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

Progress on my goals

Boat life

Wind is a little punchy for our junior-level skills, so no sailing today. Which is a champ, because it’s otherwise glorious weather outside.

I guess I’ll do some guitar, or maybe just chill out for a bit!

Distractions and detours

Caffeine detox aftermath

I went back to coffee on day one. Reality is tricky without some kind of chemical perk.

On the plus side, I’m now easily able to control my caffeine intake, and have reduced it to one strong cup a day. I find that an espresso or double espresso in the morning with a big glass of water powers me through the entire day without needing a little pick-me-up.

This pretty much means that I’m enjoying less but better quality coffee, appreciating the benefits but not relying on it, which is pretty much what I’d hoped to achieve.

Not sure if my blood pressure dropped as a result but I sleep well, don’t get big cravings anymore and when I drink a coffee (a) I’ll have it black and unsweetened and (b) I can actually feel the effects.

So I’d say a caffeine detox is worth doing overall.

Job hunt

Last week I resigned from my high paying but unnecessarily stressful corporate law job.

I don’t have a plan set in stone yet. My work had asked for a few days to think of a proposal for me to stay with them, but I’m not banking on it and over a week later I’ve started looking around.

This week I applied to a venture capital firm, but I also discovered that my island is looking for firefighters and I’ve asked for more information. The pay on the last one won’t be great, but maybe I’d appreciate the sense of purpose and I’m very aware that most firefighters have a side hustle or gig to bring in extra cash, which would allow me to pursue either freelance writing or the odd law job on the side.

If all else fails I’ll try and work for myself.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

This week is Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton. It’s there to experiment with finger picking rather than using a plectrum, which is something I’ve pretty much neglected to practice.

The exercise book I bought for scales is pretty clear and I’ve added exercises from that into my regular practice. I’m getting reasonably comfortable with C Major now, just need to hammer this home a bit then I’ll continue onto the next mode of it.

Fitness

I’ve trained hard this week. Two weights sessions, a 6-mile run, a cycle to work and a 45 minute cross trainer to ease my legs off on Friday. Happy with that.

Exercise is an important part of my life and I feel a lot more stressed without it, so this is brilliant.

To be fair though: if I hadn’t resigned and wasn’t in my notice period, I’d have been reluctant to do so much exercise in the week. Now that I’ve made my intentions clear I don’t feel much remorse about taking a longer lunch break to fit in meaningful training.

Final thoughts

Telling my family and friends I’d resigned from law wasn’t as daunting as you’d expect. I was expecting “Oh no, stick it out!” but the dominant theme was basically “Yeah, makes sense!”.

Still a little weird that I’m turning down the semi-certain chance of hitting FIRE in 5 years to basically hope for another way around, but screw it. My health is way more important, and I’m so much happier with more exercise time in my week. It’s clear to me now that I value being fit more than money.

I also got a lovely bit of fan mail this week. It’s not my first time, but it’s a warm and fuzzy moment for me any time someone reaches out to say they’ve enjoyed my blog. There are more of us having these same thoughts than you’d expect, and we all have more similarities than anyone would think possible. For example:

  • One FI Campaigner is planning to move to a narrow boat
  • Another is an archer and writer, who is now doing the home renovation thing I did early on in the Campaign
  • A couple of people have been ex-military too, and they’re now getting to grips with money and planning things out

So if you don’t feel comfortable commenting publicly, you can always write to me and I do (eventually) write back.

My financial independence campaign continues!