I'll hire you.
You can start work now.
Ok, you're fired.
Now that that's over with, do you feel better?
3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
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2Birds1Stone
- Posts: 1606
- Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2015 11:20 am
- Location: Earth
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
I am feeling better because I am laughing You are right, it is indeed quite ridiculous. Also, your scheme didn't work becuase I didn't get any paychecks in the interim
. I guess the way to say this is, I notice myself growing more conscious of "the salaryman cycle" but I also notice that am not ready to let go of this cycle yet. The flip-flopping between "money will solve all my problems" and "jesus i hate working" is strong.
Update: getting interviews, but for crap money :// - 25% pay cut to last year. Still, I am hoping to save approx. 20-25k usd per yr assuming i'm frugal. Probably would agree, because it is better than no money. Oh, well.
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
Sometimes it seems like we’re spinning through a cycle when it’s more like a multi-dimensional helix with upwards-downwards movement. When you get your next position, you might surprise yourself.
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
Unrelated, but today I was backreading the blog and encountered the personality typing post. Definitely an idealist with artisan tendencies here (values inner growth, authenticity, meaningful relationships; joy sucked out of life when must conform to plan or schedule, travel is nice because beautiful places, also food. If forced to choose between authenticity and meaningful relationships and food and travel, would choose authenticity and relationships). Have been thinking about this because home town has felt small to me lately. I live better when my world is larger. Also, now that I've gotten some distance from my experiences with beer classmates, I am starting to feel like there really isn't anything really left for me here. I do love the place itself and its sense of familiarity. It feels grounding to have some sort of center to return to, a "home base" if you will. But I'm becoming less sure my home town is one.
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
How big/small is your home town? What do you mean with a "larger world"? Big city life or vast area of nature?
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
My home town is 100-150k people max, and it fails on both of the above counts. It's not so much the "big city life" that gets to me, but that I really like the anonymity of a larger city where people don't know each other. In a smaller town, people who live here have either known each other since they were small, or have at most 3 degrees of separation. Image, and how you appear - your "reputation" - become important. I am not into doing unethical stuff, so that part of "reputation" is not that important to me, but the part of "reputation" that limits your personal expression because everyone is up in everyone's business matters to me and feels stifling. People also tend to be small-minded: focused on the concrete and the local, and with little interest in growing up the K-scale. As I've mentioned before, there's a self-selection effect at play: almost everyone has moved to one of 3-4 larger cities in my country or is elsewhere in the EU. Of my high school class, for example, significantly more people have moved somewhere else than have stayed in town.
My home town is also not surrounded by much nature. There is a river you can go to, which makes it nicer than many other towns in the country, and a city park, but it's just ... small. There isn't an opportunity to take hours-long nature walks, or even if they are not nature walks, to loop around, say, a lake, and know you've just covered 4 miles (both things that have been the case in past places I've lived, I guess I'm spoiled). If you want to take a long walk (5km?), there is pretty much one route you can loop, and it's the same loop every time because the town might be large-ish but a lot of it is dilapidated residential neighborhoods with socialist-style apartment buildings.
I left my home town when I was pretty young, and since then, the longest I have stuck at a place outside college has been for four years (grad school), and that was in DC, a large urban center with Rock Creek Park trails cutting through the middle and generally very highly educated population. Since then, I have lived and worked in two different countries and, in the same country, four different large cities. When I read C40 and slowtraveler's escapades around VietNam, for instance, I feel sad that if things stay as they are, I will no longer be able to go there and revisit a place I loved, sit with a good cup of vietnamese coffee reading a book at a coffee shop. I'm not into compulsively visiting new places, but I like returning to cities or beautiful nature I've loved. Since corona, my world has felt smaller.
In grad school, I had a classmate who, before enrolling in our program, worked hard as a management consultant, then quit and fucked off to Rio until the money was over. At which point he went back to the states and got another job, only to quit again. Maybe this is what I will end up doing, god and corona willing. Do two years on, a year off on the savings, two years on, a year off on the savings, let existing stash simply tumble up and down the stock market. Relax savings rate and find more opportunities to be in nature when off work. Go to more coffee shops guilt-free, if it makes me happy.
I think I'm starting to zero in on what my problem is. I like the lifestyle that surrounds my job, but I strongly dislike the job itself - and you can't have one without the other. Whatever I choose, I end up missing something.
My home town is also not surrounded by much nature. There is a river you can go to, which makes it nicer than many other towns in the country, and a city park, but it's just ... small. There isn't an opportunity to take hours-long nature walks, or even if they are not nature walks, to loop around, say, a lake, and know you've just covered 4 miles (both things that have been the case in past places I've lived, I guess I'm spoiled). If you want to take a long walk (5km?), there is pretty much one route you can loop, and it's the same loop every time because the town might be large-ish but a lot of it is dilapidated residential neighborhoods with socialist-style apartment buildings.
I left my home town when I was pretty young, and since then, the longest I have stuck at a place outside college has been for four years (grad school), and that was in DC, a large urban center with Rock Creek Park trails cutting through the middle and generally very highly educated population. Since then, I have lived and worked in two different countries and, in the same country, four different large cities. When I read C40 and slowtraveler's escapades around VietNam, for instance, I feel sad that if things stay as they are, I will no longer be able to go there and revisit a place I loved, sit with a good cup of vietnamese coffee reading a book at a coffee shop. I'm not into compulsively visiting new places, but I like returning to cities or beautiful nature I've loved. Since corona, my world has felt smaller.
In grad school, I had a classmate who, before enrolling in our program, worked hard as a management consultant, then quit and fucked off to Rio until the money was over. At which point he went back to the states and got another job, only to quit again. Maybe this is what I will end up doing, god and corona willing. Do two years on, a year off on the savings, two years on, a year off on the savings, let existing stash simply tumble up and down the stock market. Relax savings rate and find more opportunities to be in nature when off work. Go to more coffee shops guilt-free, if it makes me happy.
I think I'm starting to zero in on what my problem is. I like the lifestyle that surrounds my job, but I strongly dislike the job itself - and you can't have one without the other. Whatever I choose, I end up missing something.
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
Update: am still an absolute loser who has not moved out, but signs of life are returning. In addition to a delightfully unproductive interest in solving puzzles, I seem to have gotten curious about trying to identify the 4 types of mushrooms I found today in the city park. I took pictures of the mushrooms because i thought they were cool. In the middle of googling "common mushrooms [HomeCountry]" I kind of stopped in my tracks and went, ".... wait. I am actually? Curious about this? And motivated to learn about it? Wow, had forgotten what that was like."
Idk how much of an interest this would become, but I can promise you that if you had asked me to predict a post-retirement interest or potential passion 8 months ago while still full-time employed, I would have never in a thousand years have come up with, "I think being able to tell the mushrooms in the park would be cool." This solidifies my opinion that the retire-to question can rarely be solved before you have actually retired. Also, boo to everyone who said, "dude get a fucking hobby otherwise you'll quit and you'll be even more miserable." You are wrong
Idk how much of an interest this would become, but I can promise you that if you had asked me to predict a post-retirement interest or potential passion 8 months ago while still full-time employed, I would have never in a thousand years have come up with, "I think being able to tell the mushrooms in the park would be cool." This solidifies my opinion that the retire-to question can rarely be solved before you have actually retired. Also, boo to everyone who said, "dude get a fucking hobby otherwise you'll quit and you'll be even more miserable." You are wrong
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
Feeling like an absolute loser doesn't mean you Are an absolute loser. (Besides Being an Absolute Loser would be quite an achievement, wouldn't it? )
Mushrooms are so mysterious and cool. I hope you keep finding things that interest you.
I'm really glad you seem to be getting some life energy back even though the living conditions could be better. Don't get discouraged when the energy levels fluctuate, that's normal.
(Yeah. I've been listening too much of the feeling good podcast by David Burns. Is it familiar to you? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkpUcscglzY)
)Mushrooms are so mysterious and cool. I hope you keep finding things that interest you.
I'm really glad you seem to be getting some life energy back even though the living conditions could be better. Don't get discouraged when the energy levels fluctuate, that's normal.
(Yeah. I've been listening too much of the feeling good podcast by David Burns. Is it familiar to you? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkpUcscglzY)
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classical_Liberal
- Posts: 2283
- Joined: Sun Mar 20, 2016 6:05 am
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
I hate to say I told you so, but...
Congrats on finally starting to unwind!
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
Cool, you’re living the Emerson quote of losing oneself to find oneself.
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Hail_Diogenes
- Posts: 27
- Joined: Thu Mar 05, 2020 5:19 pm
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
Nah, Jason and I are both in the eeyoree club, idk who else needs to join, but come on in
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
went off on father. told him he's a small man, and to try saying something positive and validating about someone to see if his tongue would shrivel and fall out.
he laughed. my mother did, too, in an exaggerated, nervous way. i am sick in my bones of these people.
just sharing.
to address the, "dude, why the fuck have you not moved out yet" chorus, I am having a bad premonition about this. I have rationally sounding reasons, such as not wanting to shell out the initial cash required to furnish a rented place (get bedsheets, space heater, etc.) and also, not wanting to because i'm not interested in settling in my home town for a longer stretch. But those aren't the real reasons. I think I shared once that I have a woo-woo streak. But lately, when thinking about moving out, have been seeing negative omens and have been drawing negative tarot cards, both about future employment prospects and about the fact that lean times are coming. I was not financially ready to quit work, still am not, but at the same time have a sense that the world is changing in a way that will mean i will no longer be able to work abroad. I have the sense that this is it with me and full time employment, and i need to make the money last. I am FI in local terms, at 4%. But I have a feeling that this is illusory, that the world is changing and tectonic shifts are in place that don't show up on the surface yet but once they do they'll crumble the entire potemkin village that's the world around me. Even if this is indeed under way, moving out would not halt it. I don't even know.
he laughed. my mother did, too, in an exaggerated, nervous way. i am sick in my bones of these people.
just sharing.
to address the, "dude, why the fuck have you not moved out yet" chorus, I am having a bad premonition about this. I have rationally sounding reasons, such as not wanting to shell out the initial cash required to furnish a rented place (get bedsheets, space heater, etc.) and also, not wanting to because i'm not interested in settling in my home town for a longer stretch. But those aren't the real reasons. I think I shared once that I have a woo-woo streak. But lately, when thinking about moving out, have been seeing negative omens and have been drawing negative tarot cards, both about future employment prospects and about the fact that lean times are coming. I was not financially ready to quit work, still am not, but at the same time have a sense that the world is changing in a way that will mean i will no longer be able to work abroad. I have the sense that this is it with me and full time employment, and i need to make the money last. I am FI in local terms, at 4%. But I have a feeling that this is illusory, that the world is changing and tectonic shifts are in place that don't show up on the surface yet but once they do they'll crumble the entire potemkin village that's the world around me. Even if this is indeed under way, moving out would not halt it. I don't even know.
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
@jason I’m a Slav it’s our collective unconscious
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Jason
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
I think this is helping me understand you. Your thread is very Solzhenitsyn. A circle of hell you have become used to. Maybe rename it "FI in The Parental Gulag."
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
Now that's a guy I should have read and haven't. Will add to my list of projects and things.
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
I would stay put and restrict my spending to the maximum. I would also have to find what to put my money in that isn't cash. But that's exactly the issue: staying put is proving to be very difficult psychologically. Plus it's been difficult to work on my other goals (have covered this before a little bit, attracting attention to myself results in criticism and being told that what i am doing is not what i should be doing and lectures on how I should be doing what parents want me to do instead. And yes, I know I should ignore it and not let it get to me, but I'm a Sensitive Snowflake so it gets to me). Today's argument with my father was exactly about this: there was a documentary about the ancient civilizatins of latin america on the tv and i decided to tell him about a book i am currently reading which mentions the significance of shrooms in those cultures (*)
(*) Book is *Changing Your Mind* by Pollan, following a recommendation to look into shrooms i received on this journal.
I didn't realize I was happy, but I was happy: my father and I were sharing an interest, and I was telling him about something I'd read that I found interesting! Didn'r last long. Me mentioning the book I read resulted in a criticism about how reading this book is useless because it's about a far-off region of the world and is impractical. I shouldn't be wasting my time on bullshit, I should be studying IT instead so I can be a high earning professional and finally return to work either at home country or in Europe and get married and have children. He's not violent and he's not a drunk, but every expression of joy or of sincere interest and passion is criticized and punished, and has been through the years - I think I mentioned in a previous post about how I was reading a book that made him want to shit on it, etcetera (it was a socialist textbook of economics; as someone that was then studying economics at university I was curious to see how (1) the material compared to what I was studying and (2) to compare how the socialist regime embodied ideology in its economic theory to justify itself vs. what I could see of the ideology implicit in the "capitalist" economics I was studying).
I want to completely cut off ties with them, even though there will be a lot of guilt on my part, and even though I feel like it's all my fault and there must be something wrong with me if I can't just "deal with it" and don't let my parents get to me. They love me and they just want the best for me, yaddah yaddah, so why can't I just be understanding? I want to move out and live my life, but I cannot afford it. Due to state of the world + state of my debilitating depression, I may never work again --- and winter is coming.
(*) Book is *Changing Your Mind* by Pollan, following a recommendation to look into shrooms i received on this journal.
I didn't realize I was happy, but I was happy: my father and I were sharing an interest, and I was telling him about something I'd read that I found interesting! Didn'r last long. Me mentioning the book I read resulted in a criticism about how reading this book is useless because it's about a far-off region of the world and is impractical. I shouldn't be wasting my time on bullshit, I should be studying IT instead so I can be a high earning professional and finally return to work either at home country or in Europe and get married and have children. He's not violent and he's not a drunk, but every expression of joy or of sincere interest and passion is criticized and punished, and has been through the years - I think I mentioned in a previous post about how I was reading a book that made him want to shit on it, etcetera (it was a socialist textbook of economics; as someone that was then studying economics at university I was curious to see how (1) the material compared to what I was studying and (2) to compare how the socialist regime embodied ideology in its economic theory to justify itself vs. what I could see of the ideology implicit in the "capitalist" economics I was studying).
I want to completely cut off ties with them, even though there will be a lot of guilt on my part, and even though I feel like it's all my fault and there must be something wrong with me if I can't just "deal with it" and don't let my parents get to me. They love me and they just want the best for me, yaddah yaddah, so why can't I just be understanding? I want to move out and live my life, but I cannot afford it. Due to state of the world + state of my debilitating depression, I may never work again --- and winter is coming.
Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal
I would pay my siblings their share of the current apartment and I would slowly be putting sweat equity into it. It has a good location, close to the park, so that allows one to go run really easily and also to really easily pack a thermos of coffee and sit on a bench surrounded by trees to drink it.
(*) buying my own fixer-upper apartment in this location might absorb too large a chunk of net worth, so I have ruled it out, especially given I am not sure I want to settle in Home Town long term. But I would be much more willing to stay here if my parents were already gone and if I could have the apartment cheaply as I only would be paying for it the part of the price which isn't covered by my share of the inheritance.
Assuming this apartment magically disappeared 10 yrs ago with my parents, I would probably be renting a small attic room somewhere, translating amateur gay porn from Russian to English for free, spending lots of time hanging out at coffeeshops, and reading all the bullshit books in the world. Also, sudoku.
Well, no. That's what I would do if I had the luxury to never think about full employment again. As it stands, what I should be doing is fixing my health and fitness so I can go back to work for at least one or two more years - assuming, of course, that work would be available.
(*) buying my own fixer-upper apartment in this location might absorb too large a chunk of net worth, so I have ruled it out, especially given I am not sure I want to settle in Home Town long term. But I would be much more willing to stay here if my parents were already gone and if I could have the apartment cheaply as I only would be paying for it the part of the price which isn't covered by my share of the inheritance.
Assuming this apartment magically disappeared 10 yrs ago with my parents, I would probably be renting a small attic room somewhere, translating amateur gay porn from Russian to English for free, spending lots of time hanging out at coffeeshops, and reading all the bullshit books in the world. Also, sudoku.
Well, no. That's what I would do if I had the luxury to never think about full employment again. As it stands, what I should be doing is fixing my health and fitness so I can go back to work for at least one or two more years - assuming, of course, that work would be available.