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

Progress on my goals

Boat life

We made another big move to reduce the stuff we have in our storage unit. The plan isn’t to get rid of the unit (we’re already in the smallest unit we can rent and we need something that isn’t the boat for some stuff), it’s more about making what is in there easy to navigate so that we can go in and get it when we want it.

This means we finally got rid of some of the glassware we’ve been holding onto for like 3 years. Delicate glass sucks on a boat because it tends to smash if you stack it with other glassware or if you ram it into very small lockers that have other stuff in them. We’re not a boat that’s set up with a glamorous drinks cabinet for champagne flutes; we’re more the drink red wine from a tin mug crowd.

I also got rid of my PlayStation 4, which again had been sat unloved for a couple of years, because I don’t have a TV or a reliable internet connection. I’m not without toys and stuff, it just doesn’t make sense to have that kind of advanced games console that needs love, internet and probably a dry environment to really shine when I live on a boat where the humidity is between 60%-90% on any given moment.

We still have the Nintendo 64, which is in the storage unit for now, but that’s because I like to bring it out occasionally. I like that it’s robust, multiplayer, and doesn’t have much loading time so I can play a game for a few minutes and quit if something comes up without risking the device throwing a tantrum.

Overall it was pretty successful.

Start-up work

We closed our investment round and now I’m a Real Boy!

Most importantly: even though it’s not much, I’m now being paid by the start-up. That’s good news. Should give me breathing space to get this thing moving.

Distractions and detours

Physio

So I saw the physio, like I said I would.

It didn’t go particularly well. She’s suggested that I get an MRI of my knees and that she suspects from her testing that I’ve worn away bits of the backs of my kneecaps because of years of abuse.

How did she find this out?

Well, this week I got beaten up by a little southeast Asian lady who jabbed her thumbs into my knee joints until I screamed a bit.

There was one test where she asked me to tense my thigh muscles and then relax and it absolutely sucked. She’d put gentle pressure in with her thumbs and when my quadriceps relaxed onto it I thought she’d put 6-inch nails into my knee joint.

Lots of swearing. Physio seemed to enjoy it, maybe too much.

The initial consultation left me a bit deflated. It’s not looking likely that I’ll be sensibly able to carry on with some of the high impact training. Well, not in the same way at least.

“AI” experiments

This week I quit Elephas on the basis that I didn’t want to be paying for that and ChatGPT Plus.

I’ve continued to use ChatGPT to help me then set up LM Studio. Still some stuff to do, but I’ve used it to configure an open-source LLM (Qwen 2.5 14B) to work as a pretty decent contract drafting assistant. That’s ideal for what I’m planning to use these for: first draft/ outline drafts of legal documents that I will then edit and add to.

This seems to be a reasonable setup for me at the moment.

I’d like to explore AI agents, but for now I’ll settle for being a faster in-house counsel. Agents can come later.

Jeans rabbit hole

I didn’t commit yet, thinking I had a bit of time – and then last night Lady SierraWhiskyMike pointed out that I’d torn a hole in the pair I was wearing.

Ah. Maybe I don’t have time to wait for this jeans thing.

I’ll sort that out. For now, I’ve added hiking trousers to my normal clothing rotation because it’s cold and wet enough to justify outdoor kit at the moment.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

We switched from Orion to Welcome Home (Sanitarium), which is cool. My teacher thinks I can start learning longer pieces and giving some of the early solo parts in the song a go.

The guitar is buzzing quite a lot now. We think it’s the earth wire on the tone potentiometer. That means tomorrow I’ll need to solder a new wire between the two potentiometers to connect them up better. Guitars aren’t as complex as guitarists make out.

Fitness

Figuring that CrossFit is probably off the menu until I get an MRI sorted, I went back to the gym and trained twice this week.

The first session was swimming. I’m not a great swimmer, so it’s a good cardio workout for me and it gives me something to improve on. Previously, I’d been swimming for distance alone; now I’m starting to approach it as a more structured workout, so while I might only swim in 200m sets those sets are higher effort and (I tell myself) a bit faster.

The second was a mix of calisthenics work for upper body and classic back squats and dead lifts for legs. My thinking was that I could see if my knees were happy with a planar movement, which they seem to be. The knee pain must be repetition or impact-based, then.

I managed to get an off-peak membership, so as long as I avoid being in the gym after 1700hrs on a weekday I’m golden. It works out 25% cheaper.

Final thoughts

Knees are shot, jeans got a hole in, and I’ve been getting rid of more of my worldly possessions.

Sounds dark, right?

Well, all that is completely overshadowed by the awesome news that our investor is now committed.

I can pretty much focus on getting the second company built now without too much oh my gods can I still eat? worry. I won’t be making savings or major investments this year, just not dying, but I’m happy living cheaply to take a good go at getting this thing built.

My financial independence campaign continues!