Oddly, this journal usually gets around 70 hits per month, the last 22 days it got more than 200. I honestly wonder why that is. The difference seems significant somehow. Either I've reached a critical level of posts where people are convinced that I intend to keep the journal up and they now intend to keep coming back or I've reached just enough content that some are coming back to read something they've seen before (for whatever reason, I don't consider this journal a treasure trove of information as much as a landfill).
It feels like forever since I last posted something, which I guess is a testament to just how mentally fast paced my existence is at the moment.
I've been working 7 days per week for about 12 weeks, and I'm currently in the final stages of preparing for what I expect to be my last important exam in university. My mental surplus is really running on fumes and deeply ingrained habits right about now. I'm expending vast amounts of willpower every time I have to sit myself down and open a book (or rather click on stats.stackexchange and marvel at the pedagogical prowess of some of the world's foremost statisticians).
I had a single very unproductive day (rare for me!) and I decided to just do a brain dump to get the turmoil out of my head and down unto a piece of paper where I could get an overview and prioritize yet again. This is basically what I did a few posts ago, but this time I could tell that I was trying to balance a lot of unrelated thoughts at the same time, rather than fix external issues.
I grabbed a mug o' joe, my favourite mechanical pencil (it's bright yellow), a block of lined paper, sat down in our coffee room and stared out the window for a few seconds before I started jotting down all the things that were currently on my mind...
I bent over the paper and opened the flood gates.
At 5 full pages my new Magnum Opus beautifully illustrated all the shit going on inside my head. I was actually quite amazed that I had even gotten anything done the days leading up to this one fatal one where I finally mapped out my incohesive thinking.
By now my coffee was cold and completely untouched and I realized that maybe, just maybe I should get a f***** grip and actively start ignoring a whole lot of shit going on at the moment and focus on what is truly important.
I'm not going to reproduce the whole thing here, but it was tremendously useful to take a 20 minute time-out to make a list, make some decisions, make a smaller list of important things and then get on with my life.
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I read 'Own the World' by Andrew Craig, and somehow it got me excited about stock picking(*).
I'm ignoring stock picking for now, but it has seriously gotten me interested in how one is trained to be a stock picker. Every topic taught has certain feedback mechanism and certain kinds of lectures/exercises one goes through to appreciate the topic and its intricacies. I wonder how one would go about setting up a, say, seminar series on how to learn how to pick stocks; the reading material, the exercises, the gotchas and the actual application of the knowledge. As indicated by almost every piece of research into didactics, rapid and specific expert feedback is the primary way to teach people something, once they are both willing and able to learn that is.
In a system and obscure and slow as investing, the feedback mechanism would be expected to be exceedingly slow, and I'm thinking if there is a way to speed up the process in any meaningful manner.
None the less, even though Own the World is written in a rather abrasive and generalizing tone he does have some interesting points about global allocations, and especially on the importance of differentiating between the 'official' rate of inflation and the 'actual' rate of inflation. Yet again a piece of investing literature has presented me with options and things to consider, and yet again I see how taxes (in DK) will completely screw me over if I try to build anything like a global portfolio of mixed assets.
For now I'm investing in a global large cap blend fund of stable companies and two large cap value funds covering the EU and the US. Until I find more good funds to pad the portfolio those three funds comprise my portfolio, but in time I'd love a global corporate bonds, global corporate bonds, and global commodities part, as well as some rental property somewhere in the Copenhagen area. I have several friends who are interested in REIT and since I can build stuff, we can buy some horridly ugly properties and make them shine. Then all I need is a revenue generating blog, a part time statistician gig and some book royalties and I'm free(**)
I'm actually seriously considering going part-time much before a 'sane' retirement net worth. It does, however, very much depend on how exploitative the job market for statisticians/physicists/maths/programmers is in the CPH area. I'm VERY good and VERY productive for about 35 hours per week, then my productivity just plummets and all I'm doing is wasting time away from friends and family. I CAN be very good and productive for 45 hours per week, but then I crash and get very little done while I recuperate, so in the long run it's better to work less and maintain a steady progress. I know, because I've been monitoring my work efficiency for the last 4 years(***).
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It's not lentil soup by the way, it's called tarka dal and it tastes awesome! I need to learn how to make my own naan though, but other than that I'm very much enjoying learning about vegetarian recipes. I've made Dal a couple of times and I'm almost at a stable version of the recipe.
Learning to cook is a surprising lot of fun. You build something from first principles rather than from a recipe... then you eat it. What a mind-blowing concept!
I've always cooked, but I've never given the taste, texture and composition of ingredients much thought. Learning is fun.
My daughter is 2.5 years old and she can recognize lentils, chick peas, black and white beans. I was about 34 before I was able to do that
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My alternative exercise program is going okay. With 20 minutes specifically it's very hard to claim you cannot find the time to exercise. It is exercise, not training however and the lack of specific progress toward a pre-determined goal means one is fucking around in order to move one's limbs in an intentionally encumbered manner, rather than working on getting good at subject X. The strength first, then cardio-till-time-is-up works quite well for me. I'm tempted to look at the time while I'm on the strength part though, which is silly, so I need to condition myself into ignoring the timer once it's set.
I never realized just how brutally taxing it is to press two kettlebells to lockout and do loaded walking for 10 minutes until I tried it... Christ almighty that kind of torture is for people made of a different stuff than I! Loaded carries with kettlebells is slightly awkward though and I'm thinking of ways to supplement it somehow. I need something really heavy and unwieldy (****) and kettlebells just aren't heavy enough for regular suitcase carries or dinosaur-like loaded carries, although they do overhead carries very well!
Heh... My left-hand kettlebell snatch technique is so bad that my latissimus is visibly larger on the left than the right. I'm using muscle rather than technique to bring the 'bell overhead. So there is still much room for progress here. I'm staying with the program for now.
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We're getting the keys for the new house tomorrow. I'm looking very much forward to seeing our savings rate go:
up up up
UP UP and awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!
PS:
This journal update covers about one third of wanted I really wanted to dump in here. I think the rest goes on the wait-a-month list (like you do every time you think of buying something) and see if it still feels like it's something I need to communicate at the beginning of July.
(*)... 'cause I TOTALLY need to consider all that shit right now!
(**) If you're able to hold your breath until 2024, please feel free to hold your breath in anticipation.
(***) I always thought everyone did this, but it seems that optimizing is not of prime importance for a lot of people on this planet...
(****) Like my ex GF!