Thoughts and reflections from the past weeks from my own financial independence campaign.

Progress on my goals

Boat life

Tried to go out sailing last weekend but the wind and tides weren’t in our favour.

Instead… we scrubbed the decks. Yay, fun!

So I spent that weekend covered in caustic teak cleaners and thick green sludge.

This weekend we’ve decamped from the in-law’s house and Lady SierraWhiskyMike and I have spent the night back home on our sailboat. I’ve just had the best night of sleep that I’ve had in aaaages, it’s so good to be back aboard!

I’m a little disheartened that some of the anti-foul paint seems to have flaked off at the bow, exactly on the waterline, and has taken both the layer we put on and the previous layers beneath it. We need to get in the sea and have a closer look.

Initial feeling is that she needs a haul out, light sand and some touch-up paint. This seems to be a result of the heatwaves we’ve been having causing weird wear-and-tear as different materials shrink and get brittle. I’m not overly worried.

Start-up work

We now have:

  • a version 1 client portal
  • a version 1 client-facing API
  • an API key generator/ administrator portal
  • an office-side admin portal that does most of our business database admin
  • one-click backup scripts that take all of our database tables and save them as CSV files into Microsoft Sharepoint/ OneDrive

That’s pretty punchy, it’s a full operations suite.

Initial demonstrations to prospective clients have been positive. We’ve had some consistent requests for the same feature (“We want two signatories on our side”), which I’ll incorporate into the client portal next week. Basically, our clients are regulated finance businesses, so they like having a junior employee do the set-up while a director signs it off as approver.

I actually thought our products needed a bit more work before go-to-market. I’ve read lots of books and articles about how basic a minimum viable product needs to be, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it still is a surprise to be going out and getting favourable sales feedback when I’m looking at something that I’ve basically built from just ideas in my head thrown into “Johnny, Aged 5” levels of coding. It’s not a work of art, it’s a macaroni painting.

I think this bodes well. We have one serious customer who’s moving onto their due diligence of us, one who was keen but progress seems to have stalled slightly, and three others who want accounts but don’t have their own end clients in place yet.

With financial firms: they’re doing business with you on behalf of their own clients. It’s possible that we sell to the firm but the firm doesn’t get any end clients in to use the service, so it becomes a sale with no actual income. I’m cautiously optimistic..?

Distractions and detours

World Cup

Argentina lost so no prize for me. Spain deserved it, mind you.

I tried to be clever and put £20 on Spain to win, so I’d always see an upside. Unfortunately, I rushed the bet using a mobile website and accidentally selected an option where Spain had to win by two goals. Balls.

There’s a lesson in that.

New guitar toys

Spent £24 on a new guitar cable with a right-angled connector. I mostly play guitar sat on a boat settee or a sofa or the edge of a bed, and managed to damage the connectors of my old cable that sticks out from the connector at the base of the guitar body.

While I was in the shop I treated myself to a pick holder that I’ve stuck to the back of the headstock. Until now I’ve been carrying all the picks around in a tiny plastic grip-seal bag, like some kind of disappointing drug dealer. “You wanna buy some Dunlop? I got the Ultra or the Gator Grip“.

Writing club

I’ve still been going to writing club, but this time I didn’t do my homework.

The cost of having made so much progress with the startup is that I haven’t made any real progress with the writing. One of my goals at the start of the year was to make some money from y writing and that just hasn’t happened.

Actually, probably due a mid-year review…

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

We did Iron Maiden, then moved onto Watcher in the Sky by Ghost, now we’re onto Nothing Else Matters by Metallica.

I’m at a difficult point where I can play some pretty good riffs in some advanced songs but can’t upskill to the harder parts of them. My teacher isn’t worried and says that’s normal for where I am. I can play fairly simple songs all the way through, it’s just the next level of songs that’s half-doable and half-beyond me.

My playing is now getting reasonably “beginner good”. Lady SierraWhiskyMike now allows me to play out loud and even made the comment “I don’t have to wear headphones anymore when you practice!“. Thanks, babe!

Actually I’ve been practicing a lot more. Not often for very long, but generally 20 minutes or so a day, most days per week, with the odd hour-or-so longer session. That’s probably got something to do with sounding better.

Fitness

Now that the bulk of the coding is done and we’re adding new features / making bug fixes, I’ve been able to find time in my day to go back to the gym.

Have been averaging 3 sessions of “something” for the last three weeks. It’s generally some kind of run, some kind of barbells session, and some kind of either kettlebell or calisthenics session.

I’m pleased to report that the damage I’d done is being rapidly undone. It’s probably going to take me the rest of the year to get back into sort-of shape, so it’s now a year of recovering ground rather than progressing the calisthenics like I’d intended.

Actually, on that point: have gone back to barbells, not because it’s better than calisthenics (it isn’t) but because it’s a little less disheartening when you’ve put the weight on to return to weighted strength work. I’m squatting 105kg for 5 sets of 5 reps. Conversely, I’ve gone back to finding 3 sets of 5 pull-ups hard, because not only am I less conditioned now but there’s added weight to my fat arse.

I’m still doing the calisthenics, they’re just temporarily less of a priority while I get back into conditioning. The logic here is that I want going to the gym to have the least amount of mental friction so that I get back into routine with the least amount of stress. Things you enjoy, you find time to do. Working yourself up to attempt a chore tends to lead to running out of time to do the chore in.

Not worried about it, it’s just a fact of where I am. The cost of going all-out in the startup is that I temporarily sold out my fitness time. I knew it going in, I’ve paid that price, now I’m acting on the return to normal operations.

Final thoughts

I’m writing this from the boat and I absolutely confirm it’s great to be home for the weekend!

Startup is going well. Very well, in fact. Lots of early promise. Until we get a client to sign on the dotted line it’s all “promise”; still, good early indications.

As much as it sucks to be staying in someone else’s house, my guitar playing has really benefitted. I sound OK now. Not amazing, not life-changing, but OK. I want to practice out loud some more because it makes you feel way more inspired to play than headphones do, and now I’m getting to the point that even with the mistakes it sounds generally OK to try to practice aloud.

Fitness regain is progressing. It’s about time I got back into it.

My financial independence campaign continues!