I Saved Some Money, Accumulated So Good

[Cheepnis]

2b1s, sure no problem

https://www.justonecookbook.com/nikuman ... iner-57858

[llorona]

Your bao look amazing! Until you posted the recipe, I thought they were Chinese version (char siu bao) and wondered where you found the BBQ pork. This recipe looks like it's more savory than sweet, and the ingredients seem easier to acquire. Thank you for sharing.

[Cheepnis]

Thank you, @IIoronoa. I might need to figure out how to make my own BBQ pork now to make some char siu bao.

---

Reading

53. 1st 300 pages of McConnell

The past few chapters on fiscal policy and banking/monetary policy have been particularly interesting to me.

54. Tahanu: The Last Book of Earthsea - Le Guin

I think I could have benefitted from a quick refresher of book III, but this was still an enjoyable read. I don't have much a penchant for fantasy because I often feel the stories are hollow. Le Guin's flavor of fantasy focuses on the characters, who just happen to live in a world with magic and dragons, which is much more palatable. Anybody can make up dragons with weird sounding names and magic who's rules are extremely hazy, even contradictory. The good character part is harder.

55. How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy - Odell

1/3 of the way through this currently. I'm not sure what to think as it seems a little scattered.

Running

MR: 612.3 +5.5
DR: 109 +1

Reflections

I'm not sure how it comes across to the readers of this journal, but to me it seems I often allude to/reference my social shortcomings. I've been doing some ruminating on why I think this is, why I think it is a problem, and the larger implications.

Why I think I focus on it...

Firstly, I've determined I find it lightly therapeutic, talking out/thinking through things in this format. This despite attempting to keep any XXXL bummer diatribes to a manageable level for your sake . I've attempted therapy a couple times before and didn't really feel it helped much. It was probably the therapists, but both left me with little motivation for finding the "right one". And besides, while there are things I 100% need to work on, the other equally large part of the equation currently is circumstantial, which I will get to addressing the next question.

Secondly, this has direct bearing on my financial goals, you know social capitol and all that. It's not that I don't have social capitol; it's that my stockpile is allocated wrong. From where I'm sitting most strategy wrt social capitol is accumulating a little of it with a lot of people. I've got moderate to high amounts with very few people, less useful for universal/generalized applications. I see this as effectively raising the cost of FI.

Why I think it this a problem...

I've never been particularly great in the social realm. My own judgement of my lack of competence is most certainly exaggerated. I should say I "perform" passably in most situations, but I'm not adept in almost any social realm, need to expend high amounts of energy in order to "pass", and often need to be mentally prepared beforehand. And I also know the experience for me is often far from pleasant. I can manage talking to a single other person well, and I can often find that enjoyable, depending on the person. However, with 2 other people things start getting pretty dicey, and with 3 or more other people all bets are off. What @alphaville recently wrote in @Scott 2's journal really resonated.

my problem with social settings is not introversion per se, which i can navigate, but power and control, which is a constant struggle.

it's very hard to operate in peace among others. either they try to control you or you have to control them so that they don't control you. this is what hierarchies are all about: power and control.

and extroverts are very good at this: their extroversion controls their surroundings.

I could not have used these words, but they very accurately describe the inherent competitiveness I've always felt is present in almost all group social situations. The times I attempt to compete I find myself saying things I don't like or sometimes even agree with. So I mostly don't compete, which manifests itself as speaking very little in large groups, being physically present while socially withdrawn. This ties in with many of my thoughts on genuineness, one of my most coveted values*.

*For now I'll have to omit those thoughts for the sake of continuity and brevity, but there is a post forthcoming at some point about genuineness and my issues therein**.

**I don't have an issue being genuine, but genuineness is not a very prized value culturally and I find that frustrating.

My general difficulties navigating social life means that even when I was in school I wasn't great at making friends. Now that I'm out of it, and with the addition of full-time work, I think it's nigh impossible. Luckily my introversion means I do not need many friends* and I mostly get along just fine, however it's at the expense of continued entrenchment of my anti-social tendencies, which are themselves exacerbated by working around mostly people completely unlike me, who are wrapped up in excessive performative masculinity (not to mention consumerism et al), and that I have little respect for. That's the circumstantial bit I mentioned earlier. And this leads to:

*I currently have friends I can do things with, I would rather have friends I can talk to

The Larger Implications...

I was never the most open and warm individual. The defensive posture I assume at work is to gird myself against all the stuff I don't want to adopt from my coworkers, but I fear it's becoming a habit in and of itself, leaving me closed to everybody. Not good. I suspect doing most of my socializing during my 40 hour workweek is cementing an even more twisted self-conception of who and how I am in social settings, erecting an effective barrier to improvement the future.

[ertyu]

Cheepnis, I can relate to a lot of what you write. That social interactions in groups often feel performative in a way that requires the expenditure of extra energy to "pass," and how exhausting that can be. I, too, have authenticity as a core value - there's something about that inner congruence that is very important to me, and the performative and politicky aspect of group social interactions often cause me to feel conflict wrt this value, thus making social interaction not enjoyable. There are people who thrive on exhibiting their mastery in this respect and who enjoy "winning" and the act of exerting power over others. I am not one of these people and I, too, would prefer authentic interactions with a very small amount of people than being in a larger group. I have also found myself tending to withdraw in the face of performative social interactions that are, at the end of the day, just too fucking exhausting to keep at. Further, I also prefer friends I can talk to to friends I can do things with. I am quite used to, and happy to, do activities on my own. Last but not least, I relate to therapy not having been very helpful and this impacting on my motivation to keep searching for a suitable therapist.

You seem to have an insightful, detailed understanding of the areas you are unhappy with, and of the places where "glitches" occur. I think at this stage, it might be helpful to visualize the other side of this coin. What would being successfully social at work look like to you? Given that you can't change other people and that troglodytes are gonna troglodyte and posture, who would you like to be in those interactions so that you're both social to a level that's satisfactory to you and genuine in a way that is congruent with your values? In general, if you had to re-write the above, but from the point of view of someone who is like you in terms of values and level of introversion and socializing well, what would that look like? What inner state would you be in while engaging in those interactions?

A write-up like that can help to clarify your wants in this area and get you started on reshaping your situation in a way you're happier with.

[Cheepnis]

there's something about that inner congruence that is very important to me, and the performative and politicky aspect of group social interactions often cause me to feel conflict wrt this value, thus making social interaction not enjoyable

I think you just described my feelings better in one sentence than I will in my sure-to-be paragraphs long exploration of the subject!

Those are all good questions in the second paragraph and I do need to spend more effort figuring those things out because I often don't know what they'd look like.

What would being successfully social at work look like to you?

To be clear: on the whole I am successful, at least successful enough. My job does not require high degrees of acuity in this arena and I'm well-liked good enough. It's that my experience kinda sucks, even more so than in social interactions in general.

[ertyu]

I meant this more in the sense of, what would it take for you to feel inner congruence across all levels of communication. So, success is defined as performance which meets your own desired standards and not necessarily performance that succeeds according to external criteria -- unless success according to external criteria is one of the thing which you need to feel satisfied with how you communicate. Didn't mean to imply you weren't successful according to objective, external requirements.

[mooretrees]

As an extrovert I've learned a lot from this forum which seems chock full of introverts. The power dynamic you're writing about above isn't super familiar to me, could you explain it a bit more so I can make sure I'm not doing it in the future?

[horsewoman]

I could not have used these words, but they very accurately describe the inherent competitiveness I've always felt is present in almost all group social situations. The times I attempt to compete I find myself saying things I don't like or sometimes even agree with. So I mostly don't compete, which manifests itself as speaking very little in large groups, being physically present while socially withdrawn. This ties in with many of my thoughts on genuineness, one of my most coveted values*.

This is a topic that has been an issue for me all my life, and only 2 days ago I've had trouble falling asleep because of feelings of hot shame for something I said while I was with family at Christmas.
Somehow the pandemic makes it better and worse at the same time – better because the social situations are by default less, but worse because I feel I'm a little out of practice when it comes to masking/fitting in. After blissful weeks of being myself at home with only my 2 favourite people, "putting on the play" is doubly exhausting.
When I'm in group situations my CPU is so busy with filtering and keeping track of the conversation(s) and the social undercurrents, that I'm getting thoughtless with my remarks, which seldom happens in a one-on-one setting. I overcompensate and often come across as mean or sharp, or to end uncomfortable silences I start topics that are not perfectly felicitous, which I only realize hours later.
Then I wonder if I'm too hard on myself or not hard enough so that I will finally learn from my mistakes. It's a vicious circle, and one that seems to get worse the older I get - perhaps due to added maturity. When I was younger I probably was often unaware that I was awkward or thoughtless. Now I realize (mostly too late, but I do realize) that I'm offending people and hurting myself by trying to be someone I'm not, and still can't find out how to change that.

...I'm well-liked good enough. It's that my experience kinda sucks, even more so than in social interactions in general.

Yeah, just yeah.

I wish I could give you some hints how to solve this problem, but I still haven't figured this out at the tender age of 40. But reading your post was very helpful for me, alone for the affirmation that this is something other people feel, too.

[Cheepnis]

ertyu, I pretty much assumed as much, I only wanted to double-check that we were on the same page. The internal success is definitely the crux of the biscuit here.

---

mooretrees, I find that people on an individual level are more likely to be A-ok. Even the most domineering personalities are somewhat willing and accepting of my actual thoughts and personality. It's in groups, and as I said before it doesn't take very many people (4 total seems to be the point of now return IME), when this dynamic appears. I'm not sure I can sum it up neatly or concisely, but i'll give it a go.

There's a couple factors that I think influence the human group emergent behavior I'm referencing. First, our inherent need to fit in, which is also a component of the second factor... I'm sure there's a name for it, though I don't know it, where discourse/group dynamic has a tendency to either settle squarely in the boring, pinnacle vanilla, safe middle, or to drift to far extremes. I think that tendency is more common in groups of people who do not know each other particularly well e.g. coworkers*. Both cases seem to arise from nobody wanting to cause conflict, which manifests itself in nobody saying anything even remotely controversial, or in silence/agreement my omission when it would be awkward to speak up otherwise. Examples: topics of conversation rarely straying from sports/food/home ownership, or everybody just kinda nodding every time Coworker Q starts going on about Hillary's sex-trafficking ring.

*I cannot stress enough that much of this is only a function of my primary social interactions nowadays being in such an unhealthy setting. I'd have my struggles for sure in a different and better scenario, but as stated earlier my social self-conception has deteriorated severely since moving into this job.

To be sure, I dislike both of those things well enough, however, there's a place in between those examples where most of my troubles lye. As ertyu mentioned, inner congruence is very important, which can at seemingly every corner force me to choose between stirring the pot in an otherwise "safe" topic or lying. Example: if I'm asked what my favorite beer is I'm going to give my honest answer, which is I do not know because I don't particularly like beer. I'm not mean about it, I don't snub my nose at the question, or go on a contrarian ego-stroke diatribe, but I do nonetheless answer honestly in a softest-of-edge manner. NOBODY is ever ready for that answer. If it's a 1-1 scenario chances are good we can actually discuss a little bit the pros/cons of beer or maneuver to a similar topic such as other fermented drinks I do like.

In groups there's no chance. It's just negative attention. The second I answer no is the second everybody else, who are not so much being interested in my indifference to beer, see a golden opportunity to toe the line in demonstration to everybody else that do like beer, and therefore fit in. My individuality on this particular topic is a prime opportunity for explicit juxtaposition of themselves into the circle. In these sorts of situations people are rarely rude or mean, and I do not want to paint myself as a victim here, it's just a dynamic a severely dislike while at the same time equally disliking the loss of inner congruence the expected answer requires.

Another slightly different example: in the corner of the world I inhabit one of the most common greetings is "How's it going?". I can't stand it because there's only one appropriate answer: "Good!" Nobody actually cares how you are doing and if you answer in anything other than the peppiest positive things get awkward. It's situations like this where the question puts the onus on the askee to conform to the asker's/group's/society's pre-conceived notions that get my goat. This specific situation is so common here that I have developed my own work around to make the situation compatible and comfortable for me: I don't answer and instead ask "What's going on?" right back. Nobody blinks an eye at the ignored question because the whole thing was fake from the get go. Of course, if I'm actually good I could answer good but I find that being genuine in the face of complete in-genuineness somewhat dissatisfying, so I'm in the habit of firing back another ignorable question or sometimes getting the jump on the first greeting.

Does that help?

---

horsewoman, I'm glad there's others who can identify with my meager attempts at writing down my inner experience. "Putting on the show" is indeed exhausting and especially in groups there's so much to keep track of it's often easier to check out. It's such a paradox that I'd probably experince better if I didn't try to keep so many tabs but that without keeping the tabs my ability to "hang" becomes diminished in the face of the abrupt changes large group interactions are prone to. 'Round n 'round we go.

[Cheepnis]

December Spending

I’m not going to break it all down like normal. Total spending was $886.11. The were no unexpected or costly necessary expenses this month and I would have come in closer to $650, but I bought a couple nice gifts, a bunch of fancy chocolate from the local fancy chocolate maker, and we went all out with a crab dinner on x-mas eve. Worth it. 

Goal Review

Spend < 10k - maybe achieved depending on one’s generosity
Run 500 Miles - 628.8
Read 50 Books - 55

I met these goals thanks in part to Covid. (That’s a rare siting of silver-lining-cheepnis coming in HOT!).

My running slowed way down the last quarter of the year. Had I kept up the pace I would have landed over 700, maybe 750. My reading also slowed down a little bit in Q4, but not quite as much. My favorite reads of the year were A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, all the Octavia Butler I read, particularly Wild Seed and Kindred, and The Discourses of Epictetus.

2021 Outlook

Goal Adjustments

- Keeping the sub 10k spend goal. This goal will get harder this year as I am adjusting my accounting a little. My monthly savings rates do not take into account the money that gets put in my “vacation” fund. I also do not count the monthly dues paid to the national union that are auto-paid out of that account. I changed my spreadsheet to include both as income/expense respectively. I wasn’t counting that $35/m dues expense before because I have no choice but to pay it and it will go away once I leave the industry. However, it was just easiest for spreadsheet rebuild purposes to include it as an expense. I’m treating this as the softest-and-least-realistic-of-balls approximation of post-plumbing health ins. costs, a consideration I have not looked into at all. I’m still not counting my hourly dues paid to the local as income or an expense as I also don’t have a choice but to pay them.

- I’m going to keep the same 50 book goal as last year, but I want to shift the content slightly to include more source material/important historical stuff/denser non-fiction. Things on my radar: Plato’s Republic, finish McConnell and start/finish Bodie, Federalist Papers or anything Hamiliton/Adam Smith, Marx, Ayn Rand (just to understand wtf is up with her), re-read Meditations and/or discourses, a piece or two of literature, maybe Moby Dick, Walden, and/or a Jane Austen. The older I get and the greater perspective I acquire the more apparent most everything boils down to a relatively small number of thinkers. So I want to read it from the horses mouth.

- I’m also going to keep the same 500 mile goal, but I am not going to attempt to overshoot it, instead I will add and additional goal of 100 hours of yoga. That’s ~ 4d/w of exercising; 2 running and 2 yoga-ing. I plan to use the Five Parks Yoga youtube channel. I like her videos because she has a ton of them and there’s many that match my fitness/flexibility level.

Things Happening

- We’re talking about taking a road trip in the summer to visit some places we haven’t been and put eyes on potential relocation locales. I’d like to visit the Twin Cities just to visit, as well as parts of Montana, Detroit, the Great Lakes/upper mid-west region generally for possible relocation. I don’t much like gratuitous car time so figuring out an easy itinerary/a car that can comfortably fit me, will be a must.

- Hopefully Engine Show is back on this year. Aside from my concert plans, Engine Show was thankfully the largest Covid-related inconvenience in my life. On that note, I rigged up this little piece of glulam from the job, borrowed a chain-fall from work, and got this puppy on a new skid and cart. Now I can actually do some work on it. First up: magneto maintenance.







January Preview

January is already shaping up to be an expensive month. Rear brake pads and rotors need replaced and a flush of the brake fluid is overdue. My phone screen, which I cracked crawling in a soffit at work 6 months ago, is finally giving up the ghost. On the keyboard the crack runs through a couple letters that no longer respond. And I have quite a few materials I need to buy to build my GF a cabinet deal she wants. Oh, and for our anniversary she wants to go on a record store tour. This could get ugly! Hahaha

Negative Visualization

I’ve been attempting to use this technique to better understand the life I want to live. In particular I’ve been trying to parse how much my high SR/increasing NW figure into my life satisfaction. I’ve been trying to imagine what it would feel like if I lost it all while every other aspect of my life remained the same. Effectively everything would be functionally identical except the pixels on my screen would be blaring a single round looking number into my corneas instead of multiple other numbers. I have determined that this scenario would leave me feeling quite bad. That is not good, though the realization has led me to better understand why, which makes it less not good.

The exercise has left me realizing that I am above neutrally satisfied with my current life. It isn’t perfect, but it never will be, and the things I’d like to change are all fixable given time, patience, and good decisions. However, if I was having to work 40/w in order to live this exact life, to just barely scrape my $833/m together I’d be quite unhappy with that. Luckily the current structure of the economy and my lifestyle decisions mean I could work for far less pay at fewer hours and earn that living money, a situation I’d be totally fine with, especially considering I’ve already realized that some form of part-time work post FI is my most likely route anyway, both for structure and SWR cushion. If saving were prohibited by law I’d choose to work fewer hours rather than spend it all because I don’t need that much to be happy, losing it all would essentially have been wasting my time these past few years of 40 hours weeks.

Typing it out I feel this is all an topsy-turvy way of saying some pretty simple stuff, but it’s helped me realize the number doesn’t and won’t matter to me as much if I wasn’t currently allocating so many work hours to it.

[basuragomi]

Sounds like the next step would be starting on a web of goals to further explore those emotions.

What's your shop setup like? Are you able to pour babbit bearings? There seems to be a big cottage industry of maintaining/upgrading Model T/A engines, might make an interesting income opportunity alongside the classic engines.

Also very belated, but if you enjoyed Stand on Zanzibar you might like Earth by David Brin. It is to the 80s what Zanzibar is to the 60s, and interesting to contrast the two projections of the world.

[Riggerjack]

"Performative masculinity". Great term.

It gets easier as you come to see performative masculinity as a joke. Some of your coworkers are joking, and some ARE the joke.

Finding the way to make the days pass when your job takes less than all your attention is what working on a crew is all about.

Finding a place on a crew you can laugh with is the hardest part of construction. We are all different, compatible difference is key.

......

As for authenticity, I struggled with this early. Eventually, I just let go of the dissonance between me, and me at work.

At some point, I just realized that these differences that were important to me, were irrelevant and/or confusing to my coworkers. We were simply into different things.

So I stopped being "authentic" at work. I emphasized the compatible points, and just laughed at the differences.

Extraverts are great for this. Wind 'em up, and let them go. Then nod, grunt, or laugh as appropriate. They can go all day with minimal encouragement, and have a great time keeping the crew entertained.

This makes for short days full of laughter, and you can keep your mind on task.

But that also means you need someone to be authentic with. I wouldn't recommend coworkers.

.....

You are a union plumber. Does your union do full dispatch?

When I was working out of an electrical union, when jobs slowed down, crews were cut, and we would all sign up on the books and file for unemployment. When the next openings came up, we got dispatched to the next job.

Which makes semi retirement easy. Work until you don't want to, then quit. Work again, when you want to. The only problem being the wait between signing the book, and dispatch. That was always a bit of delay, days to months.

But if you don't need the money, what's a little delay? You have freedom beyond the dreams of your coworkers. Use it when you want to.

[Cheepnis]

Basuromi & RJ, not ignoring you, only came in at the moment to regale the forum with current C19 shenanigans.

---

A coworker held a party last Friday night, turns out a whole squadron who came to the party all had it, and now he has it. We worked outside, masked, and not close together for about 2 hours on Monday afternoon. I've been sent home due to those circumstances. Here's where it gets ridiculous. As I've noted before in this journal, there has been major pushback to the mandatory mask requirement put in place by the University who's campus we're working on. When the crew goes to break and lunch all 12 pack into a small room with no masks for about an hour & fifteen per day. I haven't been breaking with the group since March. Coworker P was there in that room both yesterday and Monday, yet I've been sent home and the rest of the crew is still working.

It's the height of ridiculousness. My boss has been booted off the site as well because he was also with us on Monday afternoon. The general contractor wants us to get rapid tests. Of the entire crew I have by far the least exposure due to my separation during breaks and lunch. Everybody in the break room should be off the job right now, but for some reason the rules magically change once you enter the break room (the gc knows exactly what the break room looks like). My boss is annoyed about the whole thing. We both went to a testing center this morning to try to get a test, but they wouldn't give us one because we're asymptomatic and supplies are low. My boss told the attendant we haven't had any exposure (mostly true for me, not at all for him) and not 2 minutes later complained to me that you get consistent information from anybody about this stuff.

If non of this makes any sense it's because non of it makes any sense. The funny thing is my company is generously paying me for sitting at home to make up for the government (i.e. cdc guidelines) overreach. Also funny that we get literally no paid time off of any kind, yet I've got a coworker who stupidly hosted a party in the middle of a pandemic and is now is gonna have 2 weeks paid leave. Hahahaha, it's all so absurd.

[Gilberto de Piento]

Great journal, thanks for sharing. Congrats on your incredible savings rate.

What make and model are the speakers in the pics from your June post? A relative had the same ones which were unfortunately tossed when the surrounds dry rotted. They were very distinctive with drivers on the front and top. I don't have nostalgia for them but as a former audio enthusiast I'm curious what they were.

[Cheepnis]

@basuragomi,

I haven't given much thought to the WoG concept outside my surface understanding of finding mutually reinforcing endeavors. How to tie my social life into that? I'd be lying if I said I had any clue.

No shop. I work on a fold-out table in the carport. Very limited capacity which is a driving force behind all my house-hunting talk.

I've had Brin on my list of authors to check out for a long time, you're adding more fuel to that fire. I did use to read his blog somewhat consistently.

@Riggerjack,

I am glad you can relate to some of the struggle.

We are all different, compatible difference is key.

This is definitely an issue. At this point in my life there are very few people I feel much compatibility with. You could probably fault me for being overly adverse to differences. At the same time it would be nice to have some people I felt compatible with in more than one extremely specific area used as our sole method of relating to one another.

But that also means you need someone to be authentic with.

GF, brother, mom, dad. A little variety would be nice haha. These problems all existed in my life prior to the plumbing chapter, they've just become more acute. I think I would have an easier time at work if I felt more satisfied socially outside of work, but that's been an issue since about kindergarten. I think that's why the stoicism stuff piques my interest so: the path of least resistance 25 years later seems clearly learning to live with rather than fix. Obviously haven't got there yet.

And yes, we do have full dispatch. I think early in this journal I detailed how that works for those unfamiliar and enumerated the semi-ERE benefits therein. I would have to be careful not to get labeled a flake or inconsistent.

@GdP, thanks. The SR is mostly artificial, this house of cards will tumble eventually. In the mean time I'm milking it.

They're Epicure 20+'s. Hearing about perfectly great speakers getting tossed when needing basic maintenance hurts a little part of my soul. A car isn't totaled when it needs an oil change!

[Riggerjack]

In another thread, you mentioned difficulty learning without practice. Specifically in the context of supply curves.

I would recommend a game like offworld trading company. You play a faction trying to exploit Mars, gathering resources, building factories, and buying out other players.

The pricing mechanisms are simplified, but supply and demand are variable, set by the colony development (PC), and player production and usage.

If, for instance, there is more energy used than generated, the price of energy goes up at a rate based on the shortage. And vice versa. With a dozen different resource markets to keep track of, and timing your trading in markets that are moving in real time.

I wish I had found something like this back when I was learning about economics. Practicing trading in models will give you a chance to experience an economic concept in action, so to speak.

Initially, one plays the resources and distance game. As one gains experience, one starts to anticipate resource demand by watching the way the colony develops. And how other players's strategy is going to change future supply curves. All at real time strategy game pacing.


It's a nearly cost free, fun way to practice the concepts, until they are intuitive.

Once these concepts are intuitive, it gives you an entirely different way to see the world.

Disclaimer: The Dismal Science is so known, because a lot of otherwise beautiful ideas wither and die under the harsh light of an economic examination. Learn at your own risk.

[mooretrees]

How's it going these days? Been awhile since we've heard from you.