Thoughts and reflections about the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.

Progress on my goals

Boat life

We’re ignoring the water tank today when I really ought to be attacking it. Weather is too good, we’re chilling on deck.

This will definitely bite us on the bum at some point, but hopefully not today.

We discovered that the items we’d stored in the v-berth locker (which is basically saying “under the bed” have gotten damp and mouldy due to condensation and run-off into the bilges. Cue lots of spirit vinegar and drying things out.

To be fair most of the stuff we store under there are things like backpacks that aren’t being used. They could probably live in our lock-up storage unit, which we also now need to empty.

Actually, about that…

I think we’re boat people now

When we moved aboard in December there was a non-zero chance we’d regret this deliberately difficult lifestyle and want to move back into a regular, bricks-and-mortar home.

This means we’d kept a lot of stuff in our lock-up that we’d want if we were to move into a house.

Having now experienced all weather variations in some form, it’s quite clear to us that this is a long-term play.

Which means we need to face emptying some of the crap in the lock-up, because the current level of stuff in there is now just making it hard to access the good stuff we actually want access to.

I’m not looking forward to that job, not at all. I know that there’s a trend for “decluttering”, and I’m genuinely in favour of it, but eventually you get down to the sacred calves at the end of the list. Things you know you couldn’t afford to replace if the time comes where you actually want them for something. Objectively, it’s stupid to want to keep stuff that’s sat in a lock-up being useless, but emotions tell logic to stuff it and bugger off.

We’ll get around to it eventually, it’s just going to suck.

Back to work!

This week was my first week back to work after two weeks of leave. Eurgh. Progress had not been made on any of my matters, and it seems my return to the office has coincided with every client in the world returning from their summer holidays and deciding that the time to start big things is definitely now.

Bit intense. Just a bit.

Lady SierraWhiskyMike’s reduction in employed work (as opposed to building her own projects) has meant that I got a lot more sleep than I normally would. This reduced a lot of the pressure on me during the working week and with any luck it might make my job more sustainable for the longer term. I’m earning good money as a lawyer, I’d be keen to maintain that rate of income for as long as I can to boost my financial independence campaign savings rates.

Distractions and detours

Writer’s club

One of my classmates from the fiction writing course I did earlier this year has rallied the troops and we’re keeping in touch as a social/encouragement/accountability club for fiction writing.

We had our first meeting this week and it felt really good to get the gang back together.

Being creative with other people (even when you suck because you’re a beginner) is a lasting positive experience. I feel really vulnerable when I share things I’ve written, and although no-one has ever actually said “You SUCK! I hate it!”, there’s something uncomfortable about sharing a thing you’ve made and submitting it to the judgement of other people.

Writing is weird. It’s like taking a bit of your soul and presenting it so that anyone is free to accept or completely reject, and you have no real control over who gets to do that. It’s a one-way permission: your readers can do what they want, but you probably don’t even know who all your readers are.

So it’s great that we’ve got a group where we can share our written ideas and develop them. I can honestly say that outside of writing I don’t think I’d have met all the people in our group, we’re an unlikely match, so there’s a lot of different perspectives in the same gang.

I’m hoping that we continue to meet up monthly to encourage each other and try things out.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

This week we re-visited Sweet Child O’ Mine (grade 5 simplified version). I haven’t played it since we covered it last year, but I picked it up again pretty quickly and we used the main riff to work on paying at higher tempo.

My lessons are now at the point where I need to start telling the teacher what I want to learn and how I want to progress. This is where learning things as an adult differs from learning as a child: you need to steer the teacher to get the most benefit.

I don’t really know where I want to start directing these lessons to. A lot of my progress now relies on me putting more time into practice, and it’s practice that’s really going to make the biggest gains. Well, that and memorising scales and stuff. In theory I can teach most of that to myself, so the challenge is finding ways to get the best benefit out of my one hour of lessons each week.

Fitness

I took a break at the start of the week, and I’ve only gotten two training sessions in with a view to doing a longer distance run tomorrow.

My concern is that I don’t want the hint of plantar fasciitis to develop into actual injury, so I’m listening to my body and I took a bit of time off my running to let things calm down., which they now have.

The marathon is in April 2025 so I have a long time to do a gradual build-up. A methodical, slow training plan will get better results than causing injuries through impatience.

I’m also looking to include more calisthenics in my strength training in place of weights. I’ve been doing things like barbell exercises until now, but I like the idea of building upper body endurance and strength rather than necessarily increasing bulk and size – not in the least because I don’t want to add more body weight when I’m training for a long-distance run. I don’t want to carry that over 26 miles!

Calisthenics is hard. I’m years away from stunts like the human flag, but even things like doing slow pull-ups are tiring. It’s showing up where my actual weaknesses are, rather than making my muscles look temporarily good after pumping iron or boosting my ego because I managed to get my chin over the bar a few more times one week.

A humbling week of training; but as my only pressures are self-inflicted I’m happy to trust in the process and progress slowly yet deliberately onwards.

Final thoughts

OK so I’m totally chinning off the things I ought to be doing and I know this is going to backfire at some point. Maybe watch this space.

Returning to work sucks as much for me as it does for anyone else, but with Lady SierraWhiskyMike freeing up time to do her own thing our weekly routine has gotten easier and for three days per week I don’t need to be up at 0600hrs. I’ve slept more, and my stress levels haven’t been as elevated as they were before I took leave.

That’s probably the theme of this week: I’m getting into a nice, sustainable groove. Things are starting to work for me. I’ve got things going on that add value to my life – my writing, guitar lessons, fitness plans – and that’s important.

This blog is about my financial independence campaign. It might not be obvious that these other activities I report on contribute to that, but I see this as all linked.

  • Making my work sustainable means that I can keep pushing on at a lucrative high-stress job role for longer without breaking.
  • Writing isn’t a costly hobby, any now I’ve gained a small community that gives me a lot of value for basically the cost of pens and paper.
  • Music gives me a creative outlet for self-expression and something to focus my mind on without it being about economics or work or more screen time.
  • Keeping fit means I can avoid health complications and just keep going for longer.

I’ve heard the word “healthspan” used to describe the portion of your life where you’re physically capable of doing stuff, and I reckon that this is an important concept for FIRE. Otherwise, why bother with FIRE? Just wait until regular retirement to do the things you want to do!

I’d encourage you, as my readers, to think outside the box of pure finance when planning your own financial independence campaign. This can’t be just about money. Hopefully, you’ll be reassured by the flip side of this idea in that if you can’t improve the financial side of the campaign any further right now you can at least improve the supporting elements like I do at very little cost. There’s always a way to move forward.

My financial independence campaign continues!