On February 17, I turned 66. Along with that milestone, I gained eligibility for full Social Security retirement benefits. I’ve also been working continuously for a paycheck for 50 of those 66 years. So, I’ve decided to take all these factors, wrap them together, and retire from the corporate working world. Therefore, in 2 weeks, effective the end of business, Friday, March 6, I will be closing the book on a corporate work existence and entering the world of retirement.
The question now becomes, what will I be doing in that retirement? Well, I don’t plan to just sit around acting like a hanger queen airplane. In fact, I have a list of things to do that is so long, I seriously doubt that I’ll have enough time in my retirement to accomplish all of it.
One thing that is high on my retirement list is FlyBoyz. Over the last 2+ years’, life events have prevented me from focusing much time on my aviation and FlyBoyz activities. And while many of those life events won’t be changing with my retirement, by not having to devote a significant amount of my waking hours to maintaining a job, I will be allowed to re-focus those hours instead on to my aviation and FlyBoyz activities.
I currently have no less than 6 planes that are in various stages of construction as well as 3 that are in need of repair before they can be flown again. I plan to systematically bring all 9 of those planes to a flyable condition so that I have a flight hanger with some depth to it. And then I will start to address the 45 or so plane kits that are in my ‘To Be Built’ inventory. The hardest part of addressing those 45 kits will be determining which one to build first!
I also plan to actually enjoy flying my planes on a regular basis! Hopefully, that will allow me to finally begin to advance my flying skills beyond the rudimentary beginner level that they’ve been stuck at for the past few years.
At the same time I’m addressing my building backlog and flying my planes, I will be spending significant amounts of time working on building up the FlyBoyz Store. Over the past year, I have managed to spend what little free time I’ve had establishing a basic foundation and building the store into a viable online ecommerce resource for the modeling community. What I haven’t had time for is adding my growing inventory of model plane kits, engines, and accessories to the store and promoting the store to the modeling community. That is about to change!
And, I am currently working on something that I hope will be a MAJOR addition to the FlyBoyz Store! You’ll just have to check in frequently with FlyBoyz to see if this comes to fruition and if so, what it is. So, stay tuned!
In conjunction with my modeling, flying, and store activities, I also plan to be more active on the model plane events circuit. I’ve already begun making plans to attend this year’s Brodak Fly-In, The FAC NATS, the STARS annual Model Air Show, and the NEAT Fair. Several other events will be added to this list. At each of these events, I intend to participate as both a flying entrant as well as a vendor with a selection of FlyBoyz Store merchandise for sale. I’m really looking forward to the events schedule!
All of this also means that my FlyBoyz post activity will accelerate significantly as I use the blog to update everyone on all of my aviation related activities.
In addition to the above modeling activities, I have a host of other things on my list that I plan to dive into. I actually plan to start building the HO scale model railroad layout that I’ve planned and have spent years collecting engines, rolling stock, structure kits, and scenery details for.
And I plan to get my 3D Printer up and running and learn how to integrate it into my model building activities.
And then there are my woodworking activities. And my board game activities. And, and, and…!
So, I approach my retirement not as an end but rather as a new beginning…like the fabled Phoenix Bird, it will be a rebirth! I am really looking forward to the years ahead and I hope to share some of my enjoyment of them with you, my loyal FlyBoyz readers!
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