Axel Heyst's Journal

[Western Red Cedar]

AND - I guarantee you that I will not do that stuff if I own a car. I will take the easy, more expensive, less adventurous, less socially engaged route of driving my butt around instead.

I can definitely relate to this. I noticed a psychological/behavioral change after I finally bought a car in my late twenties. I also went without a television for many years and noticed the same thing when I finally bought one.

If I have a TV sitting in the room, I'm going to watch more of it. If I have access to a car, I'm going to use it. My wife recently got a job that requires her to drive to different clients. It limited my access to our rig, and it was a blessing in disguise. I've started riding my bike more to access trailheads and I've envisioned some longer-term travel via bicycle. One of my ERE dreams, assuming I'm back in the PNW and DW is working, is to do an extended WWOOFing trip to different farms in WA, ID, and BC via bicycle.

It's extremely valuable to know yourself and set up environments or systems that will challenge you and take you out of your comfort zone - or lead you to success, however you define it.

[mooretrees]

Really interesting to hear how rural car free living seems so hard to many folks. In my limited small town living, it seems like most people who live in the 'country' are primarily diving to work.

I recently read "The Unsettlers" by Mark Sundeen. One couple he writes about extensively moved to Missouri to start a car free, electricity free permaculture experiment (The Possibility Alliance). They were really thoughtful about where they moved, choosing a small town within a certain distance of an Amtrak station and a local Amish community. Those two choices were to give themselves easier living without cars and to potentially have some neighbors to learn/share with who were experienced with living without electricity and cars.

I think your point about the pyscho-emotional motivation is really the crux of making this rural car free living a possibility. I think also, like you've kinda mentioned, not owning a car doesn't mean you can't ever use one. I've shared my car with a friend for about 9 months and I think there are ways to get creative without being a mooch.

I think you can do it and hope to join you in that car free world!

[basuragomi]

Any potential in your chosen geography of living near a river/navigable stream and canoeing/kayaking/skiing into town? Surviving break-up and freeze-in would be the challenge then, but you gain an entirely new kind of flexibility relative to a car.

[AxelHeyst]

Potentially! Building a cedar-strip kayak is on my tick list of builds as well...

[AxelHeyst]

JnG wrote this in @2birds1stone's journal, but I wanted to get it in here. Emphasis mine.

Something that I've noticed as I've transitioned from Wheaton 5 to 6 is a shift in mindset on spending. I think around the Wheaton 4/5 border it becomes important to begin to embrace the idea that not spending money is not a sacrifice. Around the 5/6 border, I've found it important to embrace the idea that not spending money has a lot of benefits. One way I do this is to consider the attributes of the product/ experience I'm looking for and then ask if spending money will actually enhance that experience. A lot of times I'm looking for intrigue, novelty or adventure and these things are decreased by spending money to gain access to something. Seeking these things in areas where I traditionally spent money has lead me to spend even less, even if the time/ money tradeoff is not optimized from a $$ standpoint initially.

I think that's such a concise way of putting what I was getting at with the #carfree conversation above. The further you get , the more precise and profound you get with your definition of *what it is you are seeking*.

So at a lower WL, I have an identity as "a climber" and I'm trying to figure out how to optimize my climbing per $ metric.

I also have an identity as "a builder of cool stuff", and I try to optimize my buildin'-stuff / $ metric.

Maybe at W4 or 5 I look at each of those individually, and I arrive at the conclusion that a truck is good for getting materials for buildin' stuff, and something like a Tacoma is good for getting to climbing spots. I might even be able to convince myself that I'm doing some higher WL voodoo by considering the relationship between the two, and deciding that a particular Tacoma with a custom camper shell is going to optimize [experience]/$ for both those activities.

But a deeper level of inquiry re-examines the climbing identity, and says "hold up, you're not Adam Ondra, your calling is not to *add* anything to the world of climbing. At *best* you're going to climb 5.13, and no one will care. What is it you're really after there? Ah... it's being outdoors, adventure, a certain relationship with risk and danger, it's the bonds of comradery you get from engaging in adventurous activities with other people and relying on someone else in a no-joke epic. So "climbing/$" is the wrong metric, the right metric is something like "[adventure/novelty/comradeship/risk]/$". Well I don't need a Tacoma for THAT, in fact I can both decrease the $ and increase the [adv/novelty/etc] by ditching the car and walking, hitching, etc to the climbing area."

And a similar internal conversation can be held when examining buildin' stuff. It's not "building" that I'm after, so much as it is "creative self-expression through the design and manual manipulation of matter in a way such as to result in a new object/thing that serves some purpose, and is beautiful, and etc". Making it HARDER to get to home depot will make me thing more creatively about how to accomplish my ideas, and use what I have on hand here, or maybe I noticed my neighbor has a pile of cedar boards, maybe I can offer to fix up his woodshed in return for that cedar, which I can use as external siding for my container build.

[AxelHeyst]

Container Update
Similarly to the above post, I had a recent epiphany with the container build. I was getting stressed trying to get it done enough to be warm by the time winter really shows up here. My mental health was deteriorating. I realized I had managed to become an overworked stressball again, with my own personal projects!

I changed my perspective from a focus on the goal of having the shipping container complete, to the goal of executing the process of building the shipping container as perfectly as I can. In other words, instead of having my mind locked in on "complete the container", I locked it in on "cut this board as well as you can. Measure this disance as well as you can. Keep your tools and workspace tidy and clean, no matter what. Move slowly, because slow is smooth and smooth is fast."

There is magic in moving your attention from the gap between what you want and where you are at (one definition of suffering), to simply doing the best where you are at. Another way of putting it is, if you put your focus on a perfect process, the product tends to take care of itself. A quick re-skim of The Practicing Mind by Thomas Sterner helped lock on to this perspective.

My mental health has been much better. The morning I spent assembling the door (see below) was one of the best mornings I've ever had.



Floor in, internal and external housewrap on.


Burning (shou sugi ban) the door frame boards.


Building the board and batten door.^>







My approach to the door was "AK47, not AR15". In other words, nice wide clearances, so it almost certainly will never bind or jam. I will use large stops and weather stripping to keep it high performance.

[RoamingFrancis]

Your comments on building and climbing are interesting. I can relate in two other areas; for me, it's languages and meditation.

For languages, I've built up an identity as a "language nerd/intercultural explorer/aspiring anthropologist." What I'm really after is understanding how people from vastly different cultures see the world, and learning the language seems to be the best way to get an "in" into a community. Not really sure how this translates into ERE language - mainly I guess that I need to figure out how to maximize fulfilling multicultural experiences per dollar. Maybe it just means capitalizing on whatever experiences are available, like inviting the Syrian neighbors over for dinner more often. Though recently I have been wanting to really "go deep" and become fluent in a new language, as over the last two years I've dabbled in 4 or 5, but haven't really dug deep into understanding the culture. This is a really deep interest of mine, and I'll have to integrate it better into ERE.

Meditation has just brought me so much goddamn inner peace that I don't mind throwing chunks of cash at various trainings. Maybe this deserves some more exploration as well...

Congrats on the door; keep living your badass life.

[AxelHeyst]

Cliff Notes from my personal 2020 Annual Report:

2020 Reflections:

• I discovered ERE and (re)committed to FIRE in January, and dropped my CoL from ~8jafi to ~1.5jafi (lifestyle... see the chart below).
• I went to a 8hrs/wk semiERE situation in July
• I sheltered in place with my parents, DW's parent, dirtbagged around a bit, and drove across the country twice.
• I really realized how important stability (roots) is for our lifestyles.
• I did a lot of healing/introspection/personal growth during the first 3 months of my semiERE.
• I came to terms with how much I dislike car ownership, and am actively scheming to execute a nonurban carfree lifestyle.

2021 Desired Outcomes:

• Lifestyle CoL < 1 jafi
• Econ and investing fundamentals education completed
• At least one comfortable shelter complete (the container)
• Get back to FTE and re-engage accumulation phase. [Contingency: continue semiERE, focus on side hustles/entrepreneurship.]
• Tax-Advantaged accounts game totally dialed.
• Starting to spend time "learning by doing" with low stakes investing.
• Strategic Approach: Apply 80/20 thinking to every dimension of my life, with a focus on high-leverage activities that will hasten my achievement of autonomy/time wealth as quickly as possible. For example, some activities have a high satisfaction ROI, but will muddle my progress towards autonomy. Consider these activities very carefully, and consider shelving them until I'll be apply to apply my full attention to them.

Financial:
I recently went through @c40's journal and was inspired by his chart game.

Lifestyle CoL means everything except support for DW and capx expenses for builds. I expect to be getting below one jafi lifestyle CoL in Q1 '21.




This includes the capx for shelter over the next several years, and assumes simple accumulation - no investment returns.

My aim is to *not need to work FT* for good no later than mid 2024. There are a few probable paths:

Traditional Accumulation > RE FIRE: Decide on a financial goal, such as 3% SWR. Hit that number around July 2024, then quit/enjoy not needing to work.

Hybrid Accumulation > SemiERE Cruise to FI: Decide on a lean financial goal, such as 5% or 20-25x. Quit at that number, in 2022 probably, then don't withdraw at all from my portfolio and instead 'semiERE' a 1-3x/yr income from part time work, side hustles, income-generating hobbies, and the like. Aim to allow the portfolio to cruise/grow to ~35x before making any withdrawals.

Committed semiERE: In this scenario, my plan to return to FT doesn't work out the way I want. I devote some portion of my attention to building income-generating side hustles and part-time work, with an aim of earning ~5x (80% SR), allowing me to hit an FI-ish number in about 8 years.

--

In other news, I'm working on an RPG-style xp-based life tracking system, to serve as immediate feedback/tracking for the purpose of encouraging high-leverage/beneficial activities and discouraging low-leverage/deleterious activities. The focus is on lead metrics as opposed to lag metrics. If it gets off the ground I'll post more about it.

[classical_Liberal]

Looks like a good year with more to come! Thanks for the advice in 2B1S journal, it was helpful and heartfelt.

I'm working on an RPG-style xp-based life tracking system, to serve as immediate feedback/tracking for the purpose of encouraging high-leverage/beneficial activities and discouraging low-leverage/deleterious activities.

Screw those who said video games were a waste of my time!! I love it!