grundomatic's journal

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:

Interesting about Vicki. I am a 7w6. My youngest sister is a 7w8, and she very much liked YMOYL, but one of the main reasons I am having difficulty promoting ERE with her is that her friendship circle includes a lot of people who inherited a lot of wealth, so she keeps arguing Picketty back at me.

I think you may be right about personality type trumping as one approaches (or approaches and recedes in wild oscillation as a 7) self-actualization. However, I "see" the FIRE space as being occupied more by *NTJ than INT*. Extroverted thinking or clearly displayed competence is more towards being a consistent "earner." INTP is more like somebody who would be an absent-minded, broke-azz yet frugal chess champion living alone in a garret*. Though I suppose in the current tech-driven economy, an INTP might be better renumerated than in other eras.

*Wow! I just realized that "I" actually currently do live alone in an actual garret. Clearly hanging out on this forum has had the effect of moving my functioning more from e to I, rather than P to J, which might have improved my chances of actually making some serious $$$

[daylen]

INTP is more like somebody who would be an absent-minded, broke-azz yet frugal chess champion living alone in a garret*.

Can confirm for N=1. This would probably be me if I didn't get along with my mom so well. Also doesn't hurt that my sex drive is probably in the bottom 0.1% for my age.

[grundomatic]

Oh, I have referenced the enneagram book I have checked out from the library the past couple days, for sure. (Have I mentioned my library ebook strategy? I check out way more books than I can possibly read in 21 days, because I get overzealous. Then I put the kindle on airplane mode and "return" all the ebooks so others can use them. As long as my kindle stays offline, I have forever to read those books. EP detour was intentional for flavor.) I was thinking that 7Wannabe5 could easily be a descriptive username for me, though in the recent past it could've been 7-need-to-drop-the-self-nagging-1-shadow instead. I resonate most with the 7w6 description, since we're talking about it.

Anyhow, I think the "design" part of ERE lifestyle design becomes more important the less like the "FIRE archetype" one is. There are fewer examples to copy. This is part of why I bothered starting a journal. Sharing my inner feelings does not come easily nor naturally, and I really dislike documenting anything. However, ERE has improved my life enough that when it came up that there was a need to make it work for people other than high-earning tech bros, I felt compelled to contribute. That if I start a journal and it helps just one ENFP lurker sort their shit out here in Rational Land, then I've made the world a better place. Usually I do that (make the world a better place) in person, with way less typing, thinking, and mental modeling, and way more socializing, joking, and laughing. Well, a better place by my standards, anyhow. I have a meme that sums it up for anyone that PMs me and requests it. More to say but out of time, I gotta go read to DW's class.

[7Wannabe5]

I like your e-book strategy. I must admit that no matter how many freebies I have piled up around me, I still spend a trackable amount of money on books.

way less typing, thinking, and mental modeling, and way more socializing, joking, and laughing

Makes me think (feel!) like I should start saying "yes" when the other teachers/tutors suggest margaritas. I need to expand my Friends of Pleasure circle.

[grundomatic]

MMM reminded me about the library, and maybe somewhat ironically ERE causes me to buy books that aren't available there. I've done interlibrary loan for some of the rare books, but there's no keeping those past the due date...they'll throw the book at you! I have no regrets, however. Though the cost is higher than $0, the value is typically there for books recommended on the forum.

I find the balance of self-development to be challenging sometimes. When shoring up weaknesses, challenging myself, or getting out of my comfort zone, I can lose myself. In my dogged pursuit of FIRE (plus other stresses), I completely squashed some things that previously came easy. Now I have a library book about fun on my desk. How did I ever get to this point? I guess learning the lesson of expanding the self without losing oneself or trying to be someone else is a valuable lesson, too.

This is part of why I bothered starting a journal.

Forgot to mention that I like being both a student and a lab rat.

[grundomatic]

I seem to need a concrete, external reason to "do" much of anything. EREfest has been the thing to get me to actually do stuff. No meals until midday? Guess I'll give this whole intermittent fasting thing a try. I've been skipping breakfast for weeks now and I like not feeling like I have to shove food in my face from the moment I wake up.

I like playing guitar, but don't really enjoy playing by myself. Like a sucka I volunteered to provide campfire sing-a-long music (no quality guarantees, sorry y'all). Knowing I was going to have to do that, I was able to force myself to play enough to at least build some calluses back up on the fingertips.

Today I'm on a tear getting things ready--decluttering the car, gathering the gear, cooking meals for DW to have while I'm gone, printing insurance cards, downloading maps, etc. Normally, I very much dislike "doing tasks" (much happier to "socialize", "daydream", "play", etc.), but no problem today as they are in service of a something with an external deadline. DustBowl is counting on me to pick him up tomorrow, and I have to be at Ft. Dirtbag this weekend if I want meet everybody.

Is this a flaw to be overcome, a problem to solve? Or do I simply game my tenancies in order to actually get things done? Want a clean house? Invite people over. Want to work out? Plan a ski trip or join a frisbee league. The obvious issue here is that doing things with most people involves a cash expenditure. I suppose really all I need to do is "DIY" my social planning rather than taking the market solutions, just as others around here build physical things rather than buying them. Start a band, start a weekday game league, plan an epic hike with friends, or whatever. Having been alone during the day at the house for over a month now, I find myself kinda lonely (not bored). I should probably leverage that to actually accomplish things. Extravert problems.

[ertyu]

I vote game rather than overcome. If this involves DIY social planning, this might not be a bug but a feature: use the commitment to gaming as another thing that will force you to "game" things -- in this case, it will force you to take active action on game league / hike / whatever plan.

[avalok]

Yeah, turning these things to your advantage/getting more from them is a smart move. You could see it as gaming, but it is also realising more yields from the same thing.

Have a great time at the festival!

[Western Red Cedar]

Is this a flaw to be overcome, a problem to solve? Or do I simply game my tenancies in order to actually get things done?

Another vote for leaning in to gaming your behavior to support goals and see results. I'm not sure how much reading you've done on habits, but a core recommendation among those authors is to understand your personal behavior and motivations to help build habits over the long run.

[grundomatic]

I think you (all) are right. @avalok I really like thinking about it as getting more yields from the same thing. I did a hike with someone last Friday and we are going to make it a recurring thing, and are already entertaining some sort of other collaborative project. Also, @Jean will be dropping by later this month, which means I will be forced to clean up the guest room clutter before he gets here. I messaged a friend to tell him about ebay sales I made for him, and now he potentially wants to clear more stuff out. I think I'll probably find my schedule filling up with socializing and the related alone tasks if I continue to lean into this.

EREfest was an absolute blast for me, which should not be surprising to anyone reading my journal. Almost everything I would want to say about it has been written in the fest thread, so I don't really know what else to write. Such solid people.

[grundomatic]

2. Effects/decisions/outcomes: How do you think you've changed, if at all, as a result of EREfest? In other words, what were any first or second-order effects of your engagement with EREfest? Have you made any decisions or resolutions as a result of your experience there? Any tweaks you intend to make to your WoG?

The WoG workshop was super helpful for me, namely the discussion around the reverse fishbone diagrams. I forget who it was, but someone brought up how the more goals there are, the harder it is to have all positive effects, which makes intuitive sense to me.

Previous at-home attempts have found me stuck, unable to eliminate all negative goals from my activities as suggested in the book, and therefore giving up in frustration. Probably a problem because I was approaching it from the opposite of my natural disposition:

Optimism: Focus on adding to the positives and hoping that the negatives don't crush you.
Pessimism: Focus on eliminating negatives and hoping that the positives aid you.
Realism: Rare unicorns doing both.

I'm a pessimist.

But hey, that’s what happens when it’s just me and the author (in book form), alone at my house.

In any case, I’ve also been reading this suggestion:

Have you read The Renaissance Soul, grundomatic?

Which, surprise, surprise, has me picking my values from a list in order to help decide what to focus on. I’m pretty well practiced at this exercise by now, so I pick my top 5 being as honest with myself as I could possibly be. I then combine the two exercises, and focus on adding positives, using my top values as a guide. Having a focus on my top “for now” values helps me not get bogged down with other things that aren’t as important to me (right now), and the reverse fishbone activity helps me improve those activities by adding ancillary goals. Going about it in this manner works very well for me.

So apparently I need to be told in person what was here on the forum already. Or maybe it was just hearing it again in a slightly different way. Or encountering it for the 6th time. Or maybe it was taking a whole weekend to focus on everything ERE that put me in a space where I could understand it in a way that makes it usable for me. So besides super fun socializing, this was my biggest takeaway from the weekend. Oh, and the books, I should mention that here, too. @theanimal reminded me of using ILL for rare/expensive books, @mountainFrugal encouraged me to keep reading even if things aren’t immediately useful or actionable, and @axelheyst convinced me to pile the library books high and deep without shame, even if they don’t all get read.

[grundomatic]

Flow of consciousness style update, because something needs to go in this journal. Don’t bother reading if that’s going to annoy you.

Five months off and I am finally starting to feel human again. All work and no play makes @grundomatic a dull boy, so it’s essentially been all play to make up for it. For me, that means socializing. I’ve connected with others who also have weekdays free. One friend just got a job offer, so it’s a good thing we’ve been playing through their backlog of unplayed board games.

Another friend and I have been hiking on their off week. This friend has borrowed the ERE book and has nothing but questions. They say it’s changed their outlook, that they went from being worried about me being unemployed to being excited for the changes in my life. They have since started youtube and garden projects with their kids.

I’ve got someone else with a great understanding of societal complexity and economics, so we can have super interesting (to us) conversations about the world. They thanked me for getting them out of the house to meet for coffee.

Weekends can be pretty full, standing Magic the Gathering on Friday nights, Dungeons and Dragons every other Saturday. Try to make Sunday a dedicated day for DW and I. I can’t wait until she joins me on sabbatical. It’s hard to be [temporarily] unchained and see the one you loved still slaving away.

Food is on super easy mode, easier than even what I was doing when working. Or maybe it just seems easier. I’ve been walking to the store, it’s just under a mile, as the weather is finally nice. ERE Walk and Talk is back on. Arizona should be on the short list for fall/winter ERE encampments–doesn’t get as cold as @AxelHeyst’s desert.

I picked 5.5 lbs of olives from a friend's tree. This was literally the low-hanging fruit. Writing this is somewhat procrastination from looking up how to brine them, but I’ll eventually get to that.

Paid the taxes on the rental house today. Have new tenants since Sep. 1, but still no check. It’s annoying, and yet, inertia keeps us from doing anything about it.

I found this super cute book at the thrift store about making cat cutouts using post-it notes. It’s just tracing a stencil, but is about the right skill level for me. I finally bought better blades for my hobby knife since mine was dull from hacking up plastic and metal models.

Speaking of models, I've been motivated to work on mine since trying One Page Rules. More Warhammer than Warhammer. This requires cleaning the clutter from my workspace. I’ve got work to do…it may actually get done since I finally feel good enough to do challenging things, because man-o-man is decluttering ever challenging for me. Stopping here with this subject because it could be a treatise itself.

I’ve been tracking monthly expenses still, just to have everything on hand when it comes time to come up with a new financial solution, since the current one isn’t sustainable. I’ve stopped worrying about it since nothing will be decided while in the current situation.

It feels strange to be in such a different place financially after only 8 years of “attempted ERE”. Unemployment used to be a very large problem, but now it’s FUNemployment, my new favorite word that I stole. In some ways, I can still relate to and understand the person I was, but in other ways I can’t remember why or what the hell I was even doing.

[sky]

Funemployment, heheh

[grundomatic]

It seems that "just doing whatever I want" is just what I needed to uncrush my soul. I know I'm doing better because someone inquired about hiring me to tutor a former student, and my reaction wasn't total disgust, which it was just a month or two ago. So I've agreed to do that 3 times a week. I started last week and I like it so far.

In addition to activities stated previously, I've started playing Europa Universalis 4 (a grand scale strategy computer game) like it's my full time job. Super addictive, and I love it. I find myself amped up and in a good mood after playing. It's like getting to role play having a desk job and being an all-powerful monarch at the same time.

It's good to feel good again. I honestly questioned whether I would actually recover.

[jacob]

In addition to activities stated previously, I've started playing Europa Universalis 4 (a grand scale strategy computer game) like it's my full time job.

Are you aware of any written strategy guides? I don't have the patience to sit through hours of youtube. I've read a bunch of playthroughs but for whatever reason things always seem to work out much better for that player than it does for me. I can only conclude that I'm missing opportunities because I don't know what to look for. I play eu3 BTW. In my first game I took Portugal to the end of the game ending up then 2nd or 3rd richest nation in the world (also gave the US it's independent in 1740 or so). However, all the diplomacy was lost on me---I never seemed to have any money until the last century when it just began rolling in.

In my second game, I realized where the coin was going. Autosending merchants zaps the credit until there are no more spots to send to. This went a bit better. It's tricky to think in timescales of a few decades at a time which is where I suspect the proper perspective is.

I have 81 hrs of game time.

[Jean]

Ahahah, i feel less alone seeing that i'm not the only one to find paradox games extremly enjoyable.

I never really got into EU4, i spent way more time in CK2 and HOI4 (1500 in each), and of course stellaris.

Usually, you start to understand what you do around 100 hours.

The wiki for hoi4, ckii and stellaris are quite extensive, so i imagine the one for eu4 is good too.

here is the eu3 one, it's not as big as the eu4 one.

https://eu3.paradoxwikis.com/

If you (or jacob) ever want to play multiplayer, hit me up. I know other ereian like those games, but i don't wan't to out them without their consent.

ckii is free now. you can pay if you want to have the dlcs, but in multiplayer, if one owns the dlc (or have a subsrciption), everyone in the game enjoys them, and i own them all.

[grundomatic]

I had to open Steam to look at my playtime. True to my claim, 87 hours in the last week, just like a job. I have 229 hours total.

I liked this guide for learning how to play: https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/a ... learn_eu4/ It's basically how I was learning anyhow. Reddit has been surprisingly helpful. I'd play, then wonder about something, so I'd search online and find multiple things I didn't understand. Don't know how much has been written about EU3.

For instance, I kept losing battles, so I searched online. Oh, different regions get different tech trees, so if you aren't western you are behind already. Oh, you need artillery in the late game. Then searching that led to actually understanding how battles work. I'd play some more, then wonder how the hell I'm supposed to pay for all this artillery. So I searched to learn how trade works. That one was a youtube video. On and on it went.

My first couple games I played as Pima and Wichita, and got rolled when the Europeans showed up. My third game was Songhai as recommended in the guide, and went well, because I actually had a clue by then. My fourth and current game I started in Friesland with the intention of forming the Netherlands. I managed to do that despite HRE hang ups (didn't know what I was in for), and then built a trade empire successful enough that could just throw money at allies and colonies, I got ranked and started scoring points. I then learned how the ranking/points worked, and now I'm in 1772 trying to figure out how I'm going to dethrone the Ottomans before the game ends. I can't indirectly affect their ranking enough through pirating away their income, so the giant war chest of ducats I've accumulated will go to hiring mercenaries and paying for being way, way over the force limit. I like the early game better (less to manage) and I already accomplished what I want, but I can't not go for it.

@Jean
Yeah, the wiki is often my next stop after Reddit tells me what I need to look at. It'd be too stressful trying to keep up with everything in real time for a multiplayer game. I'm so slow.

[Jean]

you can pause in mp too.
I think i already tried to convince you playing mp
i don't know eu4 enougg, but in ckii, playing one kingdom and one of it's vassal merchant republic can be quite fun.

[jacob]

I liked this guide for learning how to play: https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/a ... learn_eu4/ It's basically how I was learning anyhow.

That was a pretty good OP in terms of generalized strategy overview---worth reading even for non-gamers for "life is a game"-type insights. It identifies the problem of not being able to weigh the importance of a given heuristic or rule. The lack of a framework/philosophy for developing a strategy is the exact thing I find frustrating about 4x games and the way they're typically documented in wikipedia style format. "Here are all the rules. Now you figure it out."

That said ...

https://eu3.paradoxwikis.com/

I've hit this randomly via google searches. The front page leads to: https://eu3.paradoxwikis.com/Strategies I can see I've read some of them [randomly] but never in context. Still, as mentioned above it took me 70+ hours to realize that autosending merchants was a bad idea. Perhaps 70 hours is not much in the grand scheme of things, but I've lost the capacity to game for more than about an hour at a time. My most played game is AI War at 91 hours. That's over ~2 years, so I'm a light weight.

Maybe I'll give eu3 another shot.

If you (or jacob) ever want to play multiplayer, hit me up. I know other ereian like those games, but i don't wan't to out them without their consent.

Well, maybe ... after the latest bloatware update from Steam I had to switch all the remote connectivity off from running in the background. After the most recent update I spent 1.4 hrs loading Kerbal to test out my controller until I figured out that I was getting crushed by the Steam Client running background animations. I'm still stuck using an AMD A9-9425 r5 (don't laugh) ... which basically caps me at pre-2012 games insofar I'm going with "minimum reqs". Does multiplayer run over Steam or does one player set up as host on some server somewhere?

[Jean]

One of the player host the game, but it's usually good practice to host it on the slowest computer.