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

Progress on my goals

Back to the ship!

We have just arrived aboard our home again. Hooray!

Even more importantly: my repairs to keep the water out have totally worked. No leaks. We’ve been aboard 30 minutes and just running fans and the dehumidifier has cleared up the humidity.

It’s a little cold and I imagine we have another hour or so before she properly warms up so I’m typing this and will put some sourdough together for baking in the morning.

It’s great to be home!

Start-up work

The regulator seems to be on board and we’ve been scoping out some remote storage locations that we need for our proposed ISO27001 controls. I’d say things are coming together?

A proposed supplier quoted us £150k per year… then after haggling it turns out we can step up to that slowly, startin at £600 a month. That’s obviously much better and we’re taking this as a huge win.

I’ve just sent my first draft of a paid consultancy report out for review too, so I might actually get paid this month.

All good things!

Cashed out some shares

This week I submitted withdrawal requests from my Wealthify robo-investor and my Lloyds Sharedealing. These should complete at the end of next week or the start of the week after. It’s less than the £10k I had planned to draw down at the start of the year, but it’s not exactly a small dip.

The reason for this is that I’m funding my share of the startup costs.

It’s hard to draw down from your investment pot when you’ve been so focused on FIRE for a few years. Objectively though, this is the right choice for me. If my business(es) work out, I’ll be set up for bigger long-term success; if they don’t, it’s maybe 6 months of anticipated savings should I go back into legal practice. The risk is worth taking.

Distractions and detours

Rock bar reopening

Spent yesterday going to see a mate’s band at a rock bar that it turns out another friend of mine has just bought with his partner.

Obviously with startup life I wasn’t exactly hard partying – can’t afford it! – but a beer and a catch up with a few people was pretty cool. The new owner wasn’t happy in her old job and it’s great to see good people doing stuff to improve their situation.

Readers will be glad to know that I had exactly 3 beers and one of them was on the house. I nursed it like a broke student. Should’ve asked for a straw to make it go further!

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

Guitar this week was the start of Orion by Metallica.

I spent last week doing some improvising against backing tracks. I’m not what I would call “good” or “listenable”, but I’m also not “completely shite” anymore. That’s progress.

Orion is deceptively difficult. The concept is easy but the timing has to be absolutely correct to make it actually sound like the song and not just like someone having a seizure on guitar strings. Easy to learn, hard to master.

Poor Lady SierraWhiskyMike is going to listen to me sound like nails on a blackboard for a bit while I practice the fast strumming, which I basically have to do through an amp to test my technique.

Fitness

If I’d written this yesterday, I would have said I’ve been enjoying the conveniently available CrossFit classes.

This morning, while packing up to return home, I put my knee out. Don’t ask how, I don’t really know. So now when I walk I get shooting pains on the inside of my kneecap every so often without much warning. Wearing hiking boots seems to help, so I guess it’s a tendon or ligament issue that the supportive footwear is temporarily solving.

Ouch.

This is the same knee that I injured last year doing the marathon training. Can’t be a coincidence.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to call a physio/ sports medicine place and see if I can just get it scanned. It’s probably a case of a knee brace and orthotic insoles for a bit, but this is getting painful now and I need to know what’s up.

Bugger.

If it’s a long-term thing, that will probably put paid to CrossFit and I’ll stick to calisthenics, maybe take up swimming again. I won’t stop doing exercise but I might have to do low impact stuff for a while. Obviously if it’s just a temporary thing then I’ll rest a week and get back into it later.

Final thoughts

Startup life is definitely showing promise, it’s just a case of pushing onwards now and getting things together. Maintain pace and drive on!

Injuring myself again is a blow to my ego. I barely ever hurt myself in my military career, just the odd twinge, but now I do desk work I seem to get hurt all the time. I can’t tell if it’s the desk work or the previous career that’s done the damage here. Desk life is dangerous, dudes!

Whatever. I can keep wishing for more, or I can deal with the reality in front of me. Let’s get this looked at so I can get on with things.

Aside from that, I’ve had a pretty great week!

Now, if you’ll excuse me – I have to make some bread for next week’s lunches.

My financial independence campaign continues!