Thoughts and reflections from the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
It turns out I didn’t publish 110 despite having written it (!?) so here’s a double bill.
Progress on my goals
Boat plan
Not much to add on the boat front. Lady SierraWhiskyMike has been staying with her mum, who has just had a minor operation and needed a bit of a hand moving around the house and doing stuff like cooking.
Which means last week the boat was Casa SierraWhiskyMike!
I’ll have you know that I’ve kept it clean and tidy but I’ll freely confess that my guitar amp had been on the saloon table all week, because no-one was here to tell me off.
We’re now back aboard and have the winter tent up. Summer was good while it lasted. Back to the grind I guess.
This winter ought to be more comfortable than the previous two because we seem to have worked out how to turn the Eberspächer heating on. Let’s see if it works as advertised.
Distractions and detours
Standard work thrash
My return to work after leave has been a nightmare. We’re two out of five people down, for various reasons, and my many (many) taskmasters have been hip-firing e-mails with complex tasks around and simply telling clients that I will get things done by X day.
I cannot achieve X day without doing midnight shifts, which I’m refusing to do for routine business. If it was a special matter, like a major acquisition or a court hearing, I’d understand – but routine corporate actions? No, they can suck it.
With the exception of Friday and guitar lessons on Wednesdays, I’ve allowed things to run until 1930-2000hrs and then pulled the plug on it.
If it ain’t done, it ain’t done. Come at me, bro!
Actually, I was thinking about this the other day. Lots of (dodgy) personal finance influencers talk about “the 9-5 grind”, but when was the last time you met someone and they actually only worked 0900-1700hrs?
I don’t think I’ve ever had a job that has been so generous with its time limitations! Do these jobs really exist?
There’s probably something in this about “golden handcuffs”. Law doesn’t pay amazingly well for the effort of the job, but it does pay pretty well compared to a lot of other jobs.
If I was working as a shop assistant for example there’s no way I could bring in my lawyer’s take-home, even if I worked 12-hour shifts for five days per week. It’s just not a goer.
So realistically, unless I can build myself some kind of alternative, I’m probably going to be doing law for a while and whingeing about the same things every month.
Yup, read my own writing, realised I look super whiney. Going to have a word with myself and man up a bit.
Potential podcast/YouTube(?)
I’ve been chatting with Lady SierraWhiskyMike and we might add like a podcast-type-thing to go alongside this blog. The format will basically just be us having a discussion, whether weekly or fortnightly or whatever, and just talking about things we’ve read or current events.
Well, maybe. It’s a loose plan and there’s every chance we never get round to it. Maybe more of a tenuous concept than an actual plan.
Story writing
I’m still plugging away at creative writing.
This week, I wrote a story that I’m really proud of… but it’s subversive and publishing it under my own name will get me chased off the island.
Turns out that I like writing politically- and philosophically-challenging stories that poke fun at publicly-accepted stupidity. This one involved topics like climate change denial, the myth that illegal immigrants are taking jobs, and old people saying that nobody wants to work anymore. It was a fun piece to write!
Despite being set deliberately in a sailing club, there’s no way I can submit this for the writing competition on time and tide that I’d written it for. Dammit. Should probably write more accessible, less controversial stories.
I might read it to our writing club this week though because I’m happy with how it turned out.
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
We’re returning back to The Evil That Men Do by Iron Maiden. This time, the idea is that we’re going to attempt the solo and push what I can do a little bit more.
We went over the main parts during the lesson and I’ve gotten most of them down to a reasonable speed. I reckon it’s doable, I had fewer problems this time than I did trying to learn it the first time, many months ago, and I haven’t exactly been rehearsing it.
My teacher let me experiment with a few different guitar picks from his mystery tin of random crap guitar picks he’s retained over the ages. I may have just ordered some…
Actually, joking aside, I’d started out with a big mixed bag of Dunlop picks and I’ve begun to narrow down my favourites – so much so that I have to change them out now because the ones I’ve used the most have now worn down. That’s actually a good thing because I can see which ones I’ve liked and which ones I’d just discounted.
Fitness
The first week was a fitness training vacuum. I’d managed to do a bit of training – press-ups and stuff – on the boat, but my working week was such a car crash that I’ve just not had the time.
The second week I managed to do a regain and get back on the fitness horse.
A couple of things I found out the hard way this week:
- I’ve started training “false grip”, which is essential to learning something called a “muscle up”. I’ve clearly neglected my forearms, training that hurts.
- I’ve also started training pistol squats (badly), which doesn’t hurt while you’re doing the progressions but the DOMS isn’t to be messed with.
So I basically used my own bodyweight to hurt myself lots, no classes or squat racks required. Now I’m walking like I’ve got two peg legs. I even went for a jog to ease my legs off and they’re still sore.
It’s good for you, right?
Final thoughts
The fun summer has definitely been brought to an end that has been replaced with an insane pace of working.
Ugh!!!
I’m still not sure how to solve that, but working until 2000hrs isn’t sustainable long term if I also want to do stuff that isn’t work. I either need to find work I enjoy, or I need to reduce the amount of work to do other things with my week that I enjoy.
This means that I’m actively looking out for jobs now. It’s a terrible time to be job hunting on an island that basically only does corporate services because of the looming threat of global recession and the discomfort of high inflation, but I don’t think there’s ever a particularly good time to be job hunting.
The calisthenics journey has to be my favourite project at the moment, but I’m also getting a kick out of playing guitar now that I’m better – not good, but a little better than before. Having these ongoing projects really is keeping me sane in a world of high-tempo working.
Anyway, enough for now. I’m going to play some guitar, think about podcasting and daydream about potential business ideas for a bit. Have a great week!
My financial independence campaign continues!
