Early Retirement Extreme Forums

That's a good way to describe it. It's also why Plotkin or Jung suggest the sub personality framework—it creates distance between you and your negative thoughts, which both makes you more aware they're happen and aware of the fact they have very little basis in reality. I think what happens with dep...

"Cultural slave" may be an apt metaphor especially considering the void of 40hr/wk institutional obligations. Consider, for example, one could be a cultural slave even without a FTE job, such as being a feudal serf. In this example, even if you manage to become a free serf, it's still unli...

The main difference is understanding meditation modalities better and selecting the right one for the problem I'm trying to solve. Also other lifestyle adjustments have minimized the depersonalization (cutting out caffeine and exercise). Before, I was doing a lot of those "breath counting"...

Everyone's all "freedom yay, I do what I want mfer" but when they're faced with ACTUAL FREEDOM, which involves actual responsibility for your own actions and having no one else to point the finger at when shit goes sideways or you're asked to account for yourself, well that's a different ...

@Jacob - What you're describing sounds like Mindscape Theory : Mindscape Theory proposes that various types of personality characteristics (Mindscape types) are present in all cultures, and these are not the exclusive domain of a particular culture. Cultural differences (national stereotypes) are du...

Another issue with forums is that the text-only nature inherently limits the types of interactions you're going to have on them. When I've been to the MMM HQ, one thing that struck me was how much that community is does that never gets posted about online. For example, they have a weekly potluck and...

@Ego - The biggest issue I've seen with it is that it's really easy to start to identify with your own thoughts or make the depression/mental health issues a life narrative/identity because they consume so much of your subjective experience when you're stuck inside a depressive episode. These sorts ...

Yeah, one of my takeaways was "well, yeah, most people don't need much of an excuse to come hang out and chat with people who don't suck. No need to overthink it, just make a space they can come, have beer, and They Will Come." This sounds like a great approach to community building. :D G...

It's worth noting that there are different types of "thinking," and not all of them are associated with mental distress. It's not introspection , it's rumination , although these can be closely related. I'm going to talk about depression here because I have personal experience with it, but...

Solar Eclipse I drove out to Little Rock to see the total solar eclipse. The eclipse was happening on my birthday, so I figured that was something I had to experience. Let me tell you, like the grand canyon, it was something that completely blew my mind away! Honest to god, the experience was trans...

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. What I've decided is that I am probably overthinking this and need to spend less time analyzing the decision and more time executing/actually doing something. So I'm going to put a lot of effort into the actual act of moving itself because downsizing/dealing with t...

Monthly update A bit early this month, but I just calculated my net worth (which I do quarterly), so I figured I might as well update here while I'm at it. My net worth is now $878k, an increase of about ~$70k from last quarter. After years of saving, I think I've finally hit that snowball point wh...

* Life Stack 2.0. How is that going? Where are you in the stack? Did you try 1.0 first? What tools/systems did you pick to jump into it? (As you know, I'm going thru the video currently, contemplating the system. And "discipline" is an... uncomfortable (?), unattractive (?), undesirable (...

@AH - If you ever want to do a podcast episode on fiction writing, hit me up. May or may not be the most relevant topic, but it could be fun!

Thanks everyone! I think the moral of the story, at least for me, is that it was easy to get caught up in trying to optimize tiny, largely fruitless, things about my current life instead of making the bigger, more structural, and more difficult changes required to really be where I want to be. Locat...

Here's an interesting interview with JL Collins about his recent book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfG_4eLMyxM He mentions that The Simple Path to Wealth sold over 750k copies, peaking over covid, then coming back down to normal afterward. One thing I noticed about the interview, and this has be...

March Update After being pulled in a bunch of different directions in Feb, I am dedicating March to getting my stuff packed and moving. I wanted to reach the point of diminishing returns in my current lifestyle so that I would know what I'm looking for when I move, and I think I have a clearer pict...

I believe that was Carl from 1500 days and the infamous Ramit interview, who then later bought out half of MMMHQ after the divorce.

@AxelHeyst - Let me know when you're free and I'll drive up to meet you one of the days. I'll probably be out of town the 5th-9th for my birthday/solar eclipse, but I can meet up any other time really.

@grundomatic - Consider it done :D @theanimal - One of the things that makes the FIRE community in Longmont very effective is the MMMHQ, as well as the fact many of the people there live all on the same street. I've heard from people at happy hours up there that many of them will even stay within th...