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“Like the fool I am and I’ll always be
I’ve got a dream
I’ve got a dream
They can change their minds but they can’t change me
I’ve got a dream
I’ve got a dream
I know I could share it if you want me to”

Jim Croce

When I was young, I never understood the expression ‘it’s the journey, not the destination’.  I had goals, and the journey was the means to the end.  When it came to actuarial exams – I raced through the first half and the journey was relatively painless – I say relatively, because any amount of studying and examination requires some pain.  For the second half of the exams, the journey could not have been more painful or slower. 

In university, as math students we took a course called Operations Research which was about optimizing the path from point A to point B given a set of obstacles in between.  Nowhere in the course was a discussion about enjoying the journey – just a logical process to get to the destination in the shortest number of steps or amount of time.   Although I don’t get out paper and pencil day to day – I have an almost non-stop process running in my brain looking to optimize everything.  I call it ‘continuous improvement’ and the ISO 9001 certification that ASI adopted in 2002 is married to the way my brain works.  I drive some people in my life a little nutty with my relentless pursuit of ‘better’.

But I am changing.  Change started a decade and a half ago when I met Brad Martin.  Realizing that ‘sitting was the new smoking’ and that I was slowly killing myself sitting at a desk in front of a computer – I hired Brad as my personal trainer.  I don’t think either of us could have predicted where this journey would take us when Brad sold me a membership to the gym that was five minutes from my house and a package of twelve training sessions.  Of course, when we met, I was goal oriented – lose some weight, build some muscle, become more mobile, improve my golf game.  Nowhere on the list was improving my diet – but it turns out that was a serious omission.

In the early years with Brad, I made significant progress with strength and mobility – less so on building muscle and improving my diet – which it turns out were directly correlated.  In the middle years the diet and muscle building improved.  Nowhere along the way has there been a sustained weight loss – although there have been some good months followed by a reversion to the mean.  But something interesting has happened along the way – the goal has changed.  I am no longer focused on all the goals that made sense to me at the outset.  I am focused on showing up in the gym four times a week in the winter and twice a week when the golf course is open.  I am focused on pushing my body so that I don’t cheat the time in the gym, but whether I get stronger is no longer the point – the point is to be there – suddenly I have learned how to enjoy the journey.

For those that are new to my stream of consciousness ramblings, you may be unaware that I have spent the last five years thinking about retirement.  It is a complicated decision for me and if you want to catch up you can read about the journey here, here, here, and here.  In a nutshell, my sisters have retired, half my university and golf buddies have retired.  Almost everyone in the Retired Actuaries Club (Bill’s lunch gang) of which I am a member and that meets virtually on Fridays is retired or at least mostly retired.  Everyone in my life who is retired reports that it is excellent, and none of them have any regrets about stopping to work.  My dad retired at 58 and he said if he knew how good AND affordable it would be, he would have retired ten years earlier.

There is a lot of momentum pushing me to retirement.  However, every time I think about being retired, I inevitably find that I am a little sad to let go of my work.  In contrast, every time we get a new client with new problems, or an existing client asks us to help with something new, I get super excited.  There is no math behind how I feel – it just is.  ASI is going through a renewal as Ivana retires and Jolene comes on board – as Sahar joins the admin team and Karan and Alex join the actuarial team.  We knew some of these changes were on the horizon and part of me wanted to retire before they were upon us – but now that we are through these changes there is excitement in the air about where we are heading.

As we have gone through our changes, I have watched intently as the Detroit Lions have gone through a similar renewal.  In their case, they needed to start over at the top with new leaders and a new culture.  The result after four years is a well-tuned machine that is having incredible success.  In the case of ASI, we are already close to 55 years of leadership in Jason, Dean and Matt and we already have the culture that Paula and I created at the outset – so our road to integrating the new folks on the team won’t look like a big change from the outside.  I am excited to come along for the journey and I am not too focused on setting goals for the destination.  Our clients are happy, our team is happy, and our shareholders are happy and if things stay that way, the destination isn’t nearly as important as making sure everyone enjoys the journey. 

Five years ago, I was pitching a client on giving us more work.  I still remember Donald looking at me (and my grey hair) and asking how much longer before I retired.  The question surprised me as I had given no thought about retirement at that time.  I told him “At least five years”.  It is five years later, and Donald retired earlier this year.  If he asks me again how much longer I plan to be around, I am going to say “At least five years”.