It’s OK To Have Dark Early Retirement Motivation

Financially Free, optimism, ,

Early retirement is something that doesn’t need much promotion. Thinking about having the time to pursue whatever it is we want to do is extremely motivating and positive. It can push us to do everything it takes to get there. Most early retirement stories and articles concentrate on the absolute rainbows and unicorns of early retirement life and why we should shoot for it. That is if we heed the warnings and do it right. Happy thoughts and outcomes, that’s what people want to see. But let’s not kid ourselves. That isn’t our only motivation to ditch the rat race. For many, they also have some dark early retirement motivation that equally pushes them to achieve their financial goals. And on our last day on the job we truly understand the meaning to the saying, success is the best revenge.

It’s OK To Have Dark Early Retirement Motivation

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Bringing Dark Early Retirement Motivation Into The Light

After almost 9 years of early retirement under my belt I now feel ready to reveal the obvious.  Not everything about my early retirement desires were about freedom and pursuing passions. Wow! That is so liberating to no longer keep secret. I know I am breaking from early retirement article rules of keeping things cheery and positive or “how to”, “how I did it”, types of advice. But I just can’t keep quiet about it anymore. If I spell it out maybe others who silently suffer with dark early retirement motivation can stop wondering if they are alone or normal.

When Powerless You Can’t Openly Block The Backhand Of Dark Authority, You Make Bricks

I had many great experiences and good runs of decent and competent superiors and peers. But I also had a lot of, way too much of, dark early retirement motivation. If my long career experience in the corporate world was overall fair and rewarding I certainly wouldn’t have considered retiring early. There are very few people who love what they do and where they do it their entire working lives. Few have the privilege of working in an environment of true corporate nirvana where everyone is treated fairly and with respect. At least I have been told that such places exists. But from my experience that wasn’t the reasons people generally loved their corporate life for the long-term. Some lived a charmed existence through connections or power. While others were happy to drink the kool-aid or ignore their plight as unchangeable, expected, and accepted.

I wasn’t any of the above. I had no connections, was considered unprotected, and completely competent at my job. The perfect target for lazy and sometimes incompetent, power-drunk, self-serving managers in a fast-paced technical environment. Throw in a few backstabbing ladder climbing peers and you have numerous opportunities to encounter the darkness of corporate life.

I saw what happened when someone in my same employment class attempted to openly challenge their unfair situation. It never went well. It’s always best to diplomatically handle oppressive or unfair treatment, or at least try to. Sometimes it will work, but much of the time it won’t. And when it didn’t work, it built a foundation of dark early retirement motivation, brick by brick.

Turning The Dark Into Something Positive

When in dark work related situations you either whither, win or lose resisting it, or somehow subversively turn it to your advantage. I watched others lose-it and challenged corrupt or incompetent authority and lost, then paying the ultimate price or just walked off with no clear plan forward. I instead resolved to put my darkness inspired feelings towards what I really wanted- My eventual early retirement freedom.

There is no question that earning income must be sustained to save enough to retire early. I learned to control emotion to outlast and maneuver through or around any dark bullying idiots in power or their sycophants. Being in a position that had executive exposure where some were as “Dick” as they come, proven later with felony convictions, I experienced a couple of close calls when someone, anyone “unprotected” had to pay for another’s blunder.

The dark certainly triggered my freedom journey. It ran beneath the surface of all the great and happy motivations for early retirement. Knowing what I hoped to never continue living with, helped define what I wanted in early retirement. Reaching the point where I could retire gave me personal power. When there is no longer a financial or career threat that can be leveraged against me, I then could turn the tables on the power dynamics in a world that has no shortage of bullying self-serving authority figures and their merry bands of rectal fingerlings to do their dirty work.

Using The Dark Experiences For A Better Early Retirement

I used my experience of the dark in the corporate world to not only help motivate me to retire early but also create what I wanted to retire to. I feel retirement is defined as the absence of needing to work, not the absence of working and I have been able to successfully live it.

Since my first retirement I have experienced some great retirement gigs and a super rewarding encore career. Not that there wasn’t any of the same dark bullying BS going on around me. It’s just when you are doing something because you want to, not need to, they have no power over you. I could successfully decline indecent and unfair demands, deploy being rationally unreasonable in setting my work terms, or just walk away. I learned what I wanted to learn and did what I wanted to try doing. They paid me for my work and it was a win-win relationship. Right up until the moment I decided I was done and retired again.

Having now finished my bucket list of opportunities that I wanted to explore, I am perfectly happy being away from paid work. Especially staying clear of the corporate world. That is until something interesting comes along. I’m always open to opportunities. For me, that’s the way to retire early where only the light, unicorns, and rainbows are welcome.

A Toast To Dark Early Retirement Motivation

Here’s to all the dark I experienced and saw during the 31 years of my first career. It helped motivate me to be an early retirement success- The bullying, manipulation, lies, backstabbing, politics, theft, deception, threats, scapegoating, nepotism, favoritism, cover ups, and even sexual harassment (holy crap she was the worst). I say thank you for providing me all the necessary dark early retirement motivation that I ever needed.   

Finally to the darkest of my past corporate experiences that motivated me to do everything that was necessary to retire as early as possible. Here’s to my team members Don and Jim with whom I shared time in the trenches with. Both kind, dedicated, and competent at what they did. Two decent human beings who after decades of service were corporate downsized before they were ready to retire and ended up taking their own lives. R.I.P., you are not forgotten.

36 thoughts on “It’s OK To Have Dark Early Retirement Motivation”

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      1. I loved this article. My entire career was like this and I had the same mindset that the author did. I got out on my terms early and created a part time job that I love. I was not motivated by the desire to travel or live a lavish life. I was motivated by being told all my life that I am not good enough, should just get married and have babies. I shocked everyone at work and everyone that ever knew me.

        1. Thanks for the comment Karen. Good for you. I knew that I had a shared corporate experience. We are part of a large but silent club. Setting and executing goals so that we can exit the rat race on our own terms is the sweetest measurement of success.
          Tommy

        2. One of my favorite comments, when a coworker I respected,heard from another that I had announced my retirement was, ” Well played.”

      2. I loved this and have done exactly the same. I am glad you gave it a name and brought it out in the open for people to think about. It is okay not to like your job or the people you work with and to have the motive of early retirement. I put mine in steps. 1-haved X number of dollars in the bank to put me to the next job if needed. 2-be completely debt free including my mortgage. 3. keep building up enough money and dividing it by the number of years I likely would live. 4-quit and work part time at something I really wanted to do. I managed to do that at middle age and everything got easier after that.

        1. Thanks for the comment Sue. Some of us just respond to dark motivation as well as the sunshine aspects. You and I pretty much had/have the same plan and subsequent better life.
          Tommy

  2. I could have written this myself if I had the words. Brilliantly done. The one thing that will help everyone to manage their working lives better is the old Japanese Samurai value of FRUGALITY. Having something stored up can insulate you against the darkness of human nature.

  4. I just retired after 36 years in the technology industry. It was a love/hate relationship with my career. I had supreme success some years, less so in others, but was well respected and liked by most within the company and clients (where it really counts). In the last ten years of my career, I experienced many of the things you mention (Sexual harassment more in the 1980s and 90s). Although I worked for and with many wonderful people, the bad apples were corporate executives who made it clear they didnt care about you or your career, peers who victimized and disrespected you, and managers who tried to get rid of you and those who failed but tried to promote you (sure didn’t try hard enough), made it easy to plug away at my investing and goals in the background knowing it would not be much longer before I could depart. Im proud to say I did it and I hope to start my own blog soon so I can share some of these experiences, positive and negative with others, maybe to help them cope and better, to help them plan for their financial success so they too can realize this dream.

    1. Thanks for the comment Nancy. I knew that I wasn’t alone in having a bit too many dark experiences in my first career that played a part in my early retirement decision. It is just something that we try not to dwell on and is little represented online. Happy to hear to found a way to succeed in spite of it all as I did. Good luck on your early retirement and site roll out.
      Tommy

    1. Thanks for the comment Dee. I knew I wasn’t alone. Most sites stick to talking about the positive aspects of early retirement but I thought it was something I just had to get off my chest.
      Tommy

  6. Outstanding! Congrats on your escape! I am officially ‘two weeks in’ to my new early retirement (barista style, doing work I love but that is part time, flexible and limited hours) and the toxic work environment (aka ‘the boss’) was the main reason I spent the last 8 years saving up to leave. Pain in the current situation is an effective way of ‘staying the course’ to get away!

    1. Thanks for the comment Kat. I actually had the best time I ever had while getting paid as a barista/beer-tap puller for a sweet short summer gig covering for weekends while the regulars were taking vacation time. If only my back could handle all the standing in one place all night I would still be doing it. Good luck and live your life free on your terms.
      Tommy

  7. I enjoyed reading this very much. I have a seen a lot of the same treatment in my own work life. What is very sad, is that many of my coworkers have no plan at all and are completely stuck.

    1. Thanks for the comment Eileen. I know many in the company I wrote about still there complaining about the job and continued toxicity with no exit plan nor any preparation for when it will eventually end for them. Sadly I believe that situation covers a bigger part of the population than it should.
      Tommy

  8. I loved it Tommy – I had this idiot boss that gave me a Meets Expectations on my appraisal. I said I have always gotten Outstanding what didn’t I do this year?” She said “Nothing – Your bonus is the same anyway but next year I will give you an Outstanding and my boss will see I made you improve.” I thought “Good to know that if I do shitty work you will give me an Outstanding anyway or you will look bad.” Too bad my work ethic would not let me do a bad job.

    1. Thanks for the comment Ralph. I had a similar experience. Work ethic wasn’t always rewarded but used as a weapon against the competent or leveraged by bad actors for their own good. It’s nice to be able to look back and laugh at some of the absurdity and idiocy of left behind corporate life.
      Tommy

  9. “being rationally unreasonable in setting my work terms”
    and
    “rectal fingerlings” hahah
    as if i wrote this myself. thanks so much for the great read

  10. I’ve just started working in the corporate world, and so far, things are good. Though i’m not sure what awaits me 2 to 3 years later. I just want to say thank you for sharing your experience. This opens my mind to a lot of things.

    1. Thanks for the comment Albert. Not all of the corporate world experience is bad. Just like anything else you have to keep your eyes and ears open to avoid danger. Just recognize the corporate jack-holes and know what you need to do to work around them. Good luck on your corporate journey.
      Tommy

  11. Thank you for this post. Just add in being a female in corporate insurance and you have my experience. Appreciate your putting it into words. Next I hope you do a post on having no peers (nearby – we have them online, thank goodness) once we retire early and everyone around us is jealous and has no idea how hard the transition is for the one retiring, so we just keep all our thoughts to ourselves. Hahaha. I will adjust!

    1. Thanks for the comment Nawn. I would take the challenges of retirement transition any day over putting up with the rat race. It just takes time and dealing with our own mind and building new relationships. There’s no dark minded jack-hole pulling strings or throwing knives behind our backs- Thankfully!
      Tommy

  12. Really enjoyed this blog post. I had not read these thoughts anywhere in which they were discussed so directly.

    Funny, I have some of the very same feelings after 30 years in the corporate world. I always thought I was a bit of a freak for harboring some very negative thoughts and using them to drive our move to FIRE.

    I think if most people were honest with themselves they would realize that they are both, moving towards something much better but also eagerly getting away from something pretty crappy. 🙂

    1. Thanks for the comment Crusher. I knew I wasn’t alone but wondered if I was breaking some kind of FIRE rules by bringing it up. The great thing is we are all survivors of what is for most people a hostile environment over time.
      Tommy

  13. Sexual harassment in the workplace is horrific and can break you entirely. It’s shameful that in these modern times, we cannot create a safe work environment.

    1. Thanks for the comment Chandler. You are absolutely right. In my case I wasn’t damaged by the female management toad sexually harassing me because I was handling it but by the Male executives who were brought into it after another female employee witnessed it and filed a complaint. After an investigation where I was never talked to I was warned it was a misunderstanding & in my best interests to drop it and keep quiet, even though I wasn’t the one who filed the official complaint. I took it as a threat & told everyone about the entire episode after that to their dismay to protect myself.
      Tommy

  15. Cheers!! Very accurate description of corporate challenges for the morally intelligent population!
    I really connected to your feelings of personal satisfaction and freedom felt from the power shift.

    1. Thanks for the comment Julia. I like that, “corporate challenges for the morally intelligent population”. Similar challenges that go beyond the corporate world too. Satisfaction indeed.
      Tommy

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