make it sound a little better. But it’s nothing that can’t be solved by enrolling in the university of YouTube for a couple of free tutorials.

Then, some light reading. I was going back and forth between James Patterson’s Kill Alex Cross and Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, a strange pairing indeed. Though Hawking took great pains to dumb down astrophysics in his most popular novel, after about an hour, understanding very little of it, I was back reading Kill Alex Cross. I tried.

Post-retirement Lesson Learned 3: In the early days, it was crucial to have fixed routines and goals as I transitioned from a highly structured workday. Admiral William H. McRaven’s short novel Make Your Bed was particularly helpful. Just starting your day with a small accomplishment, like making your bed, engenders a sense of pride and discipline, providing a motivational foundation to tackle bigger challenges.

4:30pm – 5pm

Dinner is early, even by our standards. To paraphrase a comedian: soon dinner will be at noon and breakfast will be the night before.

5pm – 10pm

For the “entertainment” portion of the day, I begin a binge-watching marathon. I’m in the middle of a sci-fi program which is just ok (I’d rather not say which one). I’ve invested way too much time already to abandon it. A frightening thought crosses my mind. Have I already seen every series worth watching? Attempting to prove that notion wrong seems like a worthwhile challenge.

Last activity for the day: my younger son and I watched the Nets game. It’s a loss for the Brooklyn Ballers; losing in overtime, making it a tad more painful.

Before bed, more light reading; five minutes into A Brief History in Time and I’m fast asleep.

Tuesday 6:30am

Cue Sonny & Cher; it’s Groundhog Day!

***

I know some will read this and say, “Good Lord. See that’s why I don’t retire.” Fair point. But before discovering what to do next, after three decades of working countless hours, sometimes receiving emails requiring immediate attention at ten o’clock on a Saturday night, I needed a break. After some detours along the way, I eventually found what I was searching for.

In the next episode, I recount a former colleague's attempt to reel me back from the brink of insanity to resume my career as an accountant.