Retire Young.

@postaday 343; #postaday2011.

Today at work we had a party for Fred Fortin, who is retiring at the end of the year. He’s a senior vice president at Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA), aka the Mothership, and he is my SVP. He’s also a fine friend who is mostly in my computer, who I get to see on occasion IRL, at work, on the bicycle, on the road, always in passing.

Fred has so much he still wants to do and he should do it while he’s still young. Did you know that old doesn’t really kick in on time if you treat your body well, exercise, laugh a lot, and do the things you enjoy? That 50 is the new 25? That 60 is the new 30? That passion burns for a very long time? Take that, young guns! Who you callin’ old?

I stood up to say a few words today, and here’s kinda what I said:

I want to say thank you to Fred because you helped create a workplace that I enjoy coming to every day. My colleagues are fun, top-notch, and dependable. I really enjoy working and learning from my colleagues, my managers, my senior editor, my director, and my vice presidents. Everyone is a VIP in Marketing and Comm.

A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to talk to Fred about STUFF, which is code for everything in the world I can cram into the few minutes he has to spare for me every couple of months.

That day I had something bugging me and Fred let me spill it while he was eating lunch from one of our Communications potlucks. Here’s what I like about Fred. I really do check with [his secretary] April to see if I can go in to chat, but I probably don’t have to, because it’s Fred. But because this is HMSA and there is protocol, I really try to do the right thing. So I think people and Fred have come to accept that I can be a little off the wall, and in my own way I promote HMSA and being healthy and active and enjoying life.

You might want to know what we talked about, and we touched on a lot of STUFF like bicycling, and triathlons, and motorcycles, and social media, and the job, and he told me something that might not surprise you, but it was something that was right for me to hear. He said,

“Push out the sides of your box.”

No one really needs to know where your box begins and ends, but if your heart says your box is a little cramped, that you need to expand your box, push it out a little bit. Fred said I don’t have to step outside the box, but work with the box, because the box is malleable and flexible.

And now that Fred is leaving, should we ask ourselves “what would Fred do?” He’s leaving us stronger, more confident, more daring. We will need all that when we’re in the climate of exchange [health-care marketplace expansion].

And now I have some advice for Fred:

• Please do not do the motorcycle-speed-bike time trial on the Isle of Man.
• If you are not together, please call [your wife] Betty every day after you take off on a motorcycle or a bicycle trip in the wild.
• Please put an In Case of Emergency ICE number on your iPhone lock screen.
• Please update your Facebook page for your family and friends.
• Please LIKE stuff on your friends’ Facebook pages so they LIKE what’s on your page in return and I’m not the only one who likes all the stuff on your page.
• Stay in touch.
• Stay healthy and live happily ever after for a very long time.