What I Miss and Don't Miss About Pre-Retirement Life

This week Laurie and I are celebrating our 4^th retirement anniversary! I thought this would be a good time to take a quick break from food, wine, and spirits to talk about what I miss and don’t miss about being employed and working five plus days a week. Nothing beats retirement of course, but it turns out there are a few things I miss about my pre-retirement life, and also a few I definitely don’t miss. Let’s go there!

Me in front of Marine Force Pacific HQ at Camp Smith, Hawaii, circa 1993

I can’t believe it’s been four years since Laurie and I left our professional careers and retired to live the good (actually, great!) life down here in Sarasota, Fl. This past week I’ve been thinking a lot about what life was like pre-retirement, and what I miss and don’t miss about that life.

Both Laurie and I spent our entire professional careers working at the same organization – the Center for Naval Analyses, or CNA. CNA is the Navy’s and Marine Corps’ Federally Funded Research and Development Center. The staff consists of highly accomplished analysts, all with advanced degrees in mostly technical fields from the best universities in the country. CNA is non-profit by design and exists to ensure the Navy and Marine Corps always have an organization they can turn to for unbiased, objective analysis that addresses their most critical issues.

I started out as a probationary analyst (adjunct research staff) since I only had a master’s degree in mathematics and not a doctorate – I had 12 months to prove I could perform as an analyst at the level that a PhD could - I passed the test (whew!)! In the end, I spent 34 years at CNA, working my way up from an analyst to field rep, to research team leader, to Director of CNA’s Marine Corps Program, to Vice President of the Operations Evaluation Group. During my final six years at CNA, I ran the company and was responsible for overseeing all of our day-to-day operations as well as engagements with the senior Navy and Marine Corps leadership.

CNA was a fantastic place to work. I was surrounded by amazing talent, some of the best and brightest minds I have ever encountered. They made me a better analyst, manager, and leader and pushed and challenged me to be the best I could be. Oh, I also met Laurie there, the absolute best thing that happened to me while working at CNA! So, there are many things I miss about working for such a great organization, but also many things I don’t miss now that I’m fully retired. Here’s my list!

What I Miss

• Developing relationships and friendships with the senior USN/USMC leadership. Working at CNA provided me with the unique opportunity to interact, almost daily, with senior Navy Flag and Marine Corps General officers. Many of them became good friends as well. Gen Mattis (4-star USMC General Officer, and also the 26th Secretary of Defense) was a close friend and personal mentor during my later years at CNA, as were General Joe Dunford (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), General Chuck Krulak (Commandant, United States, Marine Corps), and Admiral Scott Swift (Commander, Pacific Fleet) to name just a few. I learned how to be an effective, ethical, and empathetic leader by observing and emulating these warfighters. And I am still humbled and honored to have had the opportunity to get to know these American heroes and call them my friends.

Cutting the USMC birthday cake at CNA with LtGen Walsh, USMC

• Making a difference. The opportunities for true impact at CNA were profound. Given our unique access to senior leadership, we were able to work on their most critical issues and challenges and influence the way they thought about these issues and the decisions they made. During my time at CNA, I was able to play a role in changing how the USMC deployed for real-world contingencies, helping the USMC develop war plans and assess the logistics supportability of those plans, helping the Navy implement new concepts like Sea Swap for rotating ship crews stationed forward in potential crisis areas, and facilitating USMC senior leadership deliberations on what their position and approach would be to the implementation of controversial policies such as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the integration of females into combat positions.

Receiving the Meritorious Civilian Service Award from Gen Krulak, circa 1994

• Mentoring/shaping the next generation of analysts at CNA. Throughout my career I had the opportunity to mentor hundreds of new analysts who joined the ranks of CNA as junior analysts. This was always one of my favorite, and most rewarding aspects of my job. As head of CNA, I made it a point to meet personally with every new employee we hired during their first week on the job, and I also delivered personal, hand-written notes to each employee at CNA for their milestone anniversaries at the company. Making sure all employees at CNA knew that they were a valued member of the team and helping them develop their skills as analysts was a way to give back to this company that gave so much to Laurie and me.

• Having opportunities to lead. I do miss leadership, and the opportunities I had to shape and drive the direction of the organization. During my six years running CNA, we weathered many storms and challenges as an organization, including budget cuts, rogue government bureaucrats who didn’t like CNA’s influence with senior leadership, and black swan events like the COVID pandemic that had a significant impact on our ability to execute our mission as an FFRDC. Through it all, I had a fantastic senior leader team that helped me navigate and lead our way through those challenges and helped to position the organization for success in future years - my leadership experience was truly a team effort, and I simply couldn't have done it without the support and initiative of my leadership team.

My stock photo as head of the Center for Naval Analyses, circa 2015

What I Don’t Miss

• Formal social engagements. While I loved interacting with senior Navy and Marine Corps leaders in one-on-one settings, I never liked the formal social engagements I was invited to and expected to attend. I always found them nerve-wracking (I had to be “on” and engaging for hours on end – as an introvert, that was often torture for me!) and usually couldn’t wait for them to be over. These included social dinners during senior leader retreats and conferences, receptions and celebrations for things like retirements and promotions, Marine Corps Sunset Receptions and Parades at 8th & I held every Friday during the summer, and Chief of Naval Operation (CNO) summer soirees at his/her official residence at the Navy Yard to name a few. Nope, don’t miss those one bit!

Socializing with my boss at CNA during a USMC Birthday Celebration, circa 1995

Exchange of gifts at formal dinner in China hosted by a PRC 3-star General Officer

• The government/DOD bureaucracy. I need to be careful here, because most of the bureaucrats I crossed paths with at Headquarters Marine Corps, the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV), and the Department of Defense were wonderful, dedicated civil servants who wanted to do the right thing by the military personnel they led and served, as well as the American public. But there were a number of them who could have been poster children for the worst caricatures of a government bureaucrat – bumbling, inefficient, obstructionist, lazy parasites whose sole purpose was to grind the wheels of government to a screeching halt. I ran across a few of these during my career at CNA – not only did they make my life miserable at times, but they were miserable people themselves. Learning how to work effectively with the “bad seed” bureaucrats to get things done was one of my biggest challenges throughout my years at CNA. I’m proud to say that I had more victories than defeats in these battles, but those victories often required soliciting help from senior leaders at the 3- and 4-star level to rein in the bureaucrats!

One of the good bureaucrats! Morley in HI in my field rep office at Camp Smith, HI circa 1992

• The travel. Traveling was a critical part of all the jobs I had at CNA. As an analyst and field rep, I traveled to participate in exercises, conferences, and even deployments with Marines during real-world operations (in my case, Desert Shield/Storm back in 1990). As a manager, I traveled frequently to visit Fleet and Force commanders around the world where we had analysts stationed. When I was running the Operations Evaluation Group (our field program), I routinely traveled multiple times a month both domestically and overseas to exotic (hah!) locals like Twenty-Nine Palms, Ca; Yuma, AZ; China Lake, CA; Albany, GA; Jacksonville, NC; Bahrain; South Korea; Saudi Arabia; Japan; and China. In total, I travelled over 1.5 million miles based on my United Airlines frequent flyer membership status. Travel slowed down after I took over as head of CNA, but I’d say over my 34-year career I traveled on average at least once a month. Did I mention I hate traveling overseas and traveling on airplanes?!

Dinner in South Korea with the MARFORPAC staff during Exercise Ulchi Focus Lens, circa 1993

Disembarked from two weeks on the USN Mobile Bay (DDG-53), an Aegis Cruiser in Puerto Rico, circa 1987

• Long hours/lack of work/life balance. Finally, and most importantly, I don’t miss the extremely long work hours and the complete lack of work/life balance. Laurie put up with it all without complaint, but I’ll be making it up to her for the remainder of our retirement! When I was running CNA, a typical day would include getting up at 5:00 am, arriving at the office a bit before 6:00 am, and working until 6:00 pm with 8-10 meetings throughout the day. I’d arrive home around 6:30 pm, share a quick glass of wine and dinner with Laurie, and then either head up to my home office to spend a couple of hours getting caught up on work e-mail or reading through my stack of read-aheads for my upcoming meetings the next day. I averaged 14-15 hours of work a day M-F during my final six years at CNA – that was just what the job required. I always tried hard to take Saturdays off but frequently spent a few hours on Sunday preparing for the upcoming week. The work was definitely rewarding but also exhausting. I don’t miss it one bit!

 Laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery - circa 2017

So, there you go – the best and the worst of my professional career at CNA! I hope you enjoyed this journey back in time as much as I did! Capturing these thoughts and memories only makes me appreciate our retired life even more – you couldn’t pay me enough to go back to work after the four years of retirement bliss we have experienced down here in Sarasota!

Enjoying the retired life with cocktails at Sage Restaurant in Sarasota!