I'm now in my early 50's and I have had a yo-yo relationship with ERE for a long time. My father was a city boy who had dreams of being independent, living off the land and so on. Never came to fruition but left a big impression on me. While I absorbed that deep inside, my young career life got swept along in Reaganomics and the boom years. I began my career life as a Manhattan yuppie assisting in a very large and successful corporate law firm. Hated it but my, how the money rolled in.
Then in the mid 90s I had a chance meeting with some people who really opened my eyes; while they weren't entirely retired, they were living their dream, happy as could be, on about $20,000 a year, and they were young. They told me they were basically well set enough that they could stop working entirely if they wanted. No climbing after status or money, no sense that they simply "couldn't" live this way without a million dollar nest egg each. In other words, my yuppie understanding of the horrible life i was going to have to endure for another four decades melted almost overnight. I left with a copy of YMOYL and the scales lifted from my eyes, hallelujah.
For about a decade, I pursued my dream wholeheartedly. I worked more hours at the odious soul sucking job until I had a pretty nice nest egg. Then I quit and moved to a small town in the west, better suited to my temperament and much, much less expensive than the east coast. There were plenty of stumbling blocks but I continued honing my life; simplifying, becoming somewhat independent, observing my financial progress.
In 2002 I decided I needed to fill the coffers a bit higher, and got a part time job. It was an on call sort of thing, very much on-or-off, with weeks of up to 110 hours, but maybe 10 weeks of that a year. Great way to boost the budget and the adrenaline levels, but also a great way to burn out. By the end of 2005 season, I was just about a zombie, and then I met The One! The ONE! Sigh.
The One is a very nice person. Sweet and dependable. The One was also not at all into any of this ERE stuff, very mainstream, but I didn't understand that, I'd been considering ERE for so long that the idea that someone would have no idea what it was really all about wasn't on my radar. I gave a brief lifestyle tour, got a thumbs up, and off to Vegas we went.
Ten years later ... I am still ERE but ... it's so hard. Every single little thing is a small battle between "normal" and the way I would mindfully choose to do it. I don't want to choose between someone I've loved for 10 years and a philosophy I've loved on and off for most of my life, so I'm perched up here on a fence, looking for some ways to really let my ERE freak flag fly without devastating fallout for my marriage. I've also made a lot of stupid choices in the last decade, seriously not ERE choices, that are still hanging on waiting for resolution. Stuff that needs to be sold, primarily, that I will have to take a hit on that causes much foot dragging.
So ... here's to doing it again. I loved a life truly pursuing ERE and fulfillment as well. It's time to get off the fence.
