Halloween of 2015 will always be remembered to me as the day I retired from AT&T. It isn't scary if you've planned for thirty-seven years. It's been a long time coming. I remember a good friend trying to talk me into it about seven years ago, but it just wasn't time.
Since then, most of my efforts have been spent trying to transfer out of Shelby County, but I was blocked every time. The last two years I've had requests in for almost every town in North Alabama, but there just hasn't been any job vacancies. I could tell you the facts, but from previous blogs, the puzzle pieces could be put together.
Anyway, our remodeling project was finally taking shape, so we put our home in Alabaster on the market. When it sold in two months, retirement was looking pretty good. I took the remaining portion of my vacation and as of tomorrow, my retirement officially starts.
The events of the last four weeks happened pretty fast. I'd like to tell everyone just how much I appreciate the opportunity to have been associated with them. AT&T has a great bunch of employees who go to great lengths to keep the network up and running. Unleashed, they would be a tremendous asset.
My career started as a Engineering Clerk, drawing jobs for construction. From there, as a technician it went from regrading four party telephones to two party, placing service drops and cable, splicing and repairing outside cable, splicing fiber optic cables, and recently splicing fiber optic service lines for high speed Internet. I've come a long way!
My future endeavors, of course, involve finishing our fixer-upper project. As that winds down, probably early next year, I'll look for my next career.
In the twenty-eight page document I signed this week for separation, one page requested that I write why I was leaving the company. It was a simple one sentence statement, "It is time". It was time to finish the thirty-seventh chapter of AT&T and close the book. I'm ready to start new adventures. I've bought new running shoes and I've got my bike out of the back of the garage. This is going to be fun!
