Well at long last, I am finally able to retire from Pearson. My last annual bonus hit the bank account and I hit my boss up to share to good news of my retirement.

I've been in sales for all of my life and for the last 17 years in "textbook" sales. When I started with Simon and Schuster in 1997 it was a novel idea to combine content from multiple sources into a print textbook for the college student. My company grew exponentially and became the cash cow for its parent organization. Pamela and I would travel twice a year to warm destinations for our sales meetings where we participated in the company sport of partying. Over the course of my tenor I was the top sales performer in my group 4 times, including 2014. What a way to go out.

I will miss the camaraderie and the daily duty of creatively never saying no to our customers and the internal sales team I worked with. I was made for my role and it came easy. I will miss the many people that I have worked with from afar. Many have gone on to other publishing careers or somewhere else in the massive 40,000 person company I retired from. Publishing is a giant family no matter who you work for and I was lucky I landed in it. I knew it was going to be special when the guy who hired me shared my same birthday.

And now I am the luckiest man alive. I married the most loving beautiful woman, Pamela who has supported me through thick and thin. She shared our dream of a travel sabbatical that we now begin. Sailing away in the sunset forever together.