Congrats Jesse.
You’ve been “about to retire” since we first spoke together about 7 years ago!
Seven years ago I WAS planning to retire. I was working on a Scooby Do DTV and was going to call it a day when it was finished. But Warners had other ideas. I got shanghaied off of the Scooby project, which was mothballed, and dropped onto Harley Quinn to correct the Color Design pipeline, which was in complete chaos, two months behind after 3+ months of production. Six months later, having clawed back almost all of the deficit, I went back to complete the Scooby project and was offered the Art Director position on a Courage The Cowardly Dog/Scooby Do mash up called
Outta Nowhere with a decent raise.
Then Warners kept offering me jobs to bridge the gap until Harley season 3, and after that they offered to put me on a retainer, getting a check whether I worked or not. Kind of hard to ignore an offer like that. Since I was getting credited with a 60 hour week, my pension was growing much more rapidly during the final few years. It's still pitiful, but about 30% more than I would have gotten in 2019.
So I continued on until last year, when we finished Harley Season 5. Since I was getting my Social Security and my pension, due to my age, I didn't bother to look for work. I was done, but I decided to wait to officially retire until my excellent medical benefits ran out and timed it to dovetail with my retirement medical coverage benefits, which I'm told are also excellent.
So here we are.
Better late than never.