The end of Chapter 8 – for real

Thursday I took my government issued equipment (one mobile, one iPad, one Dell tablet and one PC laptop) to FedEx to have shipped back to DC. It feels good to have one computer, one reading device and one mobile phone. I am working hard to readjust to the Mac OS as I have spent most of my time on a PC for 19 years.

I will greatly miss the great IT support staff that we had. I always had problems others did not seem to seem to have. I kept them challenged. They showed endless patience and were generally able to find a solution or “work around”. One of the things government employees are excellent at is finding the “work around” to the rules that need to b followed, but if followed too carefully are counter to getting the job done. The obvious solution to just changing the rules that don’t make sense or work is problematic because to change the rules, you have to go through Congress. Even a functional Congress would not have time to address all of the individual needs of the government offices, agencies, departments, institutes etc. So each government group must find ways to operate within the rules as best they can.

Sending my equipment off was a specific sense of finality. Leaving is not all positive and I am sure over the next several weeks, I will find I am not able to do things I was accustomed to doing with access to the VPN of the federal government.

During my first week of semi-retirement, I have been gradually integrating and updating contacts and files – trying to get organized for moving forward. I have starting putting entries on Medium (tamarabavendam@medium.com) I am loving writing more than I thought I would. I am not really sure what I am doing but I will continue to figure it out.