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

I can explain…

Progress on my goals

Boat life

Eurgh. Sad news on this front.

We fixed the engine and all was good, we were well prepared for an exciting summer of adventure.

Then, over the last weekend (more below), our elderly dog suffered a temporary illness that has made his legs permanently a whole lot worse. So much so that we don’t think we can reasonably ask him to live on the boat.

This is probably at the point that he needs end-of-life care. It’s only a matter of time before he becomes entirely unable to walk and we need to take him to his last vet appointment.

So, despite really not wanting to, we;re renting the mum-in-law’s basement room again to see out his last months.

Obviously we knew this day would eventually come. I was thinking we’d be doing this over winter, but life had other plans.

The dog isn’t dead yet, he’s still excited and happy to do things, he just can’t manage the rigours of life aboard anymore. This is the ethically right call.

Clearing the dog’s presence from the boat was pretty brutal. All the traces of him being on there and our life aboard together – which was fantastic while it lasted – needed to be taken out, as if he was never there, because he’s never coming back home. We were effectively mourning a death that hasn’t even happened yet.

The boat is now configured to be sailed at a moment’s notice. We plan to keep her ready to go and take advantage of weekend sailing opportunities over the summer.

We have no plans to get another pet after him. To be honest, if house prices in the Channel Islands had been more reasonable, we’d have waited until life after the dog to buy the boat; the economics forced our hand a little.

The side benefit is that we can now moor the boat the easy way, i.e. bow-first into the finger pontoons. That takes a lot of the friction out of actual sailing of the boat. It’s a lot easier to moor that way and get out by reversing, especially in cramped marinas in our playing area.

So it’s sad. We’re not living aboard, and when we do return home it will be because we no longer have our dog.

Start-up work

This has been where my focus went for the last 4 weeks and sorry-but-not-sorry is the reason I haven’t been writing.

It’s going pretty well.

We were compelled to do a demo for the regulator, which I *think* we’ve passed pretty comfortably. They’re now deciding what restrictions/controls they need to place on us as a new business.

We’ve been approached by three potential customers, too, which is pretty good seeing as we are legally prevented from marketing until the regulatory consent has been approved.

I have learned to build something called an API (Application Programming Interface – see this explainer) using that Python coding and freely available libraries.

APIs are essentially how internet apps communicate with each other, and this means I’ve been able to use my basic coding knowledge to build quite a few automated systems that will save us hours each week of manual data collection and reporting. It’s even let me take my existing knowledge of websites and make a portal for our clients that has all of the reports and requests normally expected in our business at their fingertips, easily accessible on-demand.

So yeah, pretty cool.

There’s a ton more stuff to talk about here but it’s commercially sensitive so I just can’t put it on the blog.

After version: I’ve become a lawyer/coder and it’s massively paying off.

Distractions and detours

Writer’s club

Writer’s club continued and this week’s piece went down well. Small group this month, everyone is kind of knackered.

We’re almost over the initial “minimum viable product” hump with the startup so I might even get some time to follow one of my writing goals, who knows?

Download festival

Lady weekend Lady SierraWhiskyMike and me went to Download Festival. With my sister and her husband.

Standout bands of the weekend were: Bloodywood, Trivium, Native James, Tom Morello… and, bizarrely, German rave veterans Scooter.

I really wasn’t expecting Scooter to be a good show but trust me it’s worth doing. Hardcore and rave seemed well-received by the metal crowd.

Bloodywood, if you haven’t heard of them, are a nu-metal band from New Delhi. You wouldn’t think that Dhols would work with nu-metal but they really do. They put on a great performance, the music is fun, and they really love what they do – and it shows. I loved the album Rakshak and it turns out Lady SierraWhiskyMike had become keen from hearing them on Spotify. Great fun, definitely go and see.

Trivium are a band that’s been going for quite a while now. I really like it, the technical guitar playing is on point, but you either love that style of music or you just don’t. I got crowdsurfed – against my will, but I still loved it – during the set and had a great time.

Native James is new to me. I’d heard it on the Download Spotify playlist and thought it was worth checking out. Can confirm it’s a good set live. They brought on some “guest performers” at the end who pretty much sucked but the band itself was worth going to see. I don’t think they have an album yet, just some EPs.

Tom Morello is famously the guitarist from Rage Against the Machine. Most of the songs were covers of that and other bands but the whole performance was so well done and you could see the years of experience of working up a crowd. Musically, the standout act of the festival.

Headliner on Friday was Limp Bizkit who were… OK. The songs sounded right and stuff but the vibe was very much “going through the motions”. Of the three headliners, they were probably the strongest set.

Saturday headliner was Guns and Roses who sucked. Axl Rose lost his voice very early on, and we decided to call it a day and beat the rush out of the arena. I later heard that they finished early and people were like “Right – is that it? What do we do now?”.

Sunday headliner was Linkin Park. I thought they were a bit lacklustre but other people who were there rated the performance, so I guess it depends on where you were in the audience as to whether it was a good show or not.

Our dog

We got back from Download to learn that over the weekend he’d had an emergency vet appointment because he’d picked up a bug.

On its own: not very serious. Take a few antibiotics and crack on.

However, he’s an old boy, and this has made his already-arthritic legs a lot weaker.

A week after the vet visit, he’s finding standing for long periods uncomfortable and he walks a bit like his back legs are peg legs. He can go for walks of a few hundred metres but taking him for a mile or more is probably a no-go.

This is effectively the beginning of the end for him, poor guy.

While he’s still excited and getting around on his own we’re happy to keep him going but the day where he just doesn’t want to get up is probably fast approaching, likely this year. We’re ready to deal with that and he’s old for a dog of his size, so as sad as it is there’s nothing unexpected here apart from the suddenness of the change.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

We abandoned Run DMC in favour of The Eagles, which I also sucked at.

It’s weird: I’m definitely improving at a steady rate, but guitar seems to be an exercise in sucking at something for a long time and eventually making marginal gains.

I spoke to other guitarists and they have pretty much confirmed this: suck, get better, still suck but at a slightly higher standard.

Being back on land and having the comforts that this comes with should encourage me to practice more.

Fitness

Been particularly poor for fitness because we sprinted to meet the demands of the regulator. The bulk of the work has been done now though, so it’s time for a regain.

Kettlebells this week revealed exactly how much my conditioning has degraded through neglect this last month!

Not to worry. I’m like 38, I’m not training for any particular goal that has immediate consequences, I can take it slow and regain my fitness to a reasonable standard.

Final thoughts

The month has been insanely productive and I was ready to report a stack of good news. This was unfortunately stopped in its tracks by the sad developments with my dog.

I guess the immediate financial setback is that we’re now renting a room as well as having paid for annual rent at the marina. While we’re pre-revenue, this probably means I’m going to have to dip into my assets to cover the shortfall.

Which is a financial setback to be sure, but it’s fine. I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I was the person who bullied my dog to death with his end-of-life problems, or if I abandoned him at the end. That would be so much worse than a temporary money situation.

My financial independence campaign continues!