Thoughts and reflections form the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
Progress on my goals
Boat plan
Boat hauled out as planned, without a hitch. Well, no hitch on our side, but the marina crew had some issues because visitors had moored across the ramp overnight.
That’s like the boat equivalent of someone parking their car across your drive.
Timing was pushed back a few hours and my “boss, can I come into work a bit later?” became “Sorry, I’ll put in a half-day’s leave.”
This bank holiday weekend (and probably next weekend), yours truly shall spend the time replacing the sacrificial anodes I removed this morning and repainting a fresh coat of anti-fouling paint on the bottom.
Distractions and detours
Book hangover of the week
Just finished the second book of The Stormlight Archives series by Brandon Sanderson. After my initial criticism that the start of the first book was a hard workout for the reader, I can confirm that the pace and bombardment of new information improves massively by the second book.
Cue some restless nights of sleeping because I’ve been reading too late!
Would recommend this series so far, but readers must be willing to persevere with the overload of information in the first half of the first book. It’s worth the investment but it is an investment, and that’s presumably a feature of Sanderson’s writing, like a risk that he knowingly takes in his books. I haven’t read his other series, but his interviews suggest that he’s a 100,000-words-a-book writer. It ain’t for everyone.
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
We did another Ghost song this week as an exercise in learning things by ear, rather than by guitar tab. So now I know at least two Ghost riffs. We also sped through Living After Midnight by Judas Priest in about 10 minutes, but I think that was an exercise basically to show har far we’ve come.
When we started it took me the best part of a month to get Sunshine of your love down, and that was the Grade 1 version.
So I guess that’s progress?
I still feel like a total beginner. I said this to one of my guitar-playing friends, and his take on it was that this feeling never goes away. Huh!
While hauled out, I’m being kindly put up in my mother-in-law’s house, so I should have some more time to do guitar practice given that there’s not a lot else to do in the evenings and I don’t need to factor in the difficulties of boat life admin.
Fitness
I’m now doing the Jack H Woods workout on Mondays (probably Tuesday this week, given the bank holiday) and a weighted pull-ups/dips session later in the week, with some cardio, flexibility and skills progressions thrown around it as-and-when.
Strength gains so far have been very real, so this calisthenics plan has been working for me.
This week has been hellish at work so I’ve noticed I’m getting less cardio in that I’d ordinarily like. Need to walk more I suppose! On the other hand, painting the boat this week has been a solid non-exercise activity. Lots of steps in and my arms are starting to feel it.
My knee hasn’t really recovered since RunningGate. I’m able to do bodyweight squats on it and I can now take it on short jogs, but I feel the impact and I’m feeling pain in it when I do things like go up stairs and ladders. Which is a problem, because I do a lot of those things!
It’s getting better all the time, but I’ll have a thing about getting the knee checked out.
Final thoughts
The boat has been the time sponge this week, but I don’t really mind that because the liveaboard life has been kind of my thing for a while now. It’s something I want to do, not something I have to do. The work is a little hard – wearing a respirator for three hours to paint an 11m boat with a 10cm foam mini-roller is a bit of a patience test – but I get a sense of satisfaction out of doing it, it’s not like I’m regretting the time I spend on the boat.
I mean the boat is the thing I want to do more of!
Fitness is going really well. Less is more. Taking a vegan protein supplement along with my breakfast has cut out most of my sugar cravings and I seem to be both exercising smarter and eating less. Didn’t expect that to happen. My body seems to be responding to the heavier resistance calisthenics better than it did to the marathon training.
Right. As I write this, I’m looking at another day of painting the boat in tomorrow. Been outside all day, feeling sleepy… going to lie down…
My financial independence campaign continues!
