Well, it is official. I have retired from my position as a Finance Manager at Amazon. I never imagined that I would be retiring at just over four years after joining the company, but here I am. I will tell you that while the work was hard, and there were days I wanted to scream, I loved every minute of it, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I will miss my colleagues and friends, but now it’s time for the next chapter.

We had a retirement party on Saturday night, and people kept asking me how it felt. To be honest, it feels like I’m on vacation. Talking with a friend who also retired a few months ago, he said it would probably be a few weeks before it really hits me that my career has come to an end. He said it was around the start of the third week that he really understood he was done with working.

I suspect that’s how it will be with me, though I think it will be the first of the new year before it really starts to settle in for me. I have been so busy with work for the last 1,600 days that even when I took time off, I still didn’t get a lot done around the house. In fact, we moved into this house four years ago this last week, and it is still a mess. We just unpacked boxes wherever we could find a place and four years later, nothing has changed except my desire to get the entire house under control.

And even though I really want to get things cleaned up, put away and organized better, I know that for the first couple of weeks, I’m going to just be in recovery mode.

On Sunday, I took the time to make some lists of my quilting WIPs. What I really need to do is make a single list where I can track WIPs, projects I’ve bought but not yet started, and projects I would like to make. What I found as I was going through my WIPs is that I have nine quilts, baby quilts and table toppers that are put together and need to be quilted and bound, as well as 16 projects that are in various stages of development. I don’t think that’s everything, though. I am pretty sure I have at least a few more somewhere in there that I didn’t find today, and some project cases that I did not pull down to check on.

Oh. Seventeen. I just remembered the t-shirt quilt I have that isn’t in a project box.

While organization in my studio is not a top priority, I do want to move a couple of sewing machines around. I need to set up the machines I will be using the most, which is the new Bernina 735 Pro and the Brother Stellaire XJ1, which I use for edge to edge quilting.

My plan is to focus on WIPs first, before starting new projects, so that I can make room in my studio. And also, some of these projects have been in progress for years. I’m pretty sure that at least one of the quilt tops I found today is 10 years old. So it’s definitely time to get it finished.

My new rule is that I can’t start a new project until I have finished at least one project that’s already in progress. Tomorrow, I plan to start going through my stash for backing for at least one of the quilt tops, so I can start working on getting it sandwiched and done. I would say this could be a great way to try out my new Bernina 735 Pro embroidery features, but I’m still waiting for my magnetic embroidery hoop to come in. So I’ll use the Brother, which I just got back from a spa day.

I have a metric buttload of projects I’ve bought but not yet started, including a staggering number of Kimberbell projects. I’ll be working on those throughout the year. Now that I think about it, I don’t think that buying all this stuff and then not working on it for years was a very good idea. I could work on the things I already have for years.

But I’m not going to let it overwhelm me. As the old saying goes, you eat an elephant one bite at a time. And this is a massive elephant, but now I have the time to devote to quilting, machine embroidery, household projects, and cooking/baking. And I am so excited; this is going to be great!