Thoughts and reflections form the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
Progress on my goals
To be honest: not much has happened on the FIRE side.
I’ve kept costs down, but it hasn’t been a particularly exciting week for financial independence.
Our main activity has been starting to move our stuff out of the room we’re staying in at the moment and into storage, or getting our stuff back out of storage to get rid of it.
Will we need gardening kit on a boat? Probably not. Call me a gambler if you like, I don’t think it’s going to be important.
Distractions and detours
So, ironically, work has been my biggest distraction this week, as well as my main means of getting to CoastFI.
Law is fairly long hours anyway (I work offshore, so it’s not as bad, but you’d be hard pressed to describe legal practice as “having a good work-life balance”). This week we also had a client hosting event that pretty much wrote off a whole evening.
To be fair, it was pretty cool, and the beer was free.
Mario 64 is still badass
Regular readers will remember that I had my Nintendo 64 modified with an RGB output signal, so that the fuzz is removed on digital TVs.
This week, I got to try it out!
I can report that both Mario Kart 64 and Mario 64 are great games and, despite the pixelated graphics, do in fact withstand the test of time. Unsure if that’s cool or nerdy, but I’m loving it.
Musical detour
I listened to Ozzy Osborne’s 2022 album Patient Number 9 this week on the suggestion of my guitar teacher. I was a bit hesitant after seeing Black Sabbath play Download festival in 2017 – not the best gig I’ve ever seen – but Ozzy’s voice comes out really well on the album. I’ve been getting into it, and the track Nothing Feels Right is a bit of an earworm.
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
Guitar this week was Ozzy Osborne’s I Don’t Know, which is why the Ozzy album came up in conversation.
The idea is that I’m progressing palm-muted single-note strumming, which is a sound that’s key in a lot of rock music. The Iron Maiden sone last week had all downward strums but this track means I need to use alternate (i.e. up-and-down) picking.
Obviously, I’m not a good guitarist. It hasn’t been long enough. But my teacher seems happy with my progress and I’m stoked that we’re playing songs I’d choose to listen to.
Fitness
Went swimming twice this week, but didn’t really get into it. Don’t know why, just wasn’t feeling it, so I switched a run in place of Friday’s planned swim.
My running pace is still OK. Not military fit, but still a comfortable 7:20 – 7:30 a mile for five miles. That’s OK for a desk jockey like me, I’m probably not going to improve that while being a lawyer. And also trying to do everything else.
I’m starting to miss weight training, so I might need to sort out a better gym membership. The problem where I am is that the gyms are generally awful and because real estate rents are ridiculous the gym memberships are also hilariously expensive.
First world problems.
Final thoughts
I’ve done a lot this week, but not much of it helps out my financial independence campaign.
Then again, most of it was already budgeted for, free or cheap.
I guess this week I mainly just ticked along and recovered from all the recent sailing drama. That’s cool, it’s enough for now.
My financial independence campaign continues!
