Thoughts and reflections form the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
Progress on my goals
Boat plan
This weekend we reattached the sails and started making plans for our trip at the end of the month.
We’ve taken the last two weeks off this month to push the boat out figuratively and literally to do some cruising.
Our initial thoughts are to sail to the next Channel Island over, then launch from there to Brittany and do a few ports and anchorages around the coast.
This is cool in itself and it’s also preparation for going into other ports and anchorages that we don’t know and don’t have a way to grab local knowledge about in advance.
It’s slightly cheating because like most English (and Channel Islands) kids, we know a bit of French from school. It’s not like we’re going to Indonesia and hoping we find English speakers. However, as much as I enjoyed talking about how I’d allegedly spent my school holidays doing planche a voile, GCSE French isn’t really applicable to using marina services or asking about navigation. It’s still a mini-adventure!
We have a family event next weekend but we’re hoping to do a quick shakedown sail after that just to test that everything works – or, more likely, work out what doesn’t and find a way to do without it.
Glasses update
Last week I found out I needed glasses to correct a lopsided vision issue. Yay for me. That’s all paid for and now I need to wait another week or so for the frame and the lenses to be made up.
Can’t tell if it’s psychosomatic or not, but now that I know lefty is a bit longsighted and straining hard I’ve started being aware of it when working off screens. I’m hoping that with my new librarian-hot goggles I’ll find computer work easier because that’s paying the bills.
Odin project
I was hoping to get back into the Odin Project and have successfully revived my ageing laptop with a new Linux system.
This hasn’t actually happened.
It might only take an extra 40 minutes a day to do Odin Project, but my usual weekday looks like this:
- 0600-0620: get up, crushing existential dread, get some clothes on
- 0620-0655: walk dog
- 0656-0710: eat breakfast
- 0711-0745: shower, shave and… ablute; get my bag together
- 0746-0830: drive to the mother-in-law’s with wife and dog
- 0831-0900: walk from mother-in-law’s to work
- 0900-1830ish: work, with sometimes a lunch break
- 1830ish/1900ish – 1930: go home (this actually takes about 30 minutes but obviously it depends on when I leave)
- 1930ish-2030ish: walk dog, re-acquaint with Lady SierraWhiskyMike
- 2030-2130: cook dinner, eat
- 2130-2200: guitar practice
- 2200-2300: make lunch and breakfast for next day, ablute, faff about for a bit, maybe read so I can switch off before bed.
- 2300: finally get to sleep.
I’m often able to get gym into lunch break, or (if Lady SierraWhiskyMike isn’t going into the office that day) I can leave her to do one dog walk, start at 0700hrs and cycle in as part of my commute. However, I’m doing well to sleep 7hrs per day on any given weekday.
Realistically, if I want to do the Odin Project, I need to either:
- Not walk my dog… not attractive, I like him.
- Not play guitar. Again, not attractive, that’s something I want to do.
- Sleep even less. Really crap idea.
- Eat ready meals to reduce cooking burden. Also crap, and expensive.
- Somehow reduce my working day so it finishes at 1730hrs, which is a problem as a lawyer because I don’t control my time.
Wednesdays are an exception: I’m permitted (yay me) to finish at 1730 so I can attend guitar lessons once per week. I had to book that in with my boss, by the way, as a specific thing that I insist on being allowed to do.
This basically means that my only spare time is on the weekends, which is also my time with Lady SierraWhiskyMike and to do work on the boat.
So, for now, I think I’m going to have to be kind to myself and accept that this might not happen. If I get time to do it on the weekend, I totally should do it: but I’m not going to beat myself up if I can’t do Odin Project stuff during the week.
Distractions and detours
Potential new jobs update
I didn’t get the job: it was offered to an internal candidate that they’d already earmarked for the job before sending out the advert.
However, it was not a waste of time. Turns out I’d been a bit of an outside wild card and they’ve asked if I can put myself forward for a different job, for which they’ve offered me a streamlined route through to the final assessment.
It’s a bit less money than I’m on, and it’s law-adjacent (investigating white collar crime) rather than corporate law. I’m going to follow up on it because there’s a non-contributory pension and it’s probably less intense than doing corporate law. Plus, there’s something to be said for job satisfaction and I’m painfully aware that my job is entirely unsatisfying.
The impact of a lower wage would mean I’d be risking having to work an extra year or two before we set sail on our travels, but if it’s a more manageable and enjoyable process I will have a better time of things overall.
There are worse things to do than free up some time to enjoy living on a sailing yacht in an archipelago off the cost of France.
New toy: old games
I missed playing video games when Lady SierraWhiskyMike wasn’t here.
I like playing guitar and reading stuff, but sometimes I miss just doing things that aren’t creative just for the sheer fun of it. Sailing is right up there, too, but that’s a two-person job and we do it as a couple.
Going to the pub scratches this itch a little bit but I don’t really fancy spending all my hard-earned cash on warm flat pints of crap Channel Islands lager. I love a beer, but not every week can end in a pub trip. I would end up pretty damned fat and pretty damned broke if I did that!
So this week I bought an used Nintendo 3DS on eBay.
This is kind of the last handheld console that didn’t require downloading internet updates, which is important when you live on a boat and don’t have landline internet. It’s also allegedly very easy to modify and jailbreak, so you don’t need to carry around a stack of games with you because you can now save hundreds of them onto a 128GB memory card that was cheap to buy on Amazon.
Obviously I don’t promote piracy of video games or other intellectual property and as a lawyer I would advise you not to pirate or illegally download video games that you haven’t already bought.
But in principle you can put like 3,000 games on this device which should be more than enough to scratch the video gaming itch.
The console should be delivered next week and if I’m lucky I’ll have a chance to play around with it next weekend and set it up before our big sailing trip.
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
We’re starting to move away from New Born for now. I’ve got another week to practice it, but if I don’t get it there’s no pressure and we’re going to try something else.
New Born was a deliberate step up and my teacher was expecting me to struggle with it, so he’s happy with my progress. Turns out I’m not expected jump to Grade 7 pieces inside of 2 years and nail it in one month. We’re not really following the grading system with my lessons because it’s not like I’m at school or using it as an academic CV builder like most kids would, but the music exercises are useful for teaching and tend to come with backing music to play along with.
I’ve got some exercises to do this week and I might learn something simpler for fun.
Actually – about learning simpler stuff – I took a break last week to learn Polly by Nirvana and nailed it in about 30 minutes. Obviously it’s a two-part song with maybe 5 chords total in it, so I’m hardly a guitar prodigy, but it was well cool to just go away and learn something fairly simply off my own back in the background and showed me how far I’ve come.
Fitness
I cycled to work twice, got in a set of pull-ups and dips – I can pretty reliably smash out 10 pull-ups now – and re-introduced running with a 4-mile jog back from work on Friday.
Not exceptional training, but not bad.
I’m hoping that the wind will die down later today so I can have a play on the rings in the Napoleonic Fort Gym later before dinner.
Final thoughts
Pretty stoked to finally get out sailing. It’s been a long time coming!
It’s a little sad about the Odin Project falling off the rails, but I just need to accept that I can’t be everywhere and do everything. Lady SierraWhiskyMike keeps mocking me for having too many “projects” on the go and not chilling out enough, so it’s probably for the best that I chill out with that for a bit until I can somehow get my working hours under control.
In fact, looking at my timeline above, it makes sense why I’m unable to do more writing, too. I haven’t exactly got an abundance of space and time in my day. Maybe I’m now at the point where I have to start thinking: “OK, you want to do this… so what do you want to NOT do?”.
It’s possible that moving into a potentially more interesting and lower core hours job will free this up a bit, so I’m probably going to take up the offer to investigate that job I’ve been asked to look into. If the pay isn’t much worse, taking my foot off the career gas is probably appropriate to give me a bit more time back.
Guitar seems to be going well. I was hoping to nail the Muse song but it turns out I wasn’t really expected to. I’d like to learn a few songs of my own choosing on top of lessons just so I have something to play, but again see my point about not having much time in my week.
Fitness is going OK. I’ve taken my foot off the accelerator a little bit these last couple of weeks with my sister’s wedding and stuff, but I reckon I can get back on it now.
My financial independence campaign continues!
