The Education of Axel Heyst

[fiby41]

https://nomoreharvarddebt.com/2014/01/2 ... year-olds/

Level 3 perspective reminds of the first of seven sins enumerated by Gandhi
Wealth Without Work
Pleasure Without Conscience
Knowledge Without Character
Commerce (Business) Without Morality (Ethics)
Science Without Humanity
Religion Without Sacrifice
Politics Without Principle

[Jin+Guice]

There is also some very strong social positioning spending (even in the realm of life energy/non financial capital) in these ranks. It's part of the culture and something you may not have experienced given your different background.

I don't think it's possible to escape social positioning, because:

humans are social animals.

However, social status isn't only gained by job title, owning fancy things or making a lot of money. In our culture, this is just the most popular way to do it. I actually think this is one big advantage of getting to higher Wheaton levels in ERE vs. just being a FIRE/ lower Wheaton level person.

If you're a money/ job dude ("salaryman"), your job is a huge part of your identity and most of what you think about is money, you're probably surrounded by people with a similar mentality and it's going to be rough spending less money and eventually quitting your job (identity). Now imagine instead you're someone who grows their own food and built their own house. Social status acquired, probably even somewhat begrudgingly from most of the salarymen.

Probably better/ more interesting/ productive to master the above, but you can also backdoor your way into fancy items way above your paygrade by owning only a few nice things and knowing how to take care of them.

[AxelHeyst]

It's interesting that I managed to spend so much, because my social pressure culture for the past ~7 years was essentially dirtbag culture. All my friends have vans/rigs, and some of them live full time in them. All my friends have duct tape on their puffys. All my friends rent shitty little bolt-holes, or live in a shipping container, or etc. They wear approach shoes to work, there is climbing chalk on their keyboards, they ride their fixed-up bikes. It's probably worth noting that most of my friends have actual decent-paying jobs, so we're not *actual* dirtbags, we all just like climbing a lot and frankly most of us wish we had the balls to be full-time dirtbags but are, in fact, not.

And yet, as far as I can tell, we spend a significant amount of money on: our vans, our gear, gas to get to the mountains (and sometimes other countries that have sick mountains too), craft beer and whiskey, setups to brew our own beer, expensive organic food, and expensive hipster restaurants. Some of us are more frugal naturally than others, but we all seem to be in about the same situation (without rooting through all my friends' financial documents, this is of course a guess).

So we've got kind of a value-signalling thing of the frugal dirtbag, but under the surface our burn rate is waaayyyy higher than what a true dirtbag could sustain. Mostly because we live in cities and have jobs and things - I don't doubt that 99% of my friends could drop below 1 jafi almost immediately if they lost their jobs and had to move in to their rigs. Our weekends and vacations *are* dirtbag life, it's just the commuting to that life and maintaining a place near our jobs that does us in.

@c_L thanks for the kind words! I am getting so much value out of this community. And I think it's part of the social conditioning thing you and @J_G are talking about - you can't really escape your social pressures, but you can choose which society you are pressured by. By hanging out here, I'm soaking up the ERE social pressure. I like the idea that I'm my own man, do my own thing, society be damned... but in my heart I know that's bs. I need to be surrounded by good people. Yall are good people.

[AxelHeyst]

I've been doing a lot of thinking about post-FIRE life, "my number", what I want out of life, etc. A plan (strategy?) is starting to converge out of all the musings.

Gratitude for this expensive apartment
I realized this morning, because DW and I were discussing how to gracefully end our lease early, that if it wasn't for getting in to this expensive situation and freaking out about it, I would not have dug back in to ERE and began this journey to freedom and fulfillment. I would have kept muddling along, saving some here and there, but the light bulb of "oh, I could really change my life within a couple years" would not have been triggered. Also, DW wouldn't have as much a fire under her to get her business of the ground if I was still so 'meh, it's fine' about supporting her. So, this apartment will have been an investment with a huge ROI in terms of money and life fulfillment.

Clarity around timeline, "my number", and post-FI life
I recognized that what entices me about not having to work a normal job is the time and life-energy space to pursue a breadth of pursuits, many of which I aim to be renumerative. One of the reasons I've not considered them realistic is because I was never confident they could match my cost of living. However, once I'm cruising at a ~1 jafi CoL (by midyear, is my target), the pressure to make X dollars/year is way lower.

So, my approximate plan is to hit a SR of 85+%, build a FU fund of 15-25x, and end my full time job by Q1 2022. That won't be enough for me to never make money again, so, not really FIRE.

I aim to then make >= living expenses through a diverse ecosystem of side hustles, builds, projects, freelance gigs, etc. I'll be happy to cruise along making just enough to cover my CoL, and my portfolio can grow by reinvesting dividends from there, occasionally funding a project that needs a little bit of capital. It'd also be cool if my ideas turn out to be better than I thought, and I can substantially grow my portfolio and get to a real FIRE number within a short amount of time.

Why not just stick it out another couple years and truly FIRE at 3% SWR? Because

• I'm not getting any younger, and I suspect I wouldn't look back on those extra years as time well spent.
• I feel like time is really starting to tick with the Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush project. Even if I'm totally wrong about the immanent slow decline of civilization, I (and DW) are experienced low-level stress from knowing that we're so dependent on The Grid due to low skill level. The more we feel self-sufficient and like our skills are up to the task of serving us well for whatever the future throws at us, no matter what is actually going on with the world at large, the more this stress will subside.
• I suspect, with my true desire to do activities that I anticipate enjoying the hell out of that incidentally will bring in income, I won't have cashflow issues. Also, DW has a number of recession-resilient skills and has always scraped money together from multiple income streams and lived frugally her whole life. I'm supporting her right now so she can singularly focus on getting her dream business up and running, not because she can't find work.
• The likelihood of me being able to boomerang with my current company, within 5 years of quitting, is high, if my plan goes sideways. Even if I accidentally burn a bridge there, my industry-specific skills won't expire for a while.

[RoamingFrancis]

Mashallah it's exciting to hear how quickly your life is changing!

The Collapse Now Project looks really interesting; I'll delve into it more when I have a gap in my higher-priority activities.

The way I look at it, even if civilization doesn't collapse, it's fun to prepare for it anyways. So even if you're totally wrong, it doesn't matter

[classical_Liberal]

So, my approximate plan is to hit a SR of 85+%, build a FU fund of 15-25x, and end my full time job by Q1 2022. That won't be enough for me to never make money again, so, not really FIRE.

Man, this reads like the inside of my mind when I started my journal 3 years ago. You are waaay ahead of where I was then(even where I am now), from a ERE-thinking perspective though. Even so, I just wanna share with you why I ended up going from thinking the above, to my current set up which is more dependant on specialized paid work.

First, be warned, accumulating money is super addictive! There are many reasons for this, here are a few:

The more you have, the more you see other potential options for yourself. I've used the analogy before that it's like a road, with each step you gain the ability to see further down the never ending horizon of possibilities that money can provide.

Society as a whole worships wealth and it feels good to know that I stealthily have more money than almost any condescending asshat I run into in the world. IOW, self-esteem.

The more you have, the more you worry about losing it. This created, in me, a weird vested interest in keeping society, as it is, stable. Even though rationally I really want things to change, I sort-of don't because I want to keep my capital safe. IOW, a new cognitive dissonance.

It also has significantly reduced my risk tolerance with money. I'm not just talking about paper investing choices, although that's part of it. I'm much less likely to risk money on things that could potentially improve my life, like lifestlye business capital or really fulfilling hobbies that have the potential to self-sustain after an upfront investment.


The second issue I have run into is that I did not put enough energy into these side-hustle, hobby type things before reaching my financial goals. I worked on skills, but only those that would help me reach the financial goals directly (less spending, more earning options from high paid specialty work). This lopsided approach left me in a situation in which I do not have any cash flow outside of my current main specialization and invested capital. So, even though I'm in a really resilient field and my need to outsource (spend) is relatively low compared to the average person, I'm tethered to both much more than I would like. This also created a situation in which I've kind-of lost interest in creating cash flow from other sources. I've become so good at flexibly making money in one way, that I find it difficult to devote time to other potential cash flow activities. IOW, anytime I think, "hey I'll try this to make some money, it sounds interesting", I quickly and harshly compare it to how much I would make if I just used that time to work in my currently specialty. Since I don't really hate it, and the other activity is an unknown in how much I'd like it or earn from it, I always chose specialty income.

Now, I'm spending a lot of mental energy trying to decide what to do with where I ended up. These things may never be issues for you, but given the similarity of my original goal to yours and the fact you have a potentially high paying, flexible specialty, I just wanted to let you know where I would have tried to approach some things differently.

I can't wait to see how all this moves forward for you!

[Jin+Guice]

My experience was a bit different than @c_L's, although my plans did also change from when I first conceived my escape. Probably 25% of my discussions with c_L are hashing out our minutely different preferences when it comes to part-time work. I prefer to work very little and how much I like the work as well as having some variety in my days is important to me, so I don't optimize for only income. I also prefer working 1-2 days a week consistently. c_L likes to optimize for income and also likes to be either all on or all off.

Ultimately it sounds like you've got a pretty solid plan, I'm interested to see if and how it changes as you execute it.

[AxelHeyst]

I really appreciate the perspective @c_L. It's so valuable to be able to hear your experience and try to digest it and have that inform my own path.

One element here, and I just outed myself for this in @mathiverse's journal, is that I'm a workaholic. I once did 80-100hrs/wk for 9 months. For most of my 20s, 60hrs/wk was standard, with frequent spikes above that number. I put a gf in the hospital because I got sick from overwork, and got her sick, and it fucked up her back. I once worked 35hrs straight. I pulled all-nighters so often coworkers started calling the nursing room "Axel's Room" (I'd nap there between 2am and 5am often). I've largely stopped behaving that way, but whatever in my personality drove me to do that stuff still exists in me in some form, and causes stress and other issues. This is relevant to my thinking in these ways:

I experience stress around work, even though I have an objectively cushy gig, in the form of feeling like a waste of resources if I'm not CRANKING. ALL. THE. TIME. My mind knows I'm a solid contributor to the company, but the gremlin inside thinks I'm garbage if I'm indulging in the luxury of, say, adequate sleep. I've done a lot of work in an attempt to murder the little bastard, but so far I've just managed to cage him up a bit and put a muzzle on him. So I'm either stressed because I'm working too much, or I'm stressed because I'm working a reasonable number of hours. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

I appreciated bigato's comment (in mathiverse's journal) that escaping work can just be escaping the underlying causes, and a better approach would be to do the work to root out those deep-rooted causes. I think bigato is right. Also, I've done a lot of fucking work on this, and I'm tired of it. I want out. Even though I enjoy my work, my company has been really good to me, and I've got a lot of freedom a lot of people only dream of, I want out. I'm tired of the clench at the top of my stomach.

And, to @RF's point in that thread, perhaps getting out will give me the space I need to be able to see what's up with that gremlin, who is probably just a childhood survival / self-protection mechanism that is maladapted to my adult life, thank him for keeping me safe, and let him be free of me.

The risk, of course, is that I quit my job and the little workaholic gremlin goes in to overtime on my semi-FIRE life and I still experience similar levels of stress. I won't know till I do it, but I suspect not having to work "40" hours a week will be a situation more conducive to rooting him out.

At any rate, this is all to say that work-related self-induced stress is a huge motivator for me.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -Jiddu Krishnamurti

[classical_Liberal]

I'm tired of the clench at the top of my stomach.

Wow, this is a great physical description of what I experience before I start a run of several shifts nursing. I've never been able to describe it before, other than anxiety or disquiet. I used to feel it when rubber met the road in other jobs as well. It's interesting because it mostly goes away after a few hours into my first shift. Although a low level of anxiety is always there, which I think is a necessary thing given what I do. This is one of the big reasons why my preference for work is in blocks (vs @J+G, a day or two a week), so I don't have to deal with this prework clench at the top of my stomach weekly.

The risk, of course, is that I quit my job and the little workaholic gremlin goes in to overtime on my semi-FIRE life and I still experience similar levels of stress. I won't know till I do it, but I suspect not having to work "40" hours a week will be a situation more conducive to rooting him out.

In my experience, it goes away completely after a bit of time. As a matter of fact, time completely off work is so effective at reducing this outside stress, I learned I do not have very well developed internal motivations. It's hard for me to do anything productive without having external stressors to do them. After awhile I felt like I needed to add work back into my life, simply to have the motivation to produce value and make all this free time seem like it was more precious, so I wouldn't waste it away.

[RoamingFrancis]

I think it's most likely the gremlin was beneficial at some point and didn't get the message when your outside circumstances changed. It'll be interesting to see how your psychology changes if you remove the behavioral triggers. Keep us updated.

[AxelHeyst]

I don’t quite like the gremlin metaphor. ... I’d rather integrate him into a cohesive personality.

I think this is really spot-on, thank you. And I agree with @RF, this dynamic was likely a beneficial adaptation at some point.

I think early on, I associated performing well, being competent, and not screwing up with getting attention/approval from those whom it mattered most. And there were few other sources of approval-income in my early life -- there was a lack of diverse income streams of approval, or at least there was a lack of ones that I perceived. So I overfocused on competence, which evolved in to a brutal work ethic.

(Interestingly, it also evolved in to becoming highly adept at what I call 'type 2 work', which is essentially Being Well Regarded Around the Office. In relationships, it manifests as Nice Guy syndrome and codependence.)

Some other environmental factors boosted this dynamic. Engineering school rewards unlimited studying; entering the work force in 2009 was dicey because juniors are the first to get the axe, so I felt compelled to demonstrate high value asap; I was infected by Silicon Valley startup hustle culture (even thought I didn't work at a startup); I approached my work with a True Believer / Green Warrior ethos, so long hours became a moral imperative.

Eventually I burned out hard, took a sebbatical, dug in to the culture of overwork, and made a course correction in my life. By 2016, I had modified my actions such that I didn't "do" workaholism any more. Super long days or weeks only happen occasionally now, when there's actually some heavy-duty shit going down at work. Since then I only label myself as a workaholic because I'm worried that if I don't remain vigilant about it, I'll relapse.

So when I say I experience stress around work, I suspect it's because there's still a part of me that isn't fully convinced that working a reasonable number of hours is enough to secure a reasonable amount of approval/love. There is a presence in my self that is puzzled and slightly disappointed as to why I haven't accomplished epic feats of production yet.

Another current dynamic is that I'm off the map with work - I'm inventing/synthesizing a niche of work that no one's really done before, so I've got imposter syndrome as well as no real benchmarks available to compare my performance against.

I intend to invest effort in understanding these dynamics in the time I have left at work. DW recommended that as these feelings of stress come up, I drop in and get curious about the feelings - ask them what it is they're after, what they're lacking, what they're worried about.

I also started reading The Renaissance Soul, based on the lurked recommendation of @7wb5 I think, and I'm wondering if a contribution to my stress is feeling too locked in to one thing at the moment. I ticked every box on the self-assessment quiz in that book, and noted that while I've only worked for one company for about a decade, I've morphed my responsibilities about a half-dozen times in major and minor ways. I read about how some people focus on one thing for a super long time and become absolute masters at it, and I despair because I desperately want to be amazing at something but my interests are all over the place. This book is great at a) helping me understand that there isn't anything wrong with me and b) helping me understand that people with broad interests can pull off a pretty fulfilling life too, often by synthesizing several of their diverse interests that no one has considered in conjunction before (I've already done this ~3 times in my career).

[Jin+Guice]

I struggle with workaholism too. I haven't found that working less for pay made me less of a workaholic, workaholism transferred to other areas of my life. I don't think I've found the best way for 1) dealing with the psychological reasons behind the workaholism; 2) getting rid of the workaholism, or 3) find the best way to productively use it, but I have made some headway in all of these areas. I have also been working extremely part-time for almost 3 years, so I have some experience.

For me personally, there are several psychological factors. My parents, particularly my mom who mostly raised me (and her whole immediate family), are obsessed with having a "good career," making money and the (often false) security that money brings. Hard consistent work was seen as the path to happiness and security. I was pretty unhappy during my late highschool and early college years. Training obsessively for my first career, landing a job in the field and then working constantly gave me a lot of self-esteem and gave me access to a tribe of like-minded individuals. The culture of that particular field is very workaholic. So, many important foundational experiences were very work-based and encouraged workaholism.

Getting rid of workaholism has been tough. In a certain sense, I'm not comfortable if I'm not working. One way to escape workaholism is to focus on your social life and relationships. I also find it helpful to question why I'm working so much. If the point of work is to get money, but I already have enough money*, then why am I working? It became clear to me that work is largely about social status, identity, and sometimes, social interaction. Those things are all great but none of them (except the workaholic identity and perceived status) require workaholism.

Doing creative or intellectual work for yourself (without a strict deadline), is another good way to escape workaholism. This is not the most effective way to get projects finished; however, it'll help you realize there is a pretty low limit to the actual "work" that can be done in a day. It's pretty hard to do anything of quality or worth when you're tired or overworked. When you work for an employer, simply being at work means you're working. When you "work" for yourself, being "at work" without getting quality work done is a waste of time and energy.

I've had slightly more success using workaholism to my advantage. To do this I reclassify the job as my life and make everything work (I'm also an NT personality type, so if you buy into MBTI, this is intrinsic to me anyway). Working on my garden: work. Successful social interaction: job well done. Made dinner: delicious delicious success. It's important to tie this method to the idea that you can't do any one type of work well for multiple hours a day for any sustained period. The point isn't to turn your whole life into a grind, but rather, focus on whatever it is you're doing at the moment and do it well.

The skill of grinding is still sometimes useful. We live in a culture of grinding and sometimes I'll take on a gig or a project that requires a grind. The ability to slip back into this mode is helpful, as long as I don't get stuck there.


*I realize the phrase "enough money" is dangerous here. In this context, I mean enough money to get through a short period like a week or a month. In the ERE "enough money" context, is it worth grinding 60-100 weeks, possibly taking years of your life, to retire earlier?



edit: Posted this before reading your previous post, looks like you've got a pretty good handle on your own psychological drivers!

[AxelHeyst]

edit: Posted this before reading your previous post, looks like you've got a pretty good handle on your own psychological drivers!

It's really beneficial to hear your perspective - while reading it I realized I'm not aware of any other people in my life who [admit that they] are workaholics.

I'm feel fortunate that I never really had any pressures related to the outward trappings of a 'good career', as my parents are pretty class oblivious. But my dad is a workaholic, and I think has a bit of a notion that my siblings and I were set up to lead exceptional lives. (Part of the promise of why they homeschooled us was so we could get an exceptional education and be self-driven, so in a sense I think he's watching us to see if we're going to "make it" in some big way). I think he gets a lot of validation from how well his offspring does (I suppose all parents do?).

Similarly to you I think, my workaholism has paid off in a number of ways. Sometimes people just starting out ask me for advice, how I got to where I am (remote work, self-defined role, high level of trust, etc), and I say "Well, I'll tell you how I got here, but I can't actually recommend it to anyone because the price was unjustifiably high. No one should have to do what I did, it's bs."

I don't know if the drives within me that have mostly expressed as 'workaholism' are something that should/can be fixed, or managed. At what point am I just obsessing over in-the-weeds details of a part of my psyche that's actually working pretty fine, and my self-growth time would be better spent elsewhere at this point? And - am I obsessing over optimizing a local maxima, wheras if I shifted my focus to, say, a deep meditation practice, I'd leapfrog over many of these issues and jump to a higher level of self-relation?

[AxelHeyst]

In a return to more tangible matters - I just got the good news that we'll be able to break our lease early. The owner wants to renovate it and sell it, so it's a win/win. March will be our last month.

My Cost of Living forecast for the year now looks like this:


The bumps are accounting for planned "one-off" expenses, some that I know about, and some that are just contingencies and might be conservative.

If my forecast turns out to be accurate, I'll spend just under $20k this year. And I'll cross $10k in... three weeks.

So what are we going to do for housing? We're moving back in to our rigs. Might go hang out in the desert for a bit and see how this whole coronavirus thing pans out - spring's great out there anyways, so it's not like it'd be a hardship or a panicked run for the hills.

[mooretrees]

That's great! Savings will explode soon.

[GandK]

I live with a workaholic (my husband, G) but am not one myself. My perspective from the outside looking in is that his self-esteem is wrapped up in his ability to achieve results. Actually, it's more meta than that, now I verbalize it... it's more about the respect he gets from being seen to achieve results.

From time to time we butt heads about his obsessive foci. He sees my rejection of his voluntary stress tornado as an unacceptable laissez-faire, indicative of an inferior work ethic just like the rest of humanity (how disappointing in a spouse), and signalling that he ought to step in and do X himself or the world may cease to turn correctly. For my part, I see his priorities as incredibly misplaced: almost nothing he gets wound up about will matter 5 years from now, so my innate NF deathbed perspective looks at what he'd call "making hay" and sees neglect of relationships, of depth, of meaning itself and all the things he will someday regret not giving his life energy to in his pursuit of... well, a cleaner, more organized, and bigger pile of poop than the next guy.

[ertyu]

That was such a cutting quality burn @K I'm tempted to screenshot it and read it to my inner job-obsessed neurotic at regular intervals.

Obligatory disclaimer: the above implies no position on anyone or anything else but myself. Also, in my case it's not about chasing respect but about being fundamentally unable to accept that I can rely on anything but money for survival, help, and security in life. Comes with one of those families that people probably mean when they say that "sometimes the cheapest way to pay is with money."

[AxelHeyst]

+1, really great post @GandK. If I had a fridge, I'd put that on it.

I think the difference between me and G is that I understand that it's unhealthy and maladaptive - I'm fully on board that the focus on work and competence is unbalanced. Rooting out all the weird non-intuitive emotional/psychological baggage is a bit of a process. Reading that book about the five biggest regrets of the dying helped me. Psilocybin moderately and responsibly used helped a friend of mine out.

[AxelHeyst]

~February Update~

Finances
I am abandoning the concept of budgeting, and instead thinking in terms of forecasting and observation. I appreciate that many people here don't budget, and the YMOYL people are rather anti-budgeting as they think it's like dieting, just a system for self-shaming and the like.

YMOYL recommends a system whereby you record every single purchase, calculate how much of your life-energy in hours you had to spend to get it, and then answer three questions about the expense: did it bring fulfillment in line with the cost? Was it in alignment with your purpose and values? How would this expense change if you didn't have to work for money?

This made me think of John Boyd's concept of "command and control" vs. "observation and appreciation", with the latter being the preferred approach.

So I adopted the YMOYL system, but retained a 'forecasting' element in my system because without something that can look a month, year, and 5 years in the future, I feel I'd lack the excitement/motivation that comes with a precise and compelling vision. (Developing a compelling narrative is also very Boydian.)

Expenses for February: 5.5 jafi. Came in only slightly over forecast, due mostly to expenses related to moving out of our apartment and towing 350 miles on short notice. The only overage worth mentioning is that we spent $500 on food, and I hopecasted 450. Some of this is due to stocking up on groceries before heading out of town, so March might be easier to achieve my forecast of $400. But we’ve got to learn a new grocery store landscape, so we’ll see how that works out.

Savings: Only $2,100, or 34%, but that's because I've got some cash tied up in business expenses that haven't reimbursed yet. March should be quite high as not only am I going to get that cash in, I'm going to be *not* paying 1700 in rent (I count rent at the end of the previous month).

---
Housing
We renegotiated our lease to terminate at the end of March, instead of May, which is a huge relief. We moved out by last Thursday, for a variety of reasons. We're now set up on the family land way out in the boonies, living in our rigs, enjoying access to tools, and my motorcycle, and the desert.

Also, the internet is slow here, which I count as a good thing. I limit my interneting to the bare essentials, because mindless browsing is annoyingly slow, and then go outside and do anything else. It's lovely.

I'm in the research phase of building a little studio/storage shed here. I'm currently thinking earthbag, but maybe salvaged stick-frame. More on that later. I've got in my mind a budget of <$500usd.
---
Health
I took a break from working out for the past month and a half because I broke a rib snowboarding in January, and have been trying to let it heal. Even an attempt at a light workout made it hurt again. So I'm focusing on hiking and light yoga.

Mentally, work is still stressing me out, but I'm better able to deal with it now that I'm out of the apt.

I'm also misaphonic, which means that certain specific sounds will annoy me. And by "annoy" I mean "induce fight-or-flight to such a degree that the only thing I can think to do is either immediately running from the room or punching the source of the sound in the face". I think there is a threshold effect, so if I'm stressed out in other areas of my life, my misaphonia is worse. It helped to learn recently that misaphonia is actually a recognized thing now - I used to think I was just crazy. Having a term for it has helped me have conversations about it.

The point is, I've determined that I simply can't go forward in life without implementing a consistent stress-mitigation plan that involves meditation. I've been putting it off for months, planning on getting back around to it when things have calmed down a bit, but that's completely backwards isn't it?

(Working out and strenuous physical exercise is a key part of my stress/anxiety management system, but I've been prevented from it now because of the rib.)

[AxelHeyst]

“If other people do not understand our behavior -- so what? Their request that we must only do what they undersand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being "asocial" or "irrational" in their eyes, so be it. Mostly the resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to "explain," which usualy implies that the explanation be "understood,", i.e., approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself -- to his reason and his conscience -- and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.”
--Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

Wherabouts and such
DW and I renegotiated our lease to be the end of March, and then moved out by the end of February. (From "hey, let's move out early" to "we're out" was 3 days.)

We are now posted up on family property out in the high desert, and are implementing as much social distancing as we can (which is quite a lot). My parents are in their 70's, and while they aren't taking the coronavirus as seriously as I'd like them to yet, it's my intention to adhere to the precautionary principle and keep them from contracting it.

We've paused all projects that involve social contact or spending any more money that is strictly necessary. All of a sudden I feel like I have much more space in my life, just by hitting "pause" on the whole damn List. It shocks me that it never occurred to me to do this in the past. I'm going to remember this, and when I start to get overwhelmed in the future I'll just call a Disaster Drill - let's playact for a month like it's the Plague again. It's good to test the preparedness systems from time to time anyways, and it's good to just bring all the hustle and bustle to a bare minimum.

My company just went fully WFH (850 people, 5 countries), but that doesn't matter much to me or my team because we've been WFH since 2016. So far I haven't noticed any impacts to work projects, except for a cleantech startup client whose product is currently (not) being manufactured in Italy.

A vanlife friend is up here as well at the moment, taking some time to replace his clutch and do some other maintenance it's tricky to do from a boondock spot out in the woods. We've got a pretty great little dirtbag compound forming, much to my parent's amusement. We're also getting some fun dual sport rides in, this area is incredible for riding.

Financial
I feel like my system for tracking money is settling nicely. I'm finally at the point where I don't need to spend an hour with the Spreadsheet every single day. March is on track to be at about 1.5-2 jafi, which includes some stocking up on more food than we'll eat this month and a long-ish road trip DW took.

Work
I'm less stressed about work, due to:
-Doing yoga
-Relaxing about some financial targeting stuff, and realizing that the best I can do is to create the best work I can make. And that I have multi-level support to do what I'm doing.
-Optimize my home office situation - no internet in the mornings, internet in the afternoons.
-Everyone else in the company is freaking out and going through the learning curve of WFH. I’ve actually been requested to make some how-to and support videos for the rest of staff. So with everything going on, I’m just less OCD about my productivity and output.

Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush: Projects and Skills
I built a humanure compost bin, finally. I've been using a composting toilet for almost two years now and haven't been in one spot long enough to build a bin. Now's the time. I built it using junk wood laying around the property and fasteners I already had.

I prototyped an outside air intake heater in my rig with a CPU liquid-cooling radiator, aquarium pump, tea heater, temp controller thingamajig, and an ammo can. The idea is to take the bite out of bringing 10*F ventilation air in to my rig at night. My rig is quite well insulated, but the ventilation air requirement, while small, turns it in to an icebox because my total air volume is small. My idea might be kinda stupid, but it's a fun build. Next step is to insulate the ammo box, rig up better mounts for all the equipment, and see if I can run it all through the night without running down the batteries (and if I can recharge it during the day with winter sun).

A future mod would be a much larger TES (thermal energy storage) tank, let's say 5-10gal, superinsulated, which I could then bring to temp during the day when the sun is shining (either with electric resistance or a solar thermal panel), and would have a better chance at lasting through the night.

I've had the books "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands volumes I and II" for years. I went out and moved some dirt around on a flat patch of earth that rainwater drains through from the main house and site. Goals are 1) to get erosion under control and 2) "plant" water so maybe some planting can be done on the pad. I'm not sure what makes sense - we get 6 inches of rain a year here in a wet year, and summer temps are over 100F. But at least I can encourage local re-growth.

I shelved all projects that involve buying materials, so I’m just going through my backlog of projects that I already have materials for. It’s a great “something from nothing exercise”.