Thoughts and reflections about the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
This is actually two days late because This Genius forgot to press publish. Fantastic.
Progress on my goals
Boat life
Our pontoon hasn’t been readjusted so we went with the option of getting some super-long lines and Tokyo Drifting the boat via the pontoon cleats out of the mooring.
It totally worked!
We spent last night at anchor in one of the local bays. We rolled about a bit, it was definitely an anchorage on the B Tier since we’d gotten there so late after picking up the super-long lines, but we had a great time with the sails up on our approach and a bit of swimming time in the bay.
The sad news is that I now have to live with the fact I spent £300 on new ropes. Much sadness. I’m hoping I won’t need to do that for a long while.
Still, we’re now able to move the boat out and about, so I’m looking to get some sailing time during my summer leave in the next couple of weeks.
Distractions and detours
Dumbphone test – third week
I haven’t fully let go of the iPhone yet, but it’s probably time – at least during the working day.
It’s annoying that the world has pretty much switched to WhatsApp. Lots of my social groups are on (and won’t deviate from) WhatsApp. That’s a bit sad really, because it means I probably can’t lose the iPhone completely unless I want my friendship group to be entirely made up of work colleagues and my wife.
Even my family insist on WhatsApp!
Other than that, I actually haven’t missed the smartphone. The iPad/ a laptop does everything a phone does, but better, and the experience of an iPod is still better than Spotify because my iPod doesn’t advertise to me.
A smartphone is literally a device optimised and primarily used for social media.
Ironically, with the dumbphone being my primary comms, I’m often happy to leave it behind. Given that my wife is the main person who sends me messages or calls me outside of WhatsApp, if I’m with her I don’t need the phone.
Yuka app
Having just written about ditching my smartphone I’m now going to write about a smartphone app. You can do these incongruous things when you own a website, you know!
This week Lady SierraWhiskyMike discovered a phone app called Yuka. It’s free to use (or pay-what-you-want for premium) and the premise is basically that you scan bar codes for food and cosmetics so it can rate it for the damage it causes to you and/or others.
No joke. Turns out a novelty “man buffer” soap I’d been given contained a chemical that’s banned in the EU as a carcinogen.
So, suffice to say, half of the cosmetics are now in the bin and we’re short on convenience foods. I guess it’s an addictive app because Lady SierraWhiskyMike turned all our cupboards out!
Surprisingly, Lynx Fresh Blast (the lime-based one) scored highly with 50 out of 100, which seems to be good for a deodorant. Conversely, we had a Garnier “Eco Friendly” suncream that, it turned out, was highly toxic to marine life. Greenwashing at its finest!
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
No lessons this week due to my teacher having a family issue, but we’re continuing next week.
I played for a bit in the anchorage on the weekend. That was a pretty cool experience, definitely right up there with weird things I’m going to remember fondly.
Fitness
I was meant to have Long Run Sunday, but we were knackered from a day of sailing and a night at anchor and its red hot outside. I did Long Run Monday instead and got to half marathon distance in 1hr56 as a training jog.
Other than that I’ve been really good at training this week and got all my runs plus some pull-ups/dips and a full stretching session in this week.
Final thoughts
We got sailing! And pretty much everything worked!
There’s no sailing planned for next weekend because we need to rip out and order a replacement for our leaky freshwater tank. That… won’t be fun at all, but I really don’t want to live on jerry canned water over winter.
Not a particularly dramatic week.
My financial independence campaign continues!
