By Dr. Bryan Jepson, Guest Writer
In February 2022, I was sitting on a beach in Hawaii during a hard-earned vacation with my wife. Now, that might be a common way to start a story for many of you, but for me, a vacation with my wife is actually a rare event due to my family dynamic with adult children with special needs (that may be a post for another day).
As an emergency physician entering my twilight years (I’m in my mid-50s), all the stress from the busy shifts with overwhelming patient volumes, the fluctuating sleep schedules, and the evenings and holidays away was definitely weighing heavy on my mind and body. I had just survived the worst of the COVID pandemic, although I felt like I had left a piece of me with it.
How much longer can I do this job? I had been asking myself that for years, but now I felt like I needed to make a choice: either retire early or find something else to do. I just couldn’t face many more years in full-time clinical practice. But I also didn’t feel like I was mentally ready to hang it all up and just go fishing. One piece of advice that I had heard repeatedly from early retirees was to be sure that you retire into something: know how you are going to…
