Thoughts and reflections about the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
Progress on my goals
Boat life
We were hoping to sail this weekend, but Lady SierraWhiskyMike has booked herself up all day today and the wind is looking shaky tomorrow. Can’t really sail on 5 knots of wind, it’s a bit poop.
Eh, it happens. I guess we can’t rush the process of learning.
Maybe I’ll go to archery tomorrow instead if there’s no wind. If not, probably just some guitar and writing, maybe some more N64 games. Chill. Zen. Importantly, good for my wallet.
Distractions and detours
Caffeine detox
Day 22 without a brew. Things are a lot more bearable, the weird eye/temple twitch I’d developed seems to have gone away for now, things are generally on the up!
Anxiety feelings come and go. I’ve not really been an anxious person, but withdrawal adds this delightful treat to my day. Some days you just wake up and you’re unexpectedly – and completely unreasonably – tense. Go figure!
One of the things that this has brought home is that social life in the Channel Islands is one or more of:
- Work
- Kids (we don’t have any, but parents seem remarkably busy)
- Coffee
- Alcohol
- Obsessive dedication to a sport/fitness club
To be fair, it was probably true in mainland UK, too. Maybe everywhere? I don’t know. I guess my point is that this got me thinking that I need to find more ways, like my writing course, to meet with people and do Human Things.
Writing course
We’re all but finished on the creative writing course. One last Tuesday session and that’s us done.
My work got reviewed this week. There were a couple of pointers and things to watch out for, but the gang seemed to really enjoy it and picked up on lots of the references that I’d thought were either too subtle or too weird.
I don’t think I can do justice to the wonderful feeling that comes with making something and listening to people talk about the bits they enjoyed. I don’t think I have any strong feelings about getting a book published one day – the erotica side hustle showed me that this isn’t essential to making money anyway – but I enjoyed that my thoughts were somehow giving other people a positive experience.
I guess I’ll need to find more time to actually do the writing, now. Can’t get better if you don’t practice.\
Which brings me to the next detour…
Smartphone addiction
Maybe it’s the caffeine detox, maybe it’s the self-actualisation that’s come from the writing course, but I’ve come to realise how much longer my working day is because I reach for my phone.
I have an iPhone SE. It’s fairly cheap (when you ditch the VAT), it has WhatsApp so I can call home without mortgaging the boat – seriously, Channel Islands numbers aren’t covered by UK or EU Roaming plans, it’s cheaper to call India than where I live – and all the modern conveniences and gamification features that any modern phone has.
Which is a problem.
I didn’t have my own stats recorded – in fact, I’ve only just turned that feature on having tried to find the stats for this post – but I did find this interesting graphic that suggests Brits use their phones over 4 hours each day:
Seriously, the global average mobile use is 5 hours per day.
Now, to be fair, if you have a two hour call with your family or a close friend, that’s a lot of the stats in any one day. Really, though? Are we really calling people we care about for even half of the 29 hours and 38 minutes per week we use our phones?
I doubt it. Even if we include listening to Spotify on the commute to work and in the gym, I reckon that’s 2-3 hours per day of just wasting time.
Normally, not a problem. However, in law, we get paid and record our time on a stopwatch. If I’m on my phone I’m not recording time on that stopwatch, so my working day is actually being extended with no benefit to me.
This got me thinking. I’ve read Cal Newport’s book, Digital Minimalism. I’ve seen the Netflix documentary on social media. I often reflexively reach for my iPhone during the working day to check nonsense things like personal e-mails, stats on this blog (why?!), even my investment performance apps… but these make no sense!
So I’m trying to work out what the best use of tech is for me. My initial thoughts are to experiment with a feature phone/dumbphone for the working day, and rely on my iPad and the iPhone to be at home for that connectivity.
Maybe this will free me up some time after the working day to do things that add value to my life? Maybe I’ll start finishing work on time..?
So today I’ve ordered a cheap feature phone on Amazon to start this experiment when the phone turns up.
In the meantime, I’ve set my iPhone to greyscale to try to deter excessive use. You can read a bit about this on Wired.
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
This week’s lesson didn’t really work for me. We’re trying to learn patterns to remember where related notes are (at different octaves) on the fretboard, but honestly I have no idea what the odd system was that my teacher was trying to show me. Screw it, I’m going to have to learn everything by rote. I guess nothing comes easy.
Fitness
I’ve kept pretty fit this week, but I don’t feel like I made any gains. I got a run in, a cycle to work, a really short gym session, and we got an activity-based client event on Friday (that I was sober for!) but very little weight lifting or time breaking.
I “kept active”. That’s probably the best description.
Final thoughts
Writing class was the highlight of my week. That was a feeling of self-actualisation on a level that I haven’t felt in a while! It’s really cool to create something and have other people enjoy it, I’d recommend trying something like this to everyone.
The rest of my week has been a little flat and introspective. Bit unintentional, not ideal.
I’m hoping that separating myself from my smartphone will free up more time to do things like writing (or any other projects) by being a bit more intentional with my internet and technology usage. We’ll see what happens when the dumbphone arrives, probably next week.
My financial independence campaign continues!
