mathiverse's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
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mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

ERE Update (Short)

I unclogged my first sink a few minutes ago! I moved into a new place and the landlord/previous tenant left the main bathroom sink (and the bathtub) in a semi-clogged state, so neither were draining properly.

For the sink, it was fairly simple to take out the drain stopper, clean out the debris from the stopper, and use a plastic drain snake to get the debris from in the pipe. It was also fairly disgusting! But I did it!

The bathtub is still semi-clogged. I removed a lot of debris from the pipe with the plastic drain snake, but the tub still drains slowly. I couldn't get the snake as far as I expected into the pipe, so I imagine I missed part of the clog. I'm not sure how to get further than I went with it, so I'll have to think more about what the next step would be to completely fix the clogged drain.

By the way does anyone know the alternative to a plastic drain snake? My cursory Google search did not turn anything up, but I'd like to know in order to get a more durable tool for future drain cleaning adventures.

AxelHeyst
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by AxelHeyst »

In increasing levels of power/pipe diameter (no idea about these *particular products*, links provided just to give the "kind" of product. Also, things like wire coat hangers and such can be used - but now you know the style of product to be thinking about.

https://www.amazon.com/Opener-Remover-G ... 5348&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088FVNC2F/re ... NrPXRydWU=

https://www.amazon.com/Cobra-Products-6 ... =hi&sr=1-9

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

Just what I was looking for! Thank you, AxelHeyst!

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

ERE Update (Short)

I've been thinking about picking up some woodworking tools the last couple days. I posted on Freecycle asking about scrap wood and I figured I buy a cheap chisel, a clamp, and a saw and get going making some stuff. However, on an unrelated post I responded to, the person noticed my post asking for wood and gave me some wood scraps, a free set of hand tools, and a small saw! I am still delighted about how that happened. That was way better than ordering online.

In a different response to my post asking about scrap wood, someone told me they'll have some wood I can take off their hands in a couple of months. Plenty of time to get to know my new tools before more wood comes in! :D

Woodworking just went from a project that costs money to one that is free! (ERE book 5.1.1) Score!

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

ERE Update

I'm now living on the east coast in a much lower cost of living area than the Bay Area. It's awesome! My rent halved. I admit my rent is still on the high side for ERE though! That's something I'll look at in a year or so when my lease is about to end. I found it a bit difficult to do an adequate housing search without knowing people or the area. I did spend some time trying to find a part time property management position like the one Ego has. I even got an interview and the owner of the company was interested in hiring me, however the commitment he wanted was higher than I had in mind, so I declined. That's something I'll try again later with more time to find an adequate role. I only had a month in temporary housing and I hadn't planned ahead with respect to applying for property management roles. Alternatively, maybe I can find an abandoned/vacant place I want to live, find the owners, and convince them to let me fix it up and rent it from them for a low rent afterward or something like that. Another idea is to take a low rent unit and use my skills to make it as nice as a higher rent unit. Anyway, those are several options. As I get to know the town and neighborhoods, I think I'll have a better idea about which option makes sense.

After being inspired by whitebelt, I'm going to grow some microgreens in my place. I still need to get a shelf and some LED grow lights. The real growing season doesn't start for another month or two in my area, so indoor growing is my best bet for now. I should be able to get 2 - 3 harvests based on what whitebelt mentions and what I've heard on YouTube videos.

I plan to do some outdoor gardening once it's later in the year too! I have a decent amount of outdoor space where I will garden in containers. I also sent a request to get a plot at a community garden, we shall see if that pans out.

I did two simple woodcarvings with the tools I mentioned in a previous post. One was my initials and the other was the Petersen graph which I learned about in a graph theory class a couple months ago. It was harder than I thought to make something pretty. The carvings are very rough and they were not pretty, but they are a good start! When I was a kid, my grandfather used to do wood carvings on small pieces of wood furniture that he built and then he would give them away to his kids and grandkids as gifts. I only remembered as I carved myself. In time, I hope to get good enough to do the same.

As I unpack from the move, I've been setting things aside to give away or sell. I want to declutter and make my future moves a bit more manageable. Hopefully, I can make a bit of money on some of the items too.

Work Update

I am working only 4 days a week since a few weeks ago. It is nice compared to full time. I'm even considering going down to 60% for even more days completely to myself. I haven't made a decision on that yet.

I also switched to a different project at the start of the year. This project will give me the chance to work on some technical skills I don't currently have. I'm excited, but it's rather difficult so far. Fortunately, I'm increasingly treating my job as, first and foremost, a place for me to grow, so the difficulties while learning are what I'm there for.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

Wow, someone told me they pay about $20 per month for weekly bike pick up of their food waste to be composted. If I had already had a yard with a large area for extra composting, then that seems like a nice small-scale business. I could do it for the neighbors within a few miles. If I had 28 customers, then I would make $7,280 a year which is above a jacob.

The inputs are time, neighborly relationships, bike (already owned), and yard space (already owned). The output is compost which you can use in your garden, exercise, neighborly relationships, and money.

Depending on how close all my customers are, I might spend 8 to 16 hours a week on the pick ups and then I have the rest of my time free. I could start the business somewhere new if I moved assuming I still have a yard.

I thought that was very interesting to think about. It also seems like a simple enough business that I could actually do it unlike other business ideas I hear about. It's a very approachable gig. I don't plan to try it anytime soon, but I wanted to write it down.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

Update

For the last 1.5 months, I've been taking some time off of work. I have ~1.5 months left of time off. Ostensibly, the reason I am not working at the moment is to complete a degree program I'm currently enrolled in. However, I see the break as primarily time to upgrade my skills, get healthy, and think about the next steps I want to take in my life.

Upgrading skills


I've some time to work on the areas most in need for improvement in my life which were food and investing. I've also spent some time on gardening.

Food

For food, I've gone from eating out for nearly every meal, to eating out only once or twice a week. My cooking skills have been increasing through cooking more and iterating on the dishes I make frequently. I also have started reading cookbooks and books about cooking. Finally, I started cooking dinner for myself and my partner.

I see this new deal between me and my partner as the best outcome of this cooking upgrade so far. With this arrangement, we spend less as a partnership (money saved because they eat out less), I spend less as an individual (they pay more in rent and utilities in return for my cooking), we both are healthier (I cook healthier food than we ate when ordering out), and I get more feedback on my cooking. If I hadn't increased my confidence and time available by taking time off work and by spending a few weeks cooking mostly for myself, then I wouldn't have been able to take advantage of this opportunity.

I think I will be able to keep up cooking regularly once I return to work because I've been improving my efficiency/technique which makes it less energy intensive to cook and I've been creating a habit that should be easy to maintain.

Investing

For investing, I'm in the process of rebalancing from random investments to an asset allocation that I think makes sense and suits my temperament. I've also started going through the ERE investment curriculum. I'm not convinced I'll end up actively investing after this self education, however I want to complete the learning so I can feel more confident about the decisions I'm making.

As I accumulate more money and as I understand finances more via self education, I realize how valuable to my overall well-being and confidence it would be to have a well though out investment strategy whether it will be active or passive. Currently, I don't have a good understanding of how I could (or if I can(*)) live off of my investments. (**) Getting to the point where I have a practical way to live off of my investments if I needed will make it easier for me to convince myself to make major transitions, like perhaps leaving my current job or industry to try something new.

(*) Well, I know I can't *right now* because my expenses are higher than my investments can reasonably support, but another six months of upping my ERE game should lead to having a reasonable theoretical withdraw rate.

(**) Ideally I will never live off of my investments because the various things I want to do in the future yield more money than I spend, however I want the option.

Gardening
One last thing that has been on my list for a while and that I did was to start a garden. A few unexpected realizations from having a garden:
  • I like rainy days better because they water my garden.
  • I'm still waiting for seeds to germinate. Going from dirt, water, and seeds to plants is apparently hard. Maybe I need to wait longer. It's only been a week or two.
  • In addition to seeds, I planted seedlings from a plant nursery and those are doing great. I enjoy going outside to admire their growth and water them.
  • For me, making self watering containers was a bit too complicated. I also enjoy watering the plants everyday. I end up going outside more often and I enjoy my balcony more than I would otherwise.
  • My area really does have its last frost date in mid to late April. When I first looked it up, I thought it was an error, but nope.
I never did get around to growing microgreens by the way. I'll try it some other time.

Getting healthy

While working and taking classes, I found I couldn't balance eating well and exercising. I'm back to doing both of those things. I also was constantly stressed before taking the break. Lowering the number of my obligations brought my level of stress to more manageable and healthy levels.

Thinking about next steps

More on this later.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

ERE Update

I decided to quit my job for a couple months at least. I've got 10 - 15 years of expenses, therefore I'm in no rush to return to work. First, I plan to focus on improving my health. I'm going to improve what I eat and get into an exercise routine again. Then I've got a road trip with friends planned. After all of that I'll focus on trying making money in ways other than my typical salaried career and I'll focus on continuing to build skills that lower my expenses. I have a few projects that I will build and I'll attempt to get some independent contracting work. I have a long list of frugal tips and tricks to implement and a couple skills I want to improve.

Whether or not I'll return to a salaried job is open ended. I'm going to work hard to get to a situation where I don't want to or need to return, but if none of my plans work out, then I might be back in a salaried position within a year or so. That's probably as long as I'd let things go on with nothing really working. I think. I don't know. I don't need to know right now. I only have to try things and see what sticks!

I guess this is semi-ERE for now, but I am not convinced I won't go back to salaried work to top off my FI stash if I'm not able to make money in other ways within a year or so. I figure a year or so off working on ERE skills and other projects will make being in a salaried position while maintaining a more ERE-like life outside of work easier to achieve. I also can look for more chill jobs after the break if I need to in order to maintain positive deltas toward ERE.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

ERE Update

I've been out of a job for about a month.
  • I started running three times a week.
  • I started doing strength training three times a week.
  • I started eating better and tracking calories to lose some weight and improve my nutrition.
  • I went on a weeklong backpacking trip.
Right now, I'm focused on becoming a really physically fit and healthy person. I got off track with this over the prior year mainly due to oversubscribing myself by working on a degree program and working at the same time. I finished the degree and quit the job, so now I have plenty of time to focus on this.

Actually the last four weeks I've mostly been focused on fitness and diet and I let myself do whatever comes easiest in my free time. That has basically been walking around town on good days and watching tv and surfing the web on bad days. I haven't taken active steps to avoid the bad days yet since along with being tired due to exercising and dieting, I'm also decompressing from work and school stress. My past experience has been that after being away from work for two to three months, I get antsy and want to do more productive activities. I also know that getting into shape and having greater physical capabilities will unlock energy to do more and the desire to do more. The antsy feeling is already starting to some extent. I think the first thing I'll do is improve my French.

Cooking

For the last five or six months, I keep coming back to the goal of eating out less. I did pretty well for a few months, but back in May and June, I had basically fallen off the wagon and I was eating out more than I wanted to. Once a week would have been a good amount, but I was closer to five or six times a week. Since quit and since I started focusing on fitness and health, I have stopped eating out as much. There are a lot of reasons for this. Eating out is 95% much less healthy than eating in. It's much harder and less accurate to count calories in food when I eat out. I fewer competing priorities which makes it easier to find the time and energy to cook.

I am really happy with how much easier it is to cook each day now that I'm not working.

Fitness

I started out this fitness kick thinking I primarily wanted to make my body look better. But I realized after the backpacking trip, I also want to improve my physical capabilities to make those trips longer and more fun. One disappointing aspect of the trip was that I could barely enjoy the being in nature part because I was tired and struggling physically a large part of the time. So I changed up my goals to be more about my physical capabilities to enhance future backpacking trips. I also have a vision of a much more active lifestyle in the future even when I start working and doing other things. Having the conditioning to be physically active without feeling limited is another goal of mine.

I also remembered that I have already experienced my body adapting to my fitness routine in ways that improved my physique without trying specifically for a better physique. I figure if I can meet my goals around physical capabilities, then it's likely I will be satisfied with my physique.

As far as having a vision of a more active lifestyle, I'm not actually sure what that looks like or how to do it. It doesn't come easily. In fact, there are still some days I don't really go outside. I've started going grocery shopping once every couple of days, so I get outside for that more often. I want to get outside everyday and do a greater variety of physical activities.

I've started walking all around the city every couple of days. I know there are great backpacking trips within a few hours of driving, so I can see weekends/weeks spent backpacking would be fairly easy to make happen. There are biking trails. There are places to do kayaking and sailing and all of these others things. I guess the only thing I need to do to have an active lifestyle is... get out and do those things?

Maybe what I really ought to use my first bit of productivity on is making a weekly plan of what physical activity, besides the running and strength training, that I will do on a given day. It's not as easy as I expected to wake up and go do something outside. I never have any good ideas other than "walk around aimlessly." I know there are people who spend most of the day outside and I want to do that more often. I can plan longer walks and try to check out every park near me. In addition, maybe I'll sign up for a class or something, so the logistics are merely "show up" for more complicated activities like kayaking or sailing. As I get more used to doing things other than walking around, I'm sure I'll naturally start doing less structured activities.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

I signed up for a sailing club near me and I'm going to go everyday for the next two weeks. Let's see how that goes. :)

AxelHeyst
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by AxelHeyst »

Oh fun!

I liked your thoughts on physique vs. fitness. I wonder how much of it is personality, cultural exposure, and where one's dissatisfactions are greatest? For a long time I worked out with almost purely physique goals. Of course my fitness was pretty good because I was working out all the time, so I had low dissatisfaction with respect to fitness. But then I got into climbing and mountain biking, and my specific physique training program didn't serve me well for those activities. So my mentality changed a bit and I refocused on specific fitness goals.

I think after you get to some point, it almost doesn't matter as the difference will be slight. I mean, if your primary current dissatisfaction is fitness, and you get after getting fitter, as you say you're sure to improve physique. And at some point you might be so fit that you're more than adequately fit for everything you do in your life, and you go through a "physique" phase to focus on one or two things because that's just what sounds most fun for the time. Then you get into some activity that has specific fitness goals, so you swing back in that direction...

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

Thanks for the thoughts, AxelHeyst! In my case, I think you're spot on that my greatest dissatisfaction is with my fitness right now despite the fact my physique is no where close to what I want. At this point since I'm out of shape and unfit, I guess I could attack from either angle and get great results since I'm not optimized in either. I suspect you're right that later I may cycle between the two goals especially since I'm not sure how I'll look once I hit my fitness goals. I may have more to do.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Really interested to hear more about the sailing club. How does it work? As someone who has big ambitions wrt sailing (eventually would like to buy a 30-36' sailboat and live on it for a year or two while fulltime cruising.....very curious how the logistics work, and your experience with it.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

Hey 2B1S!

The place I signed up for has dinghy sailboats (I don't *think* they have bigger sailboats, but I may be mistaken) and windsurfing equipment along with kayaks and stand up paddle boards. The cost is ~$500 per year.

The place includes free beginner and intermediate lessons so you can learn to take out the sailboats even if you have no prior experience (6 classes, iirc). For another $40, you can also take all of the advanced sailing classes (9 more classes, iirc). There are two beginner classes one has to take or to test out of before one can check out the sailboats.

Once you sign up for the membership, you can take out boats everyday. The kayaks and SUPs are available right away and I've only taken those out so far because I've been missing the beginning sailing classes so far.

The club also has classes about boat racing and they have boat races every week. I haven't participated in any yet, but I saw them happening last week.

When I lived in the Bay Area, there was a similar place: https://www.cal-sailing.org/. Cal Sailing was even better because they had a bigger fleet of ships including bigger keelboats and it was more volunteer based so you could learn a lot of cool skills volunteering like boat and sail repair and maintenance. But the idea is the same and I'm glad I found a place that was fairly similar in my new location.

I'd love to try some cruising too! But I'd have to find another place to do that sort of thing. The sailing club I'm in focuses more on dinghy sailing.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

Scott 2 wrote:
Thu Dec 16, 2021 9:06 am
...
Removed from the ennui, It's very tempting to run back - money, structure, benefits, social outlet, status, competence, etc.

On the other hand, now I can appreciate all those positive aspects. Maybe that perspective would stay. See - that doubt creeps in again.
Wow! I wanted to save this here because I'm currently tempted in the same way and I am also seeing my old job with the same, potentially rose colored, point of view now that I've been out of work for six months and I am no longer burned out. I was surprised to see my experience written out so well haha.

I originally planned to use semiERE to try other jobs, but I haven't found it easy to do anything different. Even the idea of contracting as a software developer which is an obvious pivot from full time dev has been, well, an unappealing and difficult-seeming prospect. It seems a lot easier to get another full time tech job and spend another year or two making money and saving the contracting for some situation where being a full time dev obviously doesn't fit my life (eg if I want to stay home to watch my kids in the future or something like that). If I go back to work, then it'll be another few months before I do, but I have realized that figuring out what to do next isn't as easy as I thought it would be.

zbigi
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by zbigi »

mathiverse wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 5:11 pm
That's basically me as well. Long story short - quit my dev job (well, technically reduced it to 10% part-time) for six months, got bored, returned to the job and found it even harder to stomach than before.
I think these relapses will occur until I feel rather secure financially. Until then, it's hard to stay at home and "find myself" when I know that my biggest asset, i.e. ability to make a lot of money through paid work, is withering by the quarter.

Scott 2
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by Scott 2 »

IMO full time tech is far easier than lean FIRE. I've found turning off LinkedIn especially helpful in staying my course. It's hard to ignore that I could have an extra $5-10k to play with, every month. I am counting the hundreds over here.

The opportunity cost of working remains my primary FIRE motivation. I went swimming with my wife at 1pm yesterday. I'm taking a 9am yoga class today. My schedule has no constraints. I love that. I also found myself a shell of person, outside the tech world. It is rewarding to see that slowly changing.

For me - the value of schedule freedom makes part-time tech especially unappealing. As does the impact to health insurance subsidies. I also found the need to establish myself as an expert provided a significant barrier to entry. I think I'm firmly in the all or nothing camp. I'd take a fun, non-tech job, but nothing has come up.


Interested to see how you solve the problem.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Intermittent work is not a bad approach. I had many of the same questions/concerns about going back to work at the end of 2020 (after 13 months off), and some of them materialized at first! Then after 6 months I switched employers and found an amazing opportunity (for now), which has almost none of the negatives with many positives. If/when the negatives begin to outweigh the positive in any meaningful way, it's time to quit again.

The key IMHO is finding a good team/manager, more so than the company itself.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

@2B1S - I agree that team and manager is key. At my last job, I had a great team and manager, but there were other places at the company that were known to be less pleasant. I'll be applying to several different companies and I'll be paying a lot of attention to the team dynamics once I get to the team choosing stage. I will keep an open mind to leaving a company really quickly if things don't look good after I start. I want to be quicker to get out of a bad situation this time around.

---

In other news, when I wake up in the mornings in the winter, my windows tend to have condensation at the bottom of the window panes. Is that something others deal with? Is it normal to have to wipe down windows every morning? I tend to wipe them down because if I leave them wet, then mold tends to grow. Is there something else I could do?

theanimal
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by theanimal »

Interior window condensation happens when warm, humid air inside your house comes in contact with colder, dryer air. Windows are often a spot where this occurs (and are typically the first) because they retain heat less easily than walls. This can be common in the winter in tightly insulated homes with minimal airflow. If you're finding it overnight, it's likely just a result from your breathing. You're in an apartment right? If you have a door to a bedroom you can try leaving it open at night if you aren't already to allow more airflow. Other things to manage humidity are using exhaust fans when you're cooking or in the bathroom when showering. Otherwise the commercial solution is a dehumidifier.

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