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

Progress on my goals

Boat life

My loving assistant, Lady SierraWhiskyMike, forgot to arrange for us to borrow the angle grinder. Tank has been pushed back yet another week.

We had a marine electrician visit this weekend to talk about navigation aids. Ours are so obsolete that I think the Nintendo 64 was still a current games console when they were fitted, and they haven’t worked in the whole time that we have had the boat. Lady SierraWhiskyMike has a long shopping list that my wallet is presently living in fear of. I hope for a compromise on at least some of these things. Wish me luck!

By contrast: I’m on Team Paper-chart-hand-compass. There are two types of sailor.

Storm season has started in the Channel Islands and I’m no longer writing this from the sunny cockpit that doubles as our conservatory. I’m hiding below and writing on the saloon table, like all brave men before me.

More decluttering

We used our productive Saturday energy to re-visit our storage locker. It’s weird going back and reviewing the items, it’s like the people who packed the locker aren’t connected to the people that we now are. The ghost of our old life was in there, plus the seasonal kit we actually need the locker for while we’re working full time here.

Some of the stuff has been downsized again. I’ve bitten the bullet and put my electric drum kit on Facebook marketplace. I’d bought that kit on my return from a deployment to Afghanistan, on the basis that the acoustic kit I already had wasn’t allowed to be set up in the house and Lady SierraWhiskyMike reneged on her promise to let me build a drum shed in our garden at the time. Suffice to say: it’s an emotional decision for me, because I’m basically admitting that I’ll never play drums seriously again and I’ve been playing those since I was about 13. This is part of the reason I do guitar lessons now.

We’re planning to relocate the storage unit to one closer to the boat, so that we actually use it more frequently for items that we need close to hand but don’t want on the boat.

Payday!

I got paid, made my equity investments and continued with my physical gold purchases. Same old, same old.

There are a few work trips, one to London and one to New York, that are happening this month. I’m also getting the second phase of ink done on my leg tattoo. As a result, I’m being a bit stingier with my spending on the weekends to compensate for the likely damage to my current account and slush fund.

We’ve got a weekend in Paris booked for our anniversary in November and of course there’s Christmas, so I guess Jan-Mar 2025 are going to be lean spending months!

Distractions and detours

Bodytrax scanner

Turns out that the body composition scanner in my gym is free with my membership, so I used that this week.

While the machine says I’m totally healthy as an adult of my age, and that I have a pretty decent lean muscle mass, my body fat was something like 22%. I’ve actually lost weight so I’m happy with my progress, but I don’t think it’s too big an ask for me to chip this down to 15% ish over, say, six months if I allow for setbacks.

We switched to a plant-based diet a few weeks ago and it seems that I’ve lost about 3kg over that time, which is a safe fat loss rate (about 6-8 weeks). I reckon if I just keep doing what I’m doing with my lifestyle changes (and activity monitoring!) and dodge any junk food binges this problem will solve itself.

In case you’re wondering: my weakness is absent-minded sugar intake. Corporate law is stressful, and it’s always someone’s birthday in the office so there’s often cakes or sweets around. That’s not necessarily a problem in itself, but if I eat sweets all the time I add in lots of extra calories and – because it’s empty sugar calories – still put away a decent dinner. Switching to a plant based diet and reducing meat consumption has dropped my calorie consumption of fats, which definitely helps, but it’s the junk food that does me in. Worst thing is that you barely register having eaten it.

It was pretty intimidating! The Bodytrax machine stands in the centre of our gym, opposite the reception desk and in sight of the door. As I took my shoes and socks off, other men looked at me and backed away, as if I was peer pressuring them into doing this, too. I checked around and I was probably the leanest person in the gym other than the staff, which is probably typical of a gym in a corporate district, and I still have a higher body fat percentage than I’d like.

So, yeah, I understand if you’re avoiding the body scanners too. Still, forewarned is forearmed (or something like that), knowledge is power (etc).

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

We’re doing more work on Black Dog by Led Zeppelin and have moved onto the second riff.

I’ll be honest and admit that I’ve never really been a Zeppelin fan. When I first heard them was in the 2000s when the “remasters” came out on CD and, frankly, they sucked. Way too over-engineered, designed to suit the sound of the times rather than the feel of the music.

However, I did at least know the song, and I can tell you it’s one of the more fun songs to play. Lots of chromatic runs of notes, quarter-bends and timing changes that make it sound a bit sleazy. It’s quite a sleazy song!

Might go into the list of riffs I practice regularly just for fun.

Fitness

Started to re-introduce myself to running this week after the break I took to let the plantar fasciitis warning disappear. That’s been a sensible decision and I ran 8.5miles as a test today after limiting my running this week to short-distance treadmill work.

My tattoo appointment is 9 October and I’ll be out of action (for running at least!) for two weeks after that, so I reckon I can train as normal this week with the big rest coming up.

I plan to keep walking as the tattoo heals so I don’t suffer as much of a setback as I otherwise might, but the tattooist was very clear last time that going to the gym, swimming pool, sea swimming or going for a big sweaty run was a no-no until after the scabbing phase. I might sneak into the gym to do dumbbell work and pull-ups this time, but definitely not in the first week while there’s a risk of it weeping.

Tattoos are cool but the process is pretty gross.

I’ve been doing a lot more calisthenics. Although I’m training for the marathon, I’d rather maintain muscles mass if I can than obsessively get the fastest time. This means I need to keep training the other muscle groups, and calisthenics is working out for my upper body and core. I can structure the workouts to leave my legs alone and use the running programme to keep those developing.

I figure hill reps and sprint training are effectively a replacement for squats and deadlifts given my short-term goals. I’ll probably re-introduce the barbell later, but for now my priority for my legs is conditioning them for a 3-4 hour run.

Final thoughts

Not the boat progress I was hoping to report, but still progress was made. I guess we’re really committing to this way of life now. I’m happy with that, even if that means letting go of things I still think are awesome.

Oh, if we quit this and go back into conventional accommodation, I’m totally drumming again.

Then again, guitar is kind of scratching that itch. Not perfectly, because I’m an average beginner guitarist whereas I was a pretty experienced drummer, but it’s sort of there.

Fitness has been on my mind a lot lately. Having the data recorders available is holding me accountable: I can’t lie to a Bodytrax machine and say “I’m probably a little under 20% body fat…” (which, by the way, was my working estimate!) but I can start to measure monthly progress towards an actual measurable and achievable goal.

My financial independence campaign continues!