Allison is an awesome contributor, and will be missed.
However, this goes back to the same thing which has been discussed with some frequency on here and to which I say...
The best way to retire from this work is simply to stop posting, advertising, and communicating with people in the industry. You have to simply quit cold turkey.
Otherwise, you inevitably come back and, to be quite frank, you look rather foolish. Especially if you try to make it seem like you only now work "very limited times" or "only seeing established clients" or some such. Here's why this never works:
- Your "very limited times" will expand and you may as well have never retired;
- Why not, instead of posting, JUST CONTACT your so-called established list;
- At some point, you want more clients, so you will have to expand your list;
- Your limited times may often not work for the majority of said clients.
So, again, in the end, if you need to quit this line of work... just quit. And if you are going to school, be advised that your first real "white collar" job upon graduation will have neither the flexibility in schedule nor hourly rate of pay, so keeping an active account on a site like ECCIE is going to lead you back into it.
And, if you are in school and quit to "focus on school" be advised that you will quickly wonder where all the money went and you will come back to the lifestyle anyway if you simply do not quit.
If you must walk away, just walk away and don't fuss about it. Kill your accounts, delete your email accounts, cancel your web site contract, ditch the phone and SIM card and just walk the heck away.
