bostonimproper's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
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bostonimproper
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bostonimproper's journal

Post by bostonimproper »

I am a late-twenties woman married to an early-thirties man. We own a small two-bedroom condo that in the next few years we'd like to add two children to.

My goals over the next ten years are to:
1. Have and begin to raise two children
2. Hoard enough money from working to hit traditional FIRE
3. Start the journey of increasing our family's climate change resiliency

It is for my third goal that I start this journal. My husband and I are your traditional city dwellers. We rely heavily the convenience and cultural offerings of density and have little in the way of useful physical skills. I worry about gardening here where the soil is inundated with lead city-wide, a relic of our former-industrial past. Even patio gardening, I wonder whether the lead paint gently curling off the buildings might flake into my tomatoes. These are irrational thoughts, I know, but they are mine.

I wonder whether someday we will need to leave the city to protect our children, though I don't know what place would be any safer than here. I am from a family of migrants. Each parent, it seems, has moved thousands of miles to carve out space and stability for their family, only for the next generation to uproot it all and try again.

At this point, I am mostly at a loss. I see this future with high certainty of risk, but have little personal understanding on how it might manifest and the best means to take precaution, and by when. I think of what strategies we might employ, and nothing seems the clearer. Should we:
  • invest in land ownership in as many cities with higher likelihoods of climate resiliency that we would be able to migrate to as possible?
  • work toward a homestead in the rural area nearest us, getting a better understanding of the local clime and agro?
  • identify trade skills that would still be of relevance in a post-peak oil economy and slowly accumulate knowledge in those areas for future labor-bartering?
  • hunker down where we are, building emergency stashes of food and bug out supplies, but generally lean into the knowledge worker status for the long haul and hope the world economy doesn't entirely collapse?
Hm, this list is spiraling quickly.

My husband, to his credit, is not nearly as motivated by this crippling anxiety as I am, so any initial work will be driven by me, a tiny old person in a young person's body with weak wrists and bad knees.
Last edited by bostonimproper on Sat Dec 28, 2019 11:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Salathor
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Re: bostonimproper's journal

Post by Salathor »

"Even patio gardening, I wonder whether the lead paint gently curling off the buildings might flake into my tomatoes. These are irrational thoughts, I know, but they are mine."

A little lead won't kill you--your body is more resilient than you think. Think of all the people who lived in Boston before now--many of them lived to a ripe old age even back then.

Regarding safety: places don't make you safe, in particular. I wouldn't move somewhere intentionally DANGEROUS, but if you don't assume that the ultimate burden for your safety lies on you and your husband, you're making a mistake. From a long-run, generational level of safety you're probably best off somewhere semi-rural (1 acre plots?), with a gun or two, and in an area where you are decently friendly with your neighbors--maybe with a close-knit church or something if one is available. People survived pre-industrial eons by banding together, and even if climate change is as catastrophic as you think it will be, the same survival principals will hold true.

And bigato is right about just learning skills now and saving money, regardless of what you fear the future will hold. Nothing wrong with learning to garden or work wood today, plus it's fun!

bostonimproper
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Re: bostonimproper's journal

Post by bostonimproper »

There's an old bit I remember from when I was young, I think I read it in a Beverly Cleary book. It was something like: Every person has a bowl full of tears they're born with. They don't know the size of their bowl, big or small. And when they use it up, it's gone. Give or take.

I've been feeling something akin to that lately, but for my anxiety. For years I worried about saving money. And then when that got too easy to reasonably worry about, I stayed awake ruminating on the thousand little ways my house was falling apart. Or upgrading over time to climate change. Always something to worry about, because my bowl was still full.

Suddenly, monumentally, my bowl feels empty. Not so much that I've lost my anxiety, but rather I don't have the energy for it anymore. I'm too burnt out to worry.

I am leaving my job next week, cutting our household income 75%. My husband's income alone does not quite enough to cover all our expenses (we are, sadly, no Jacobs), but we won't be depleting our savings too fast.

This will be the first time in my entire life I don't know what's next. The strangest part is that I'm not even worried. I'm just numb. I have been looking for other jobs, interviewing for some, ultimately with no offers. I don't even feel like I want to go back to the same sort of work, but I do need to make money eventually. We want to start a family, kids need to eat, yada yada yada.

We're in Europe now for a friend's wedding. So many other people here my age just quitting their jobs for no particular reason other than bad fit, like me. I guess that means the economy is strong. Or something. Peak millennial quarter life crisis time.

Anyhow, that is all to say: I should probably find a job soon-ish, but it'd be nice if I could figure out something I actually want to do.
Last edited by bostonimproper on Sat Dec 28, 2019 11:18 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Bankai
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Re: bostonimproper's journal

Post by Bankai »

bostonimproper wrote:
Sat Jul 06, 2019 1:08 pm
Every person has a bowl full of tears they're born with. They don't know the size of their bowl, big or small. And when they use it up, it's gone.
This is a very interesting insight. Probably everyone has various 'bowls' that once depleted, are gone for good. An example that comes to mind is all the old folks who don't give a damn about social norms etc. and just do whatever they want. Their 'what will people say' bowl is clearly gone. It would be an interesting exercise to 1) identify all the bowls & 2) figure out which ones are worth preserving vs which ones are better depleted asap. I can already see the bottom of my 'helping family/friends fix their lives' bowl; since people never listen or take action, there's no point wasting my time trying to help them. On the other hand, something like empathy will still be useful in decades time (I believe empathy might be a finite resource, at least towards a particular person(s)).

bostonimproper
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Post by bostonimproper »

I am officially unemployed. I am giving myself a week to finish up various life chores- switch over our health insurance, cleaning, reverting back to good diet and exercise routines, etc. After that, I have the real work of figuring out what's next.

There are a few paths I'm considering:
  1. Get another W-2 position in tech. I can either stick with the kind of positions I've been doing that I like but stress me out or switch into engineering. This is probably the path of least resistance to match my previous pay, but at the expense of probably falling into the same old not-so-great-for-my-mental-health patterns.
  2. Start a consulting business. This is something I could probably do more easily a year from now, once my non-solicitations expire. I know some old clients who'd welcome me back at a 25% discount which, for me, would be a 200% raise from what I used to make at my old firm. Didn't really like this line of work, but it's lucrative and can shuttle me to FIRE pretty quickly (3-5 years) if I do it right.
  3. Build an Etsy/Youtube mini-empire. There are a couple niches that I think are interesting, albeit probably already too saturated. This would allow me to test out my product discovery skills. Downside is that I might be capped at a pretty low ceiling since I don't really want to show my face on camera or link to personal identity, which helps to drive a lot of the more successful businesses on these platforms. If I really grind it out, I (very optimistically) think I can hit mid-five-figures per annum by mid-2020.
  4. Create an ML-enabled product for my own startup. Very, very low possibility of turning into anything successful, but would give me an excuse to get back into some pseudo-academic tinkering for a while, which might be fun and potentially a decent side project to cite should I loop back into path 1.
I want to hone in on exactly one of these to focus on if I can. Flitting from thing to thing is one way I go about procrastinating, but once I'm honed in, I ramp up really quickly (which in turn leads to burnout but we're going to ignore that for now).
Last edited by bostonimproper on Sun Jul 21, 2019 11:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

FIRE 2018
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Re: bostonimproper's journal

Post by FIRE 2018 »

I don't see anything about investing in the stock market. If you do look into diversifying your money into index funds. You are not going to achieve FIRE just be hoarding but with index funds it's - building and increasing your net worth.

bostonimproper
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Post by bostonimproper »

@cimorene: Maybe? The area I'm interested in is using NLP for a specific type of content generation, which is not really overlapping (the way I conceive of it) with the areas of broad commercial interest du jour (text to speech, chatbots, etc). The field is advancing rapidly, and I imagine my technical abilities will still be novice level after a year.

@bigato: This is probably true, but 2 only becomes really doable in a year when I can actually use my network. Until then, finding clients would be very difficult so I'm more or less figuring out if I should do 1, 3, or 4 to bide my time. I also dislike the work itself, which is why I'm not jumping up and down to return to it despite the clear financial benefit.

@FIRE 2018: Except for our emergency / biding my time for new job fund and condo, we have everything in Vanguard funds. Asset allocation is 80/10/10 stocks/bonds/commodities & REIT, roughly 50/50 split between domestic and international.

bostonimproper
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Post by bostonimproper »

Based on feedback here and elsewhere, I'm deciding to focus on (1) employment over the next year, with the understanding I will transition into (2) consulting once my nonsolicitation has elapsed. Since it's unlikely job searching will be a full-time activity, I will kill time building up (4) pie in the sky startup idea. This will involve beefing up my AWS and data engineering chops. I have decided to drop (3). While it seems the most fun, honestly, the start up costs to do what I want are high for something that will ultimately probably only make hobby level income.

So for employment I'm thinking about a few different roles. My lack of role specificity seems to be confusing/turning off recruiters. Folks in my network have well-meaningly forwarded along some opportunities, but none a good fit so far.

In other news, I nearly tore my husband's arm off today when he was leaving for work, I've been so socially deprived. I'm still seeing friends probably 2-3x weekly but that's clearly not enough. Probably time to find a low stakes volunteering thing.

I think the "funemployment" phase is over. Whee
Last edited by bostonimproper on Mon Jan 04, 2021 11:24 am, edited 2 times in total.

bostonimproper
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Post by bostonimproper »

Career & Life Updates

Got an offer for a new job, will start in a month. Decent raise over last role, which is nice. My body feels less anxious and tense, having not worked the last few months. I hope to keep this calm when I go back to the corporate grind, but admit that's unlikely.

We'll have to wait to start trying for kids until Q3 2020 so I can qualify for maternity leave. I am both excited and scared. I've always wanted children, but am not too keen on the pregnancy bit. I also worry what kind of world they'll grow up in.

Finances

We've updated our asset allocation. It is now:
* 5% VMATX MA munis (all in brokerage)
* 10% VWESX investor grade corporate bonds (trad IRA)
* 10% VUSTX long-term treasury (trad IRA)
* 10% VGSLX real estate sector (trad IRA)
* 10% VSGAX small cap growth (trad IRA)
* 25% VTSAX total US stock (brokerage/roth/trad)
* 30% VEMAX emerging market stock (brokerage/roth/trad)

Portfolio value between brokerage/roth/trad is 35%/15%/50%.

This means we've:
(1) Increased fixed-income from 10% to 25% (probably too conservative, will likely bring down)
(2) Added fixed-income in the form of munis to non-retirement brokerage
(3) Traded total bond funds for investor grade corporate and LT treasury (less interested in ST treasury and low-grade corporate bonds)
(4) Eliminated developed international stocks and bonds entirely

I wish Vanguard had a commodities futures fund that had a minimum less than $50k; it'd be nice to splash some of that in our portfolio. Not that I know what I'm doing because I really, really don't. *nervous laugh*

In addition to the above we have our condo (~55% LTV), private stock from a former employer (~10% of above portfolio value), husband's 401k with some opaque target date fund (another 10%), and cash (yet another 10%).

We hope to FIRE by the time I am 35, about seven years from now. Once I start working again, we'll be back in the rapid accumulation phase. I'm not really sure where to put our money after maxing out our tax-advantaged accounts. I've been idly considering buying investment property in the area. Maybe I'll just default to more VTSAX/VEMAX? Open to suggestions.

Climate Change

The 13 year old I mentor has been writing an essay on Greta Thunberg for a class. She's been talking about how her future is fucked. There's not much I can say to console her.

Beginner Level Gardening

I've been trying to garden to feel more self-sufficient. Honestly, I don't think I like gardening. What little there is to do (pruning, fertilizing, cleaning out our compost tumbler), I find fairly tedious. I do like having plants around though.

We've brought in our containers for the year. The banana (2 years, grafted) is doing well for New England. The strawberry (first year) seems robust and is still giving us teeny tiny bright red morsels. Not much yield on the basil, but it's the first year and I spent much of it propagating. I'd like to add a cold hardy avocado next year. Long-term, I'd like to have an aquaponics setup going, but our downstairs neighbors (who do most of the gardening) would probably be upset if we took over part of the yard which, though is owned by both units via the HOA, is de facto their turf. There's a lot I'd like to do if we owned a SFH with a little outdoor space. But with the RE prices out here, that's kind of a pipe dream.

Meanwhile, our friend recently gifted us an umbrella plant, and the soil is breeding a horde of bugs that are flying all about the house. They're like mosquitos without the blood-sucking and I find them incredibly annoying. I'll probably take it outside today so the birds can do their pest-control thing.

One thing I do like about gardening is that's it's opened my eyes in how adamant life is to assert itself. Weeds, clovers, slugs, and bugs will find a way to live on, climate and gardener be damned. I've found a lot of comfort in that.

Emergency Preparedness & Gadgetry

Because of the PG&E blackout in California, I've been thinking about what we should do to prepare for emergencies as the climate changes. We already stockpile staples, jacob-style in 5 gallon buckets. We're on a hill, so we're unlikely to experience much water damage to our own home, but are still susceptible to water contamination and blackouts due to hurricanes and storm surges.

For electricity, the two options I'm considering is either buying a back-up generator or attaching a battery wall to our solar panels. Neither are particularly cheap prospects.

For water, if have backup electricity, we can maybe get an atmospheric water generator? Or we can try to do rainwater capture and filtration? I'm quite wary that we'd be able to set up the latter appropriately.

It strikes me that given these concerns, I default to rather consumer-oriented solutions. Buy a big gadget to make our family safe. Very non-Renaissance man of me. That's something I'd like to work on, but am a little at a loss where to begin.

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Alice_AU
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Post by Alice_AU »

Hello bostonimproper, very interesting journal!

Congratulations on your new job, hope it turns out to be a bearable stress level for you. I always thought you people in America work too hard, with expectation of very long hours, short holidays and to be on call any time - even when home in the evening or on the weekends. At least this is what they show in movies :)

bostonimproper
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Re: bostonimproper's journal

Post by bostonimproper »

Career

Not loving the new job, but it's good for my resume and pays well. I'll probably stick it out for 2-3 years before moving on back to a small startup and transitioning to data analytics or development. I'd rather the mental focus and flow of actually doing things than be on the management and business side-- constantly dealing with internal politics has gotten old.

Mental health

Upcoming deadlines at work are lighting my anxiety again. I've noticed myself grinding my teeth at night.

Also, there is some tough stuff going on with my friends and family-- helping one friend struggling with alcoholism, brother with an emotionally abusive girlfriend, mother who has almost nothing saved for her retirement at 60 but refuses to talk about it or deal with the issue, so I guess I'll just be saving up for her retirement on top of our own? Sigh. I'm glad to be a support to the people I care for; it makes me feel useful. But I am also fucking exhausted.

I miss feeling carefree. Actually, now that I think of it, I wonder if I've ever really been carefree. Not since I was a small child, at least. I can't seem to clear my mind, even on long quiet walks. I am grateful for my life, but it'd be nice to feel unencumbered joy. Even just a little bit.

Finances

I've shifted our asset allocation a bit. Eliminated corporate bond index and traded it for another 5% treasury bond index and 5% VTSAX. This feels adequately conservative for now.

For 2020, the plan is to:
  • Max out both our Roth 401Ks
  • Max out my ESPP
  • Add a 5% allocation in gold ETFs - non-fiat currency alternative, open to other suggestions, mostly using as a hedge if there's an inflationary recession
  • Send out our estate plan docs to our trustees
  • Roll over my Trad IRA to my 401K for better asset protection in case of litigation
  • Get some umbrella insurance.
I also have some "play money" invested in individual stocks per my climate mitigation thread. I don't expect this to be really meaningful return-wise, plus I'd rather not go all in being a trader (stock gambling addiction runs in my family).

After that, I'm not really sure what to prioritize financially. Some things I'm considering:
  • Mega Backdoor Roth - apparently my company's 401K allows for it
  • Buy some investment property near freshwater. Vaguely considering Lowell, Buffalo, Chicago, or Milwaukee
  • My friends are starting to invest in private equity / VC funds affiliated with our alma mater. I am less interested in this
  • Invest in some physical property to help in SHTF scenarios (mostly Powerwall, rainwater catchment, and aquaponics)
Last edited by bostonimproper on Wed Dec 04, 2019 8:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

bostonimproper
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Re: bostonimproper's journal

Post by bostonimproper »

I finally got up the nerve to figure out what we spent over the past 12 months. It isn't pretty. Summarized below, I took out charitable contributions, for which we target about a tenth of our income. This is for 2 adults.

Code: Select all

ADMINISTRATA			$4,187.86
------------------------------------------------
Business Misc.			$276.51
Estate Planning	               	$3,558.32
Life Insurance	               	$243.09
Office Supplies	               	$8.49
Postage & Shipping	       	$101.45


EXPERIENCES			$3,605.99
------------------------------------------------
Entertainment			$822.90
Travel	   			$2,783.09
	
	
FOOD				$7,487.67
------------------------------------------------
Groceries			$5,935.66
Restaurants			$1,552.01


HEALTHCARE/MEDICAL		$7,584.15
------------------------------------------------
Dental				$275.00
Health & Dental Insurance	$3,367.44
Healthcare/Medical		$65.00
Prescription Drugs		$254.41
Therapy				$3,622.30


HOME				$23,722.33
------------------------------------------------
Home Appliances			$685.60
Home Insurance			$1,500.00
Home Maintenance		$923.68
Mortgages			$19,100.00
Property Taxes			$1,513.05


PERSONAL CARE			$2,890.71
------------------------------------------------
Gym Membership			$1,308.00
Personal Care & Toiletries	$1,582.71


SHOPPING			$1,084.74
------------------------------------------------
Clothing/Shoes			$601.59
Hobbies				$79.65
Home Furnishings		$403.50


TRANSPORTATION			$7,580.52
------------------------------------------------
Car Insurance			$3,685.00
Car Maintenance			$1,140.32
Car Registration & Admin	$110.00
Gasoline/Fuel			$975.69
Parking				$261.25
Parking Tickets			$350.24
Public Transportation		$644.00
Taxi				$414.02


UTILITIES			$2,325.62
------------------------------------------------
Electric			$101.97
Internet			$678.44
Natural Gas			$505.52
Telephone			$329.81
Water				$709.88


OTHER DISCRETIONARY		$9,492.00

==========================================


GRAND TOTAL			$69,961.59


bostonimproper
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Re: bostonimproper's journal

Post by bostonimproper »

There's clearly a lot of fat to trim here. Let's say my baseline goal is to reduce our spending 10% over the next year. This should be straightforward to do, since we were already planning to:
  • Eliminate legal fees for estate planning: Easily done since that's finished = $3550 (DONE)
  • Re-negotiate car insurance premium = $600 (DONE)
  • Switch to my company's health insurance = $300 (DONE)
  • Join transportation FSA w/ automatic work reimbursements = $275 (DONE)
  • Negotiate internet rates = $200 (DONE)
  • Only travel regionally: No international trips, wanted to do this anyway to eliminate personal flying = $1750 (DONE, ONGOING)
  • File for work gym reimbursements = $550 (TO DO, ONGOING)
That's an estimated $7275 in savings with very little work or change in lifestyle.

If we want to reduce our spending by 20%, we'll need to start actually engaging with lifestyle change. Mostly around food. :|
Last edited by bostonimproper on Sat Feb 01, 2020 12:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Peanut
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Re: bostonimproper's journal

Post by Peanut »

I don’t think you’re doing badly. Some categories are actually very low for your demo.

My 2c: Do u need full auto coverage? I pay 600/yr for one car for liability plus a big umbrella in a HCOL. $3600 even for 2 cars seems like highway robbery unless the cars are brand new.

3k plus for physical or other therapy? Don’t need an answer just saying I’d cut it if the latter.

1.5k for personal care? If you color your hair or are a makeup fiend I get it. Otherwise there’s probably waste there.

bostonimproper
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Re: bostonimproper's journal

Post by bostonimproper »

Thanks @Peanut. That makes me feel better for being 5x Jacob in spending.

Auto insurance: That's actually the premium for 1 vehicle. My husband unfortunately needs it for his job, which involves transporting things and people. He was in an accident 4 years ago which totaled his old car. So, yeah: living in high premium city + risky driver + new car + full coverage (because, I don't know, my MIL insisted and we weren't married at the time?) = $$$$$. I'm hoping by now he'd qualify for a better rate.

Therapy: It's talk therapy. My husband used to experience severe depression and getting on meds plus therapy has been a game changer for him. He is also in a job which involves interacting constantly with high trauma individuals. I think it's definitely important for his ongoing mental health, and he's voiced it as being a non-negotiable.

Personal Care: Breaking that down, I'm realizing it's a lot of random mis-categorized catch-all. Broken down, roughly:

Code: Select all

Walgreens			$630.67
Prescription drugs		$309.96
Haircuts			$242.95
Who Gives A Crap TP		$106.00
Thrift Market delivery		$102.13
Sensory Deprivation Tank	$58.00
Face masks (for smoke)		$32.72
Dollar Shave Club Razors	$29.76
Duplicate entries (whoops)	$82.73
We pick up toiletries and a lot of random little grocery items (milk, bananas, cereal, etc.) from the Walgreens near us, so it's hard to pick apart how much of that is food vs. toiletries. I don't know how more prescription drug stuff ended up in this category. The Thrift Market delivery included like $60 of my fancy sea salt soap that lasted me for 6 months or whatever it was, so that's how that ended up here. Also my husband has lots of expensive hair stuff (very curly hair that he maintains well, but takes a whole routine ).

bostonimproper
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Re: bostonimproper's journal

Post by bostonimproper »

Some thoughts, in no particular order.

I am exhausted. The new job is taking a lot out of me mentally and emotionally. I've been sitting in, on average, 30 hours of meetings a week (some useful, many less so) and working late to get actual stuff done for the past two weeks. I haven't cooked in a while, and have been overspending on eating out even though my employer covers lunch. I can feel my self-worth and independence slowly warping to conform to the corporate structure and I don't like it. Just very, very tired.

No Spend January. Since the big crunch for me should end after this week, I'd like to dedicate myself to a mini-reset in January. No discretionary spending, in particular for things like eating out, should put me back in the groove of healthy lifestyle habits.

Read 5 books in a week. Speaking of healthy lifestyle habits, when was the last time I picked up a good book? Too long I say! I'm way behind on my reading goal for the year, so I'm thinking of doing a book binge next week while I'm taking some time off for the holidays. Recommendations are welcome. I generally like literary fiction, particularly modern era (think Faulkner, Salinger, or Vonnegut) but not as into contemporary (though I'll certainly read it). Tight sentences and surrealism preferred. Authors whose works I've read recently and liked: Haruki Murakami, Tim O'Brien, Alice Munro, Toni Morrison, and Evelyn Waugh.
Last edited by bostonimproper on Wed Dec 18, 2019 8:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

ertyu
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Re: bostonimproper's journal

Post by ertyu »

That feel about one's self-worth and independence warping. I've had that feel. I know that feel. Also, the very very tired feel. Fingers crossed and commiserations via the ether.

No-spend: also fingers crossed. Looking forward to how that goes. Eating out/ordering as post-job entertainment or exhaustion self-medication is one of mine, too.

Do you like kazuo ishiguro at all or am i just throwing japanese-sounding names at you (i think his sentence tightness might disappoint?).

bostonimproper
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Re: bostonimproper's journal

Post by bostonimproper »

ertyu wrote:Do you like kazuo ishiguro at all or am i just throwing japanese-sounding names at you
I liked Buried Giant, was so-so on Never Let Me Go and Remains of the Day, and couldn't finish An Artist of the Floating World. I find him to be really melancholy, which is fine when it pays off but for me often fails to land.

bostonimproper
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Post by bostonimproper »

Husband finally got around to shopping for auto insurance quotes. Got one from Progressive that's more than $2k less than what we have now, same coverage across the board. His words: "I feel bad for not looking into it sooner." Now I'm wondering whether I can needle him into some more cost saving measures while the window is open. :P

bostonimproper
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Re: bostonimproper's journal

Post by bostonimproper »

Today I got sucked into a black hole of watching Li Ziqi videos, including this one where she literally raises silk worms and extracts the silk by hand to make her grandmother a quilt and pajamas.

I asked my husband how he could possibly still love me given that I could neither make us soy sauce from seed nor weave my own coat from raw wool. To which he replied, "You have a lot of skills that are a lot more relevant to our culture and daily life." Which I appreciated, but also got me thinking. Why am I so compelled by this image of radical pre-industrial self-reliance? Especially when, in jacob terms, I'm a lot more wont to rely on my competitive advantage of high earning power than, you know, ever do anything that requires any amount of physical or technical skill (something something Renaissance man something).

As a kid, I used to think I would be a doctor. That way, people would still want to keep me around if there was some big disaster instead of letting me starve. That's one strategy: trade a well-regarded skill that maintains relevance in the post-apocalypse for social capital and, in turn, to other goods and services. Another strategy is to go full homesteader, a la Li Ziqi.

But this all presupposes a very particular type of apocalypse. One where our existing technology has evaporated, culture has collapsed, and all we're left with is two rocks and a twig as a means to cook our dinners. But that's probably not what the future is going to be like. Adaptation, innovation, and flexibility will all still be important, but even in a post-peak oil world it'll be less "catch your dinner" than "how do I spot a deep fake" and "can I learn basic structural engineering and chemistry to understand in what ways our infrastructure will become unreliable and flag unsafe industrial pollutants in our freshwater."

I don't know, it may just be the week of no-work relaxation talking, but I'm starting to get some ideas.

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