Hristo's FI Journal

[Jason]

I think you and all your friends should grab the kids, jump on a plane and head to Disney World. You've earned it. And I heard the Apple/Goldman Sachs credit card is just giving the points away.

[Hristo Botev]

DW and I are positive for antibodies, so perhaps we will Jason.

[ertyu]

Ha, so was it that pneumonia you had in the fall then? Or did you guys get it recently. How was it, if yes?

[Jason]

The first months of reopening is going to be the Roaring 2020's. Relief/joy from one war underlined with anxiety that another is around the corner. Everybody squeezing some fun in just in case it doesn't last.

[Hristo Botev]

Ha, so was it that pneumonia you had in the fall then? Or did you guys get it recently. How was it, if yes?

Don't know. Neither of us has had any symptoms, apart from the pneumonia back in October. DW works in a hospital, so she could have been exposed there (or, of course, in any hundreds of other ways), and just not shown symptoms.

[2Birds1Stone]

I say, but the Airstream and the new truck, sell everything else and go fulltime =D

You would instantly be FI.

[Hristo Botev]

I say, but the Airstream and the new truck, sell everything else and go fulltime =D

You would instantly be FI.

Indeed, but based on the experience of 2 months in lockdown with our kids in our 1,300 sq. ft. home, the idea of living full time with them in ~140 sq. ft. is downright horrifying.

[Hristo Botev]

"Whatever you are, be a good one." A. Lincoln

[Hristo Botev]

Went to the office yesterday and got about 4 hours in; it was glorious.

[Hristo Botev]

So apparently I'm on the verge of going down another rabbit hole. To the extent anyone who knows what they're talking about actually reads my journal, is this Joel Salatin guy for real. I know permaculture is a big focus for a lot of people on here, but it's not something I've ever really dug into myself. I mean, I love reading Wendell Berry's stuff from time to time (is he a permaculturist?), and DW and I get most of our produce, cheese, eggs, and meat from a farmshare thing; but my mind's been kinda blown listening to this podcast today (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-7O3fOXXKo), and I'm just not informed enough to know what's real and what's kind of pseudo sciencey stuff.

[Hristo Botev]

Did that thing where I logged in, started writing a really long journal entry, got sidetracked by work, went back and finished writing the long journal entry, hit "submit" before Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C, and then lost the journal entry because I'd gotten logged out in the interim. I'm now understanding why Brute really kept his entries so short.

[Hristo Botev]

The gist of the entry was that I've realized that in times of uncertainty, I turn to books and exercise, things I have a difficult time devoting significant time to in times of certainty. I plowed through an insane amount of books from March to mid-May or so, when the COVID lockdown thing was in what I'll call phase 1. Then, as things seemed to lighten up a bit and I was able to move past the "keep calm and carry on," "stiff upper lip" mentality with how I faced the world, I pretty much stopped reading and exercising without giving it much thought. Now, again, as I'm going to bed most nights with my city literally burning and with the downtown district looking like a war zone, I find that I'm back to reading and exercising at prolific levels once again. This weekend alone I read Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman and Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And I'm about halfway through both The Hobbit and Orwell's 1984. My top-level takeaways:

- Go Set a Watchman: race relations in the South are complicated and nuanced; we shouldn't rush to permanently cancel people as racists, and for the same reason we should be very careful not to lionize people--we are all flawed, and all saints are also sinners, even the impeccably virtuous Atticus Finch.

- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: a great literary illustration of what Solzhenitsyn told us in Gulag Archipelago, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart."

- 1984: we are all screwed; I don't even know where to start with this book and what it says about the times we are living in RIGHT NOW.

[Hristo Botev]

For the Hobbit: sometimes you need to leave "The Shire" and set out on adventure. As St. Pope John Paul II told us, "Be not satisfied with medioctrrity. Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch." Life is fleeting, remember death; go slay the dragon and save the princess. We don't write ballads based on someone binge-watching Game of Thrones.

[Hristo Botev]

how do you explain this pattern of behavior?

I should ask myself that question, shouldn't I? For the reading, it has something to do with being comforted by the transcendentals; by experiencing the true, the good, and the beautiful. During times of uncertainty I find it very difficult to sit with DW and watch mindless TV (she, however, feels comforted by the distraction). And for the same reason I can't read "mindless" books during periods of uncertainty. And I don't want to be disparaging by using "mindless," it's just a distinction between something that is or potentially could be considered a "Great Book," and everything else. E.g., I tried to start Saunders' Lincoln at the Bardo yesterday, and then again today. But I just can't right now, even though I've no doubt that it's pretty damn good, as I've read several of his short stories in the past and like him as a writer. Right now I need something that's lasted a few decades, and that speaks to the transcendental; and something that also speaks to the fact that, whatever uncertainty or pain (physical or emotional) we may be collectively experiencing right now, it absolutely pales in comparison to what those who came before us experienced. Reading great books, like participating in Mass and the sacraments, helps bring me back to center. I love the image of a cathedral rose window, where you've got trifles on the perimeter and then, with each layer you move in to the center, the images are less trifles and more essential. Until you find God at the very center, surrounded most directly with family and then vocation. Reading the Great Books helps get you move away from the periphery--whether that's Twitter or ultimately insignificant political disagreements with friends or whatever--and focuses you back to the center, where there is truth and beauty and goodness.

During times of certainty, I'm just as happy to watch or read something mindless at the end of the day, when my mind is tired from regular-old work and child-rearing.

As for exercise, I suppose it has something to do with self-flagellation, in addition to just being a good way to distract yourself and to also feel alive.

[Jason]

Lincoln At The Bardo is haunting. I would recommend getting past the year it was published. It's not like his short stories.

[theanimal]

I had the same issues with Lincoln at the Bardo. I couldn't get drawn in enough. What's your source for Great Books? Is this a list you've found or just books you've selected that have lasted through time? I looked to see if you mentioned it previously but couldn't find anything, my apologies if I missed it.

ETA: I guess I forgot to mention that I tried Lincoln at the Bardo as an audiobook. I should give the physical version a try.

[Hristo Botev]

What's your source for Great Books? Is this a list you've found or just books you've selected that have lasted through time?

There are a bunch of lists people have compiled through the years that you can find online and pick and choose from as you wish. The most well known list (as far as I know) is the list Mortimer Adler put together, that became the "Great Books of the Western World" collection from Britannica that I grew up with on my Dad's bookshelves. http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/book- ... tbooks.htm. Several colleges have Great Books programs that publish their book lists; here is one: https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/u ... ading-list. This year I have been sort of using this Great Courses course reading list as a guide: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses ... books.html. But I'm also just reading what I can easily get my hand on and that is sort of always been in the back of my mind as something I want to get around to reading one day. So those are books that are already on my bookshelf, or that I can download from the library. Also, I'm doing a men's book club where the focus of our book selections are books that say something about what it means to be a Catholic man living in 2020. So far our book club has read Seneca's On Providence and Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins. Our next book is To Kill a Mockingbird (not my selection, as I like most men in the South have already read this book multiple times; so I chose to read Harper Lee's sequel instead).

[Hristo Botev]

Your reaction though, is completely alien to me, hence my question.

If I might ask, how do you react/are you reacting to times of uncertainty?

[Hristo Botev]

Because I've been meaning to compile this list somewhere, here're my 2020 readings so far, roughly in order as I read them:

1. The Swamp Fox, Francis Marion – Gerson
2. The Intelligent Person’s Guide to Philosophy – Scruton
3. Coming Apart – Murray
4. Blood Meridian – MacCarthy
5. The Power of Silence – Cardinal Sarah
6. The Decadent Society – Douthat
7. Of Providence – Seneca
8. The Gospel of John
9. On the Consolidation of Philosophy – Boethius
10. Letter from a B’ham Jail – MLK
11. Night – Wiesel
12. Animal Farm – Orwell
13. The Brothers Karamazov – Dostoyevsky
14. Hamlet – Shakespeare
15. Out of My Life and Thought – Schweitzer
16. Sorrows of Young Werther – Goethe
17. Ajax – Sophocles
18. Everything that Rises Must Converge – O’Connor (this should be required reading for our entire country right now)
19. Love in the Ruins - Percy
20. Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee
21. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde – Stevenson
22. The Hobbit – Tolkien

Currently Reading

1. The other short stories contained in Flannery O’Connor’s Everything That Rises Must Converge
2. 1984 – Orwell

I’d set a book-a-week goal for 2020, and I’m now realizing I’m behind the curve on that. But if the current uncertainty related to COVID and protests/riots continues, I’ll be able to catch up.

[Hristo Botev]

Exploring all possible scenarios and trying to get ready for the unexpected in whatever way I can.

Like buying firearms? (I kid; sort of.)

That certainly makes sense. I guess I tend to think I've done as much as I can to prepare, especially given the fact that I've no real idea what I'm preparing for; and so with a shrug of my shoulders, I choose to focus on the permanent things, as opposed to the temporal things over which I know I don't really have any control.