AE's Journal Round 4

[ertyu]

Thirding that statement. Also always wondering what's wrong with me for not being able to deal with ft employment

[Gfascal]

Hi AE - just caught up on your journal and I could relate to so much!

I learned about FI/ERE etc when I was in my early 20s and so I learned how to live on less both because of necessity initially, and then later because of my desire to hit FI. You and others have talked about getting hung up on the financial goal and I remember being there. About a decade ago I definitely burned out and I completely checked out of everything and the savings and everything I'd built up previously helped with the transition. There are so many stories of people starting over at various ages for various reasons and it often works out or they learn to make do. What I didn't do, but what you are doing, is surveying and asking people (whether here on the forums or elsewhere). Somewhere in this crowd of responses you've already read is the answer you already know in your heart to be true.

The things you have been doing: tuning out social media, getting a dog, exploring next steps are all excellent IMO (I just borrow dogs since I can't commit to caring for a dog long term). Definitely seek out a therapist because it really helps to bounce ideas off and see if there is something that needs to be diagnosed. If you can take breaks and days off, try to do as much as you can.

The isolation with COVID I am sure isn't helping but just reach out to good people who are around you, a simple text saying you are thinking of them and wish them well hurts no one and makes everyone feel good

As for the job thing: I know I am very fortunate to have a job I absolutely love and colleagues I respect and love too. But it took work to get here: had to to an analysis of my own values and needs and goals. And the search took a looong time and I was very broke and desperate to boot but I refused to compromise and often wondered if I was on some crazy fool's errand. But I also have made a trade-off: salary. With my degree I know I could be making a ton more in the private sector and I knew this when I graduated, but quality of life has always been very important to me and I knowingly opted to pursue a career in the non-profit sector (it has its own challenges, but the benefits outweigh the problems).

I'm glad you're surveying your area to reduce costs, and perhaps a change of scenery could help clear your head

[classical_Liberal]

I would agree that therapy or the like is helpful, probably no matter what. However, just because someone has tried one sub-type of work (like software engineering, FT, for others), and doesn't like it. Doesn't mean that the problem is psychological. It could just be this type of work, in those amounts, in that certain environment(working for others), isn't suited to you.

I've had a ton of different jobs. Some I liked more than others, some I liked a lot for a while, then didn't. Some I hated from day one and never got better, so I left. In my case I really think it's just a matter of unique preferences, not some deep seeded issues.

Occam's razor, if you've only tried one type of work and hate it, first try the simplest solution. Try a few other variations of work. Just my opinion.

[jacob]

Most people I know have just a few life-long interests. If they were into motorcycles and playing the piano at 20, they still do it at 50. Ditto when it comes to their work where the only difference is seniority. Presumably, insofar they picked the right shelf, it is "normal" to be satisfied with doing more or less the same thing for decades.

But then there are those who thrive on change and novelty. I've found I can be/get interested in almost anything but that the interests don't prevail. I'm a learning machine moreso than a working machine. I've found my engagement in specific work captured by Csikszentmihalyi's flow chart. It usually starts with "arousal" ... but eventually rotates clockwise into boredom and ultimately apathy if I don't manage to quit beforehand. I've experienced this enough to recognize the pattern. Insofar career tracks contained sufficient learning/novelty to keep me engaged, I'd probably still be doing the same thing, but as it is tracks are moving too slowly to stay engaged.

Perhaps specialized work in particular doesn't have a sufficient "challenge level" before one learns the two or three functions one is expected to repeat. Maybe it's just an attitude---this seems likely. For example, writing and getting my first few scientific papers was extremely exciting and cool. Writing #32, #33, and #34 was apathetically boring. Yet, people who stay in the business eventually end up authoring several hundreds. How do they do it?

Anyhoo ... it might be that it's not the field, but the structure of work itself that is the problem.

Some are process oriented, others are results-oriented. If you're process oriented, you can probably climb Mt Everest a dozen times or run marathons over and over. If you're results-oriented, what's the point in repeating yourself over and over other than showing persistence which is an entirely different quality?

[Gfascal]

Cooking
Do you fellow forumites use a single type of oil and vinegar for cooking? Or do you use a wide range? Cleaning out my pantry, I realize I have about 5 varieties of vinegar and 6 of oil. I do use them all for different dishes, but I am wondering if this can be simplified.
Top

I cook a lot so I have a variety of vinegars and oils and I use them all fairly regularly. Cooking became a huge source of stress relief years ago and just doing it every day is incremental (or maybe exponential if I compare my food to some of the foods I've eaten at established restaurants) progress.

Food is also a source of great pleasure for me and thus I allow myself the indulgence of having lots of spices and oils and stuff beyond the basics. I also did some analysis a while back to realize I am very indifferent to travel. If I was on some high income track or some sort of wealthy socialite with money to burn, I'd probably travel more. But travel isn't a priority for me but in the course of realizing that I figured out that my biggest source of pleasure when traveling is eating and if I can recreate any cuisine in my own kitchen, why travel (ignoring the Twain quote here). There is also lots you can make yourself (the various infused oils and vinegars) and sometimes I do that as well.

[reepicheep]

Helpful chart for me. Explains a lot. Thanks.

[AnalyticalEngine]

Grocery Shopping - Part 2
I've gone through and organized my entire pantry. I ended up throwing out a lot of food that had either gone stale or was such an extreme niche ingredient/product as to be unusable. I always feel guilty throwing away food. It did, however, make me aware of just how much "typical consumer" food habits cost.

For example, I had several half-used bags of croutons that I had to toss. I don't eat salad very often, so when I buy croutons, a lot of them end up going to waste. A better approach would be to toast your own croutons whenever you need them because then you're only getting exactly what you need without waste. Unfortunately this approach can be more time consuming, which is why I kept defaulting to store croutons.

I also had a habit of cooking some ethnic dishes for fun for awhile. This was a fun hobby, but now I am left with a lot of expensive, niche ingredients that I can't really eat. And this effectively just drives up the total cost of my food bill.

I have discovered that making your own pan fried flatbread from scratch is really easy and a great way to get bread for sandwiches/wraps/etc. Flour costs almost nothing, and the fresh bread taste better than the stuff you buy at the store. One easy meal I've discovered is bean and flat bread sandwiches. You take 1 can of kidney beans, 1 onion, and 4tbps of mayo, plus whatever spices you want. Mix the beans with a diced onion and mayo then add the spices. Simply spoon onto the flatbread. This meal costs very little and tastes great. (It'd be even cheaper with dried beans instead of canned, but I am trying to eat through the cans.)

The cost savings are even more for expensive products, like biscotti. Making biscotti yourself is pretty easy and very cheap. I think cooking might be the most obvious example of improving your life and reducing expenses through skill. Because biscotti at the store cost $5-$10 a box, whereas you can make them yourself for the cost of three cups of flour and some eggs.

So far, my biggest takeaway is to avoid food waste by only buying widely useful ingredients. It's not that you can never cook anything niche, but just be fully aware of how much even more you are paying if you let the weird/expensive/niche ingredients go to waste.

@Gfascal - Good point on cooking. I think everyone's tastes will vary. If the variety of oils are something you use very often, then I think it's worth the increased complexity to keep them all. I do find all the oils have pretty different tastes and uses, as well as smoke points, so it's hard to just buy something like corn oil and make that your only oil.

[jacob]

The cost savings are even more for expensive products, like biscotti. Making biscotti yourself is pretty easy and very cheap. I think cooking might be the most obvious example of improving your life and reducing expenses through skill. Because biscotti at the store cost $5-$10 a box, whereas you can make them yourself for the cost of three cups of flour and some eggs.

So far, my biggest takeaway is to avoid food waste by only buying widely useful ingredients. It's not that you can never cook anything niche, but just be fully aware of how much even more you are paying if you let the weird/expensive/niche ingredients go to waste.

Now just extend this thought to everything else in life and you'll be instantly transported to Wheaton6!

(W7 is when everything gets integrated instead of compartmentalized like in W6.)

Also if interest would be to ponder why this wasn't trivial to realize this on day one. Fundamentally, it's pretty obvious, no?

[ertyu]

Interesting - my default option solution here wouldn't be, "toast own croutons" it would be "well fuck crouton-containing salads"

i seem to want to resolve by simplifying rather than upskilling.

[jacob]

@ertyu - That's pretty normal in the beginning. It's easier to give something up than figure out a replacement. This is also why it's common to think that spending less is about sacrifice. As mentioned elsewhere, a high income + comparative advantage can be an additional obstacle: "Why do I need to learn anything when I make enough to pay instead?"

[Frita]

It's easier to give something up than figure out a replacement. This is also why it's common to think that spending less is about sacrifice.

With the stale croutons, I would also want to figure out how to keep fresh (double bag and freeze) as well as how to use instead of throw away (crush to use in meatballs, veggie burgers, topping for mac and cheese tossed with extra seasonings, birdseed, etc.). That way even if I started making them myself, I would eliminate the problem of tossing out breadcrumbs whether homemade or store-bought. (Also noting that I could use up stale bread for the best croutons and to avoid more waste or even plan ahead by making more bread than needed.)

From a behavioral intervention standpoint, a replacement behavior substitution is far superior (and longlasting) to simple behavior extinction. Learning a new skill seems to make not spending money for a solution sustainable.

[jacob]

One positive aspect of the "doing without" approach is the resulting hedonic reset. This can be leveraged into all kinds of psychological "benefits". In crouton-language, it would be gratitude for having salads in the first place, when croutons are not around, and excitement when croutons are around because they become a treat.

I think aesthetic minimalism/simple living in particular tries to substitute other values for the sacrificed behavior. E.g. "going without buying stuff" => "enjoying clean surfaces".

Since the early "sacrifice"-years, we've gone in the opposite direction. This can be a bit of a spoiler too. Like AE discovered, a good homemade version is often superior to a commercial/mass consumer or restaurant version unless you fork over the money for master craftsmanship. After the COVID- accelerated bread making learning curve, I don't see us going back to buying any kind of bread product any time soon. Ditto soap making which is getting ever more complex. I don't see us easily going back even if it doesn't save money to DIY, the homemade product is ten times nicer and lasts 3-4 times longer. Ditto furniture. Learning how a lot stuff gets made and making it better than what comes out of a factory makes it hard to appreciate the stuff found in box stores. Fancy colorful packaging no longer sells once one knows how to spot shoddy workmanship. However, now we suddenly find ourselves spending quite a bit of time making all this because we've started enjoying the luxury a bit too much compared to commercial solutions.

[ertyu]

you need to be driven to it though, imo. i have minimalistic tendencies, and i definitely enjoy clean, bare surfaces, etc. this comes first. i didn't train myself into it to compensate for my beloved stuff, the drive to be like this was already there it just needed to entangle itself from other drives e.g. the compulsion to amass driven by childhood experiences of poverty.

i assume the equivalent to this would be, a pleasure in optimizing systems comes first and is an innate trait; the pleasure of optimizing, say, one's budget for savings is just an application. has to match pre-existing personality.

[AnalyticalEngine]

Also if interest would be to ponder why this wasn't trivial to realize this on day one. Fundamentally, it's pretty obvious, no?

I do think one of the things holding me back was trying to eliminate instead of substitute. For example, it is indeed easier to say "I will just avoid croutons." And in my case, I attempted this by eating some variety of lentil sludge for every meal. Lentil sludge is similar to the lentil stew recipe, except overcooked, frozen, then thawed. "A calories is a calorie" went my logic.

Now as one might imagine, eating lentil sludge represented a downgrade in life compared to the consumer standard. Thus it was hard to make the habit stick because it objectively was not fun. Sure, it is possible to be monklike about the lentil sludge, but my willpower is not there. And if you take elimination too far into your life, pretty soon you have a reason to avoid pursuing any goal.

Knowing how to handle the crouton problem gives you more options because, as @Frita said, bread, breadcrumbs, and the like are all part of the crouton life cycle. So now you know how to incorporate bread, french toast, meatballs, etc into your diet in addition to the salad and croutons. And if you happen upon stale bread for free, you know how to turn it into something palatable. This is all a quality of life upgrade over consumerism compared to avoiding croutons and going for lentil sludge, which would be a quality of life downgrade.

This line of thinking lead me to default to eating out all the time because eating at home seemed sad. But it is possible to make eating at home a better experience than eating out. The major caveat here is that it requires you to build up the skill and put in the work. Historically that's been harder for me to do when I'm already exhausted by work or other stressors.

[reepicheep]

This was a theme in my life for so long. Are you seeing a good therapist? I think you would benefit hugely from it.

I also do not want to work full time. I work more than I have to, strictly speaking, but a little bit of work seems good for me and more than a little bit of working for other people (in any capacity) has huge impacts on my mental health.

I no longer feel shame about this. It's just how I seem to be wired, partially as a response to trauma I experienced, and partially (likely) because working for other people is often a waste of my time.

[Frita]

I also do not want to work full time. I work more than I have to, strictly speaking, but a little bit of work seems good for me and more than a little bit of working for other people (in any capacity) has huge impacts on my mental health.

I no longer feel shame about this. It's just how I seem to be wired, partially as a response to trauma I experienced, and partially (likely) because working for other people is often a waste of my time.

Is working full-time for others healthy for anyone? It seems like the history of working humans involves sporadic, seasonal work in community.

[reepicheep]

Good point.

[classical_Liberal]

It seems like the history of working humans involves sporadic, seasonal work in community.

And not doing the same frigg'en thing over and over ad nauseam. Each season had a new duty, each day had many opportunities for varied work. Was fishing work? now people do that for leisure. Was cultivating crops work? now people do that for leisure too. Maybe they seemed more like work when your life depended on the outcome, maybe not. All I know is that what we've got go'en on in the US for work isn't even close to healthy. Screw therapy, I declare AE one of a few sane ones.

[ertyu]

Maybe they seemed more like work when your life depended on the outcome, maybe not.

I'm sure they seemed more like work when the feudal lord sent the knights after you for not passing on the requested amount of grain

The key here is exploitation imo, defined as the power of another to make you do a task and fork over (part of) the value you generated.

[AnalyticalEngine]

On work - Thanks for the responses everyone. It's definitely given me a lot to consider. It is useful to see everyone else's experiences here and see that I'm not alone.

I think the flow chart is pretty applicable for how I burn out (or "bored out") at work. I usually do enjoy work during the first year because I'm still learning a lot. But I get into apathy very quickly, and then work really sucks because I have to fake enthusiasm all the time, get told that I'm not being "engaged," then worry I'm going to be laid off because I have zero motivation to do anything. Definitely not a good place to be.

I have been to therapy before, although it was for depression and I didn't find my therapist to be a good fit for me. Still I think therapy can be helpful to resolve feelings of guilt. Like it should be enough for me to acknowledge that I'm not happy in my career without feeling bad about myself for it. I think when your personality/desired lifestyle is not "average," it can be easy to feel alienated, and those feelings of alienation can turn into resentment, depression, or guilt. But in reality, the healthy response is to go "okay, this isn't for me, and it doesn't really matter if other people do or do not enjoy their jobs because I am not other people."

I have had other jobs before too. In addition to several programming jobs, I used to work as a lifeguard in high school, and an instructor in grad school. Being a lifeguard was a decent gig because you have a lot of downtime to read, although I think the real advantage that job had is there was no need to maintain the illusion of "this is my life's passion" and I only did it PT or in the summer, so I never did it enough to get sick of it. Being an instructor was okay, although dealing with students could get tedious. I remember I literally had a student come in 15 min late and then asked me to restart the lecture. Still teaching community college PT is a definite option if I want to work less/seasonally. Critically though, lifeguarding and teaching never made me as depressed about my entire life as FT corporate work has, which is maybe a sign that there's a problem.

There's this cultural expectation in the professional/salaryman world that you need to "live your best life" through "finding your passion at work," but I'm starting to wonder if I accidentally absorbed that message and now feel bad about myself because it feels like that will never happen for me. And not having a job you love is a cultural death sentence, even though most people don't love their jobs. Maybe this is an additional mental trap I've fallen into.

Regardless, this does have me thinking now that I need to make a more dramatic shift than merely finding another tech job. I'm going to have to give some thought into what that looks like and how it aligns with my other goals.