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

Progress on my goals

Boat life

Actually, very little to report from boat life.

This weekend has been fantastic weather and we’ve mostly chilled out on the boat. There’s something cool about sitting out on the deck with the sun shade up and just chatting and thinking about stuff.

It occurred to us that our current careers don’t allow us to maximise this boat life at all. After the realisation last week that we’re not far from CoastFI now, which was the target I was aiming to reach in a little under 7 years’ time, I’ve been re-evaluating what I actually want from life and whether maintaining a highly stressful job is even necessary given our teeny tiny outgoings.

Regular readers will know that I’ve been struggling with this question for a while.

I’ve been approached by a start-up company and asked to apply for a job that would be fully remote with flexible hours, and involve me setting up as a freelancer on a fixed term contract. There are some hurdles because not only do I need to pass their interviews but I’d also need to clear this with my profession’s regulator. Still, it could be an avenue worth pursuing that would allow me to maximise the benefit of boat life.

Distractions and detours

Started reading philosophy

I listened to Ryan Holliday’s The Obstacle Is The Way on Spotify this week while I was in the gym. It’s a great book and I’d recommend it to anyone.

Stoicism isn’t something I’m too familiar with, although it became trendy for a while, so I really enjoyed the way Ryan explained it and the key thoughts behind it.

As a result of the book, I’ve reattempted reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. I’d found it to be inaccessible last time, but Ryan’s own website recommended a particular translation to read on Kindle that was in modern spoken English.

I guess Ryan, king of The Daily Stoic, probably struggled with a few readings in his time, too.

Anyway, philosophy is something that is important and I’ve noticed it creeping into my life more and more as we progress on the financial independence campaign. When you first realise that you’d like to be financially independent, you start to ask “why?” a lot.

It’s also something that I think anyone can discuss and will be helpful thinking material for anyone on their own financial independence campaign, no matter whether their goals align with mine or what stage they’re at. I’ve decided to write a separate segment of articles on this blog with this in mind, mainly to throw my ideas out into the world and see if anything comes of it. Might also help me with developing those ideas or introducing new ones, who knows?

Dirty stop out night…

An impromptu night out on Friday turned quite heavy and Saturday was a day of many hungover regrets.

So that sucked.

Many pounds out of pocket and a day wasted, maybe not the best use of time or money. Definitely a setback and a distraction.

Caffeine problems

Law is hard. You’re staring at PDF documents, searching for specific words, working out the impact of changes, and drafting frankly long and boring (but important) documents for companies that think your rates are too high but are making millions in profit from any deal. You have multiple bosses, all of whom think their requests are top priority, and your clients call up with requests that are “urgent” and “must complete this week/ today/ in the next hour”, because most people don’t value knowledge work.

So I may have been relying on coffee as my stimulant-of-choice to get me through the weeks.

Well, for the last two weeks I’ve developed muscle twitches around my left eye. Naturally, I turned to the internet, where Dr Google told me variously that it was brain cancer, Bell’s palsy or (after dialling down the drama a notch) too much caffeine and stress.

I guess I can’t rule out the scarier first two, but when I looked up how much coffee was too much for regular consumption I relied upon Occam’s Razor and identified the problem right there.

As I type this, I’m on Day 2 of caffeine free month. The idea is to detox completely, then decide if I want to reintroduce this into my life.

Actually, this decision fed into the latest round of career introspection. If I’m right, my career and lifestyle have directly impacted my health. Big red flag, will need to resolve that issue – but one bridge at a time.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

We’re still progressing with The Evil That Men Do. I’m starting to sound pretty confident and we’re moving onto the first part of the solo, so that’s cool.

Learned this week that I strum better with my guitar at hip height. Gives me a few fretting problems, but it sounds a lot cleaner. I guess I’ll adapt my technique to be more relaxed from now on!

Fitness

Apart from hitting the beers on Friday, my fitness has been going pretty well. Getting a membership at the gym near work has been a great investment, I’m generally training intentionally three times per week. Managed to do a 1.5mile run in under 9 minutes this week (8:40-something) which is pretty good going for my age, albeit it’s on a treadmill so add 30 seconds for reality.

Final thoughts

OK, so I set myself back by going out for a night of drinking. We can all see how that’s a limiting factor in my financial independence campaign, so I don’t think I need to elaborate on that too much. It happens.

Caffeine free month is likely to suck. I’m not keen, I love a coffee, but having had spontaneous eyebrow spasms for over a week and feeling them getting worse I can’t really take the “do nothing” approach.

Which brings me back to the main problem: I work a hard job when I don’t really need to. The cognitive dissonance is very real.

I’m hopeful that this new opportunity will bear fruit. If it doesn’t, I may – for health reasons – need to look at doing something else to earn money. I need to earn so little of it to survive, I’m surprisingly close to my CoastFI goal already (so it has already paid off), perhaps I could afford to do something less stressful now?

Not a problem that I can solve this week, but it’s something to think about.

My financial independence campaign continues!