Thoughts and reflections about the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
Progress on my goals
Boat life
Solar system
Two panels and a controller are now on the boat waiting for fitting. Lady SierraWhiskyMike and I had a play around with different layout locations and we think that the answer (at least, for now!) will be to attach 3 x 100W panels onto the Bimini canvas roof, which we’ll need to reinforce with nylon or polypropylene webbing and rig some attachment system to it.
The cable route through the lazarette to the electronics and battery area will work, I just need longer cables than the ones I have. Easily fixed.
So I reckon we’re going to need that sewing machine after all – and a third panel!
About that sewing machine…
The going rate for a used sailmaker sewing machine is about £400.
Someone we know is using a modern Singer heavy duty sewing machine designed for denim, but allegedly it’s “workable” rather than “effective”. That’s also roughly the same price point.
A new sailmaker machine, like a Sailrite, comes in at £1200 plus import headaches.
I’m a bit flinchy at spending that kind of money, but the canvas is looking sad and doing all that by hand would take us all year.
Weighed against the cost of £400-1500 for a dodger, £1,000-2,000 for a Bimini, and £2,000-2,500 for a stack pack on the sails, is it really that much?
So I guess I know where my spending money is going next month.
Distractions and detours
Gym membership
My gym membership comes to an end next month and they’ve upped the prices by 20%. I was already pretty pissy about paying £80 per month for a very average (but incredibly convenient) gym, but at least I was using it. That said, if I get (at best) 3 sessions in that gym in a week, and the price is now £103, I’m paying £8.58ish per session. If I only make it to the gym twice a week and train in the open air on the weekends, it’s even worse value at like £12.88 per session.
I wouldn’t mind that if the facilities suited me, but they’re OK at best. Usable, convenient, but not actually good for what I want to do.
The leisure centre is just a few more minutes walk away. The facilities are about equal, still not quite what I’d ideally want, but at £54 per month it’s a lot cheaper.
It’s irritating because what I actually want to do is start training with gymnastic rings, which is as easy as having a reliable straight bar out of the rain that I can suspend from. Guernsey, unfortunately, doesn’t have that many trees on it, but the real answer would be to find a place to train in a park or woodland and accept that winter will suck.
For now, it’s a distraction, but it’s FIRE-adjacent because I believe that being fit means giving yourself the longest time to do the things you want to do, earn the money you need and keep your medical costs down in the long term. Fitness is an investment.
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
I smashed out my playing of You Shook Me All Night Long – well, to Trinity Grade 3 standard. It’s a win for me!
I felt so pumped that I even woke up the next day with a massive grin and a sense of contentment. That’s it, I’ve hit the peak of my guitar career. I can die happy now.
This week’s challenge is the opening riff from Friday I’m In Love by The Cure. It’s theoretically a really simple riff because it’s just three notes, but the timing is vitally important so it’s harder to play (for me) than it really ought to be if there was any justice in the world.
I’m really excited to play again after smashing out AC/DC. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it was a total fluke – we then played it a second time and I screwed up the solo – but now I know that I can do it.
We also did a bit more on improvising in different positions on the fretboard in a deliberate key. The idea is to be deliberate in working out where the root notes of the scale are, and in doing so be able to move between scale shapes naturally.
This is a guitar-specific thing: on a keyboard, a scale of notes is all in a line, whereas with a guitar-style instrument the strings and the frets mean that your scale is over several positions for your hand, called a scale shape. You have four working fingers on your fret hand (well, some people use a thumb too, but that’s rare), so a shape basically helps you move along the fretboard to the next block of four fret spaces and play more notes in the same scale and key. To start with, you play around in one shape at a time, but I’m now getting better at remembering shapes because I practice them so I can start to move around and look cool get different tones of the same notes.
Fitness
This week I stumbled upon a YouTuber called Jack H Woods while I was listening to YouTube in the background cooking dinner. I’ve been putting in more calisthenics, so the algorithm played a follow-up to a video I’d just watched on something else, and it turned out to be this one (embed below).
To be fair, the opening presentation of this video is a bit… naff. If I wasn’t covered in onion juice at the time I would have skipped over the hyperbole. However, after the first couple of minutes, the guy raises a valid argument about strength training at the limit of your strength threshold, and using negative reps on an exercise that’s at the limit of what your body can do to ensure you stay there.
I’ve just done my third session of this and can confirm that I’m already seeing progress, albeit that’s to be expected as newbie gains tend to be a thing with any new training plan.
It’s weird spending so little time in the gym but walking away with my muscles feeling like they’ve put in some serious reps.
I’m going to keep cardio up alongside this because I feel like cardio is a mental health benefit as much as a training benefit. I can’t run yet, but this weekend we walked my 10km route and I reckon I can get back to cycling this week.
Final thoughts
So yeah, no tangible results yet but visible progress.
Gym training and guitar were the big features of my week, but I also made some progress on the solar system rig and that’s probably a few weekends away from being fitted.
Mood was pretty upbeat this week, so something must have been going right!
My financial independence campaign continues!
