Four Years from Now, I'll Be Retired. What Comes Next?

Four years from now, on October 1, 2030, I will wake up and realize I no longer have to go to work.

For most of my adult life, work has been part of who I am. I have spent almost three decades as a civil servant in Indonesia, following routines, carrying responsibilities, solving problems, doing what needed to be done. It has shaped how I think, how I plan my days, even how I see myself.

But one day, that routine will end.

And when it does, I will have something I have rarely had before: time.

The question is what I will do with it.

Over the past few years, I have watched artificial intelligence move from something abstract into something that touches how we work, communicate, and think about the future. I won't pretend I understood it right away. But somewhere along the way, curiosity got the better of me.

That curiosity is what pulled me toward learning AI — not to become an expert, but to understand what this technology might mean for my own life, at my own pace. I take online courses when I can. I watch a video here, read an article there. Slowly, piece by piece, it is starting to make sense.

I don't know yet exactly where this will lead. But I hope it opens doors I can't fully see from where I'm standing now — ways to stay useful, stay curious, maybe even stay productive — after the office door closes for the last time. Most of all, I hope it helps me answer the question I keep circling back to: what comes after "civil servant"?

Some people might say I'm starting this a little late — that a man four years from retirement should be slowing down, not signing up for online courses. I understand why they'd think that. But I don't see it that way.

Four years is not nothing. It's enough time to learn, to stumble, to try things that don't work, and to try again. I would rather spend it building something new than waiting for retirement to arrive and wondering, quietly, what I could have become if I had just started sooner.

So this is where I start.

Four years from now, I will retire. But I don't think that will be the end of my story.

Maybe — and this is the part I actually believe — it will be the beginning of the most interesting chapter yet.

Jakarta, September 8, 2026