I spent a year telling myself I was just between jobs.

Issue #1 - The year I stopped waiting to go back.

Forty years in television production. Hundreds of people around me every day — crews, talent, executives, chaos. That was my world. I loved it. I knew how to run it. I was good at it.

It gave me an identity I didn’t even realise I was wearing — until someone took it off me.

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The Drop

One day the industry started to change. Labor disputes. Technology shift. Studio restructuring.

At first, I treated it like a break.

Six months in, I was still in extended holiday mode. I slept in. I told myself I’d earned it. I assumed things would settle down and I’d find my way back in.

At twelve months, I couldn’t ignore it any more.

I wasn’t going back. Not by choice. Not on my timeline. But it was real.

And for a while, that part sucked.

What caught me off guard wasn’t the time off. It was everything that came with it.

The calendar — once packed — emptied out. The people I’d spent decades with kept moving. Their lives stayed full. Mine didn’t. Or at least it didn’t feel like it did.

“No one tells you how quickly you can go from being in the middle of everything to feeling like you’ve disappeared.”

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The Map

Around that time, I came across a TED talk by Riley Moynes on what actually happens when people leave their careers. Not the polished version — the real one.

Four phases: the honeymoon, the drop, trial and error, and eventually building something new.

When I finished watching, I had one thought: I wish someone had handed me that map earlier.

Because knowing something is happening and accepting it are not the same thing.

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The Question

The real turning point didn’t come from a big decision. It came from a small one.

One afternoon, I drove past a coffee shop and saw a group of men sitting together — laughing, arguing, completely at ease.

I remember thinking: how do I get in on that?

So I did something that felt uncomfortable, even a little embarrassing.

I started a men’s group on Facebook and posted a simple message:

Anyone want to grab a coffee?

That was it. No plan. No strategy. Just a question.

Six men showed up the first week. We started with the usual — sport, the neighbourhood, the weather. Safe territory.

But within twenty minutes, one man mentioned he’d been retired for two years and still hadn’t figured out what to do with himself.

Another nodded — not casually, but like he’d been waiting to hear someone say it out loud.

That moment stayed with me. Because it wasn’t really about coffee. It was about recognition.

The next week, a dozen men showed up. Then twenty.

By January it had grown into two coffee groups each week, a dinner club, a weekly walk, a bike group — and more than 275 men connected through it.

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What I Learned

Every one of those men had a story. Some were through it. Some were in it. Some were fighting back.

But underneath all of it was something consistent: the need for connection, and the quiet loss of structure that no one had really prepared for.

Work was never just about work. It gave you things you didn’t realise you depended on until they were gone:

• Structure — somewhere to be, a reason to get up

• Purpose — something to contribute

• Status — a role, a place in the world

• Belonging — people who knew your name and what you were good at

When those disappear all at once, it leaves a gap. Not a visible one. But a real one.

You don’t retire from being useful. You don’t lose your ability to build something meaningful. And you don’t age out of connection. What changes is the format.

No one hands you the next structure. You have to create it. No one assigns you purpose. You have to decide where to put your energy.

The career might be over. But the Post Game is just beginning