A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

[Dragline]

Happy Birthday, I-D! '64 was a great vintage, wasn't it? I'm about 5 months behind you, enjoying the fact that I'm now entitled to make so-called "catch-up" contributions to the 401(k), which I have renamed the "overstuffed mattress" contributions.

As for meeting women, your young friend is right that you would need to get out "there", but just make sure the "there" is with the types you might want to meet. And remember, you don't really choose women or at least have no real way of "persuading" one to go with you -- woo-ing is a myth. It's women who really do the choosing in our society. The ones that find ways to keep magically appearing nearby are the ones who may be choosing you. Your invitation to them for coffee or a walk in the woods is merely an acceptance of the choice they have already made.

Oddly enough, your chances are going to improve with age if you can keep yourself in reasonably active physical shape and are otherwise presentable. Men have a huge and favorable survivor-ship bias, because most of the "competition" is overweight, diseased or worse at our age. So you'll be done working and healthy while others are stressed out, eating crap and dropping dead. Play your cards right and you'll be in high demand the older you get.

[EdithKeeler]

Happy birthday! (And I like your poem, posted a few entries ago). I have the big 5-0 coming up in 5 months, and am not looking forward to it. Sorry, as a woman, I have no advice on the dating scene; it's been 4 years since my last relationship, and I find most men I meet have a lot of financial baggage that I don't want to get wrapped up in. I've been single for so long the thought of sharing a home full time with someone is a little scary... I miss my old relationship--it was the right mix of intimacy and distance, and he was financially independent, so no worries in that regard. We remain good friends to this day. Too many women I know get sucked into relationships because they're lonely or they think they "need" to be with someone. A good friend married a man with a ton of debt that she's trying to clean up; another friend married a man who promptly quit his job and hasn't worked since (and they couldn't afford for that to happen). You sound like you'd be a real catch!

Anyway, if I lived near you I'd take you out for a drink and celebrate your natal day!

[jennypenny]

But $50/month cost avoidance adds 12.5 cents/month each month to my FI income!

I love that you calculated that.


Happy Birthday! There seem to be quite a few of us in this age group. (I'll be 48 in a couple of weeks) Funny, it looks like IlliniDave and I are the only ones not born in October.

[jacob]

But $50/month cost avoidance adds 12.5 cents/month each month to my FI income!

I love that you calculated that.

Wait, What?! Doesn't everybody? (Divide by 400 ~ the 3% WR)

[IlliniDave]

Wow, a lot of great responses! Thanks for all the wishes, it was an unremarkable day but good nonetheless. I'm using the occasion as an opportunity to ramp up my focus. In all likelihood, as far as the financial side of things go, increased intensity won't make a material difference over simply coasting along at this point. But I'd like to hone my reflexes.

Entering the new decade does feel different. There's no logical reason for it, yet the sense of urgency is definitely more palpable.

Lots of thought-provoking discussion on the subject of dating. I'd like to follow up on that.

ebast:on the other side - here's secretly hoping for a curveball. in my own experience they can hit you in the unlikeliest of places, if you can just manage to put yourself there.

ebast, that's pretty much how it always is for me--just when I least expect it. That's why I never completely close the door on the topic.

Dragline:And remember, you don't really choose women or at least have no real way of "persuading" one to go with you -- woo-ing is a myth. It's women who really do the choosing in our society. The ones that find ways to keep magically appearing nearby are the ones who may be choosing you. Your invitation to them for coffee or a walk in the woods is merely an acceptance of the choice they have already made.

Dragline, all I can say to that is, "Nail, meet hammer." The degree of subtle manipulation in that dance is amazing, but there's little doubt who's leading most of the time. I'm happy to see someone else who's had the same observation. Dunno if it's fortunate or unfortunate, but at this point in time I appear to be flying under the radar. Stealth is my salvation. I like your other idea too. In thirty years I'll be an utter stud in the old folks home

EdithKeeler:...and I find most men I meet have a lot of financial baggage that I don't want to get wrapped up in. I've been single for so long the thought of sharing a home full time with someone is a little scary... I miss my old relationship--it was the right mix of intimacy and distance, and he was financially independent, so no worries in that regard. We remain good friends to this day. Too many women I know get sucked into relationships because they're lonely or they think they "need" to be with someone. A good friend married a man with a ton of debt that she's trying to clean up; another friend married a man who promptly quit his job and hasn't worked since (and they couldn't afford for that to happen)

Edith, I have to say that sadly, your observations are common enough to be the norm (in our age cohort anyway) and really, it works in both directions. We probably see the symptoms more in the opposite gender (or most generally, the gender we're interested in pairing up with). I see my single guy friends targeted by some amazingly financially and emotionally needy people. As an observer I can see the train wrecks coming 100 miles away. Warning doesn't help, nothing to do but just sorta wince and watch it happen.

It's harsh thing to say because I have to include myself in the group, and many are in it through no fault of their own, but at this point in life the pond is pretty well fished over, and the distinct majority of the folks running around "available" at this stage of life are single for a reason (sometimes several reasons).

Thanks for the thought regarding the drink! I'm in the south but a long way from Texas (most of Texas is a long way from Texas!). As it played out I had a quiet evening at home. I did splurge on Pizza and Ben and Jerry's!


********************


So aside from hitting an age where it just seems most likely I'll be flying solo, here's my thoughts on the matter. I'm not so old that the physiological aspect of boy-girl interaction has gone dormant and fled from my awareness (I'm trying not to be too crude here), so there's a certain amount of inner conflict regarding the topic.

I really haven't had what I'd call a "relationship" in the time since I was divorced, which is about 6 years now. I've dated some, (and have some howlers of stories maybe I'll share someday) but always there comes a point beyond which I don't want to share my life. Initially it was because my youngest daughter was still living at home with me, but even after she got out on her own there's a moat around my castle.

It's awful to admit this, but part of it's financial. Divorces can be very, very, expensive; and financially devastating. My climb up out of the bomb crater has been difficult, and I really don't want to put my teetering little rebuilt life at risk.

Also, in case it isn't apparent, I'm not your archetypical Stepford guy. I dislike being judged. My ex- worked very hard at fixing me. I don't want to get fixed. I actually kind of like me.

I also don't want to plug gaps in the line and fill holes in other people's lives. Financially or emotionally. One thing that I've learned is that happiness comes from within. It's not something you address by filling voids with external things. I can't make an unhappy person happy in the long run. Maybe in the short run, but in the end the inherent unhappiness will return, and this time I'll be deemed the cause. I spent many years being accused of ruining someone else's life. Never again.

I find there's relatively few happy people out there. Is it just a faulty observation on my part?

So, I'm quite selfish at this stage. It's not something I'm proud of, but there's no point in trying to deny it.

Of course, I had a somewhat analogous palette of attitudes many years back, and then wound up married not terribly long after. I've always been susceptible to those darn curveballs

I do sometimes wonder about what kind of person I could conceivably wind up with. I always end up with a notion that it will be someone who is outwardly very different, almost completely opposite,yet somehow inwardly there would be some sort of jigsaw puzzle piece kind of fit. Curveballs again.

So anyway, after that little rant it should be apparent why I predict I'll be going solo for the long haul My attitude is distinctly suboptimal.

It's not so awful a fate. And if I'm wrong and wind up discarding my bachelorhood, well, I've been wrong before. Just because something seems likely doesn't mean that the other options are not possible.

I promise to get back on topic next entry.

[henrik]

Thanks for an interesting journal, I like the ones that read like a story with real character development:) Also, happy birthday!

Two bits I liked from your first few posts:

I feel sometimes like I've turned into a big flow diagram over the years, and my job over the next 5 years is to become a blank page.

Also another reason to keep a simple ER lifestyle, less stuff to go wrong.

Also,

I can do my essential online functions at local businesses that offer wifi, although I do have some security concerns with that, and it would mean I would participate here and some other favorite places less frequently. But $50/month cost avoidance adds 12.5 cents/month each month to my FI income!

If security is your only concern, you can solve that to a reasonable degree by subscribing to a VPN tunnelling service, shouldn't run you more than $5/month.

[IlliniDave]

Tricked by Time

I was doing some thinking last night and was reminded I tend to fall into the trap of looking towards the future for some key ingredient for contentedness. Just a little more money, then I won't need my current job, then I can move, then I can be happy. There are a lot of variations to that chain of thought. But it's always something out there that I don't have today that once I get will be the key to peace. Fortunately, I no longer look at material possessions in this light, but it seems I've maybe just transferred the fallacy to a different arena.

This wasn't an epiphany, because it's a concept I've understood for some time on an intellectual level. I just lose track of it fairly often. It seems like once a month I have to "rededicate" myself to cultivate a focused and mindful path, and to do my best to being fully aware of what's happening in the now. Having just entered a new decade should be enough to remind me that life as a linear concept has finite length. Where you can really make something of it is in it's breadth, and that requires being present.

So today's exhortation is: "IlliniDave, get your head out of the clouds. Don't wait for the future to save you. Look around you now to find your smiles. There's a thousand of them at hand if you just take the time to see them and reach for them."

[DutchGirl]

I have this with changing my habits. "When I have gone through this small patch of rough and busy weeks, I'll be stress-free and then I can start eating healthy / working out / doing volunteer work , etc". But I guess I'll always be relatively busy and that there will always be stress...

[IlliniDave]

Dutchgirl, that made me smile, only because I couldn't begin to count up how many times I've told myself I'd take up or restore some positive behavior right after the weekend, or next time I have a couple days off work, or right after the holidays. In the School of Hard Knocks I've earned my PhD in Applied Procrastination cum laude.

[IlliniDave]

Tuesday

Some randomness for the day ...

I was reminded of a favorite poem this morning:

So every day
I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God,

One of which was you.

--Mary Oliver

My attempts to recover some amount of physical fitness are ongoing with the expected difficulty, but progressing. I mentioned earlier that I've dropped 20 or so pounds this year from improving my nutrition. On the strength front, this month I've done 208 each of squats, pushups, and situps; on my way to 775 each for the month. Two years ago I could have done 100 of each in an hour without a lot of difficulty. But now 22/day (this morning's count) leaves me sore and rubbery. At some point I'll have to bite the bullet and start in on some more intense cardio-type activities. I'm using my upcoming ultrasound as an excuse to delay that pending the results. I really dislike that form of exercise, especially in the hot/humid climate where I currently dwell.

All-in-all though, I get around pretty good for an old geezer.

I have my little plot ready to plant my sweet potato "seeds" that I saved from the harvest last year.

I also found a pair of volunteer tomato plants that sprouted in an unlikely place. I think I'll leave them there and see how they do. No idea what the fruit will be...Roma, Big Boy, some cross of the two, or some weird offspring of a hybrid that doesn't reproduce true.

I still have not adjusted to the south even after 25 years. I went and checked on my onions and they've already flowered. They are really a winter crop here.

I've continued to cut my clothes dryer use by over 75%. Probably not a huge addition to the bottom line at this juncture, but it makes me feel good to do so.

Supposed to get a cold front through here tomorrow, so I might get an opportunity to take a casual hike in the mountains. Unfortunately I probably missed most of the trillium.

I haven't seen a hummingbird yet this year. Usually I catch them visiting my red buckeye trees in late March. The wacky winter seems to have derailed the rhythm.

I tend to be a worrier at times. There's an old Zen saying I like to make a mantra out of:

Spring comes--the grass grows by itself.

Speaking of grass, I need to back off a little on monitoring my progress. On occasion I get energized and my enthusiasm surges. But frequently tracking progress in detail is a lot like watching grass grow. It's slow, and as the old Zen guys said, with things in motion, it will happen on its own.

So that's all the excitement here on a Tuesday morning.

[Dragline]

Tuesday

My attempts to recover some amount of physical fitness are ongoing with the expected difficulty, but progressing. I mentioned earlier that I've dropped 20 or so pounds this year from improving my nutrition. On the strength front, this month I've done 208 each of squats, pushups, and situps; on my way to 775 each for the month. Two years ago I could have done 100 of each in an hour without a lot of difficulty. But now 22/day (this morning's count) leaves me sore and rubbery. At some point I'll have to bite the bullet and start in on some more intense cardio-type activities. I'm using my upcoming ultrasound as an excuse to delay that pending the results. I really dislike that form of exercise, especially in the hot/humid climate where I currently dwell.

All-in-all though, I get around pretty good for an old geezer.

Good news is that you probably don't need to do lots of intensive cardio to get in shape if you don't want to -- low level is just fine when combined with some strength training and a little sprinting, and is much less likely to result in injury, which is a big issue as we age. I like the fitness programs/ideas designed by Mark Sisson, who is about 60 and specifically designs them for ease and low-risk. While he is known mostly as a disciple of the paleo eating movement, his fitness suggestions are more valuable for the average person in my view, because they are focused more on health and functionality than performance -- he used to be a world class runner in his youth, but burnt himself out and realized he had to do something different to be healthy in older age.

The basic idea is contained in the fitness pyramid here (scroll down past the diet stuff):

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/how-to-s ... t/#fitness

He also has a free book you can download here, with more specifics and ideas:

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-b ... z31bFMzV8H

Well worth the price. And makes the whole process a lot less daunting/more manageable. It's a very common sense approach.

[IlliniDave]

The basic idea is contained in the fitness pyramid here (scroll down past the diet stuff):

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/how-to-s ... t/#fitness

He also has a free book you can download here, with more specifics and ideas:

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-b ... z31bFMzV8H

Well worth the price. And makes the whole process a lot less daunting/more manageable. It's a very common sense approach.

I'm familiar with the Primal Blueprint, and it's philosophy I'm loosely using as a template for my emergence from lethargy. Unfortunately, perhaps, I just like Crossfit too much, and that's what I'm angling back towards. We'll see how it goes. Your point about aging is astute, and it's difficult to navigate Crossfit with enough restraint to avoid beating one's self up unnecessarily trying to pace the younger athletes. If that doesn't pan out for me, Primal Blueprint is probably the best choice for an alternate, and that program is far more cost-effective!

[IlliniDave]

I Gotta Pay for it Forever?!

I'm not uniformly a tough guy when it comes to thriftiness and self-sufficiency. There's a side of me that would be quite content lounging on silk cushions shoving cake down my pie hole and cursing the gardener for the awful racket he was making outside. Luckily there's some things I really want with which a lean lifestyle has beautiful synergy.

Still, I tend to have to whittle away at the edges rather than go in with a cleaver and be done with it. That process entails a lot of stewing over numbers, and recasting things in different ways.

Maybe this line of thought is old-school to the bona fide ERE-ers, but here's where I arrived this morning. I mentioned a few days ago that I was looking at shaving my home DSL service. With that I bundled a few other similar items and determined I could avoid costs of about $2000/year. I'm a 3%-er and my horizon is about 5 years (1821 days actually, max, but who's counting, right?). So doing the math that works out to more-or-less $25/month passive income forever after the 5 years worth of costs are avoided and the money invested.

Where it got interesting is when I looked at it the other way around. If I kept my DSL and various subscription services for 5 years, not only would I pay the $10,000, but in effect would be paying an additional $25/month for the rest of my life for them, even if they were all cancelled/disconnected permanently at the end of the 5 years.

Somehow, that view makes them seem much more expensive, brutally so.

Again, that might be a "Well, duh!" for everyone else, but that perspective stated aloud, as it were, made one of those little light bulbs pop on over my head. The idea that unspent money could be used for future income is well within my grasp, but turning it around and saying spent money will cost me even more money for as long as I live got my inner self to put down his cake, put on his Mr. Thrifty costume, and beat his chest in defiance.

Did I mention yet that I'm kind of a nerd?

[IlliniDave]

1,819 Days to Go

My internal project of late has been to work on banishing resistance--resistance being anything that distracts me from accepting and connecting with what is, and what is happening, right now.

Probably, blathering in this journal is a form of resistance.

I think too much. Or rather maybe, in the western way of things, I identify too strongly with my thoughts--so much so that it interferes with my ability to feel alive.

Most times I put a wall of processing between my self and what is, screening with pattern filters and cramming things into vocabulary. In the process my mind reinforces a barrier between me and not me, perhaps an artificial divide producing false demarcations.

While I still eat and sleep and all those things that are part of being alive, I'm doing so from inside a cage built of thought, like some wild creature that sat down one day and decided to build a zoo around itself.

A byproduct of all that is that I have frequent and lively internal dialogues (more accurately probably a monologue, but I often pose questions to myself and seek to answer them in my thinking). I talk a good game! I really do. But alas, too often it's all talk. In the same way it's easy to confuse thinking with being, it's easy to confuse thinking with doing in the realm of internal change.

My journey is not an abject failure. I do have a sprinkling of successful moments and I like to think they happen more frequently as I become more aware of how thoroughly I am fooling myself at times.

Yesterday was a good day. The weather was nearly perfect and I was off from work. It's difficult even for me to conjure resistance to a tranquil late Spring day when I can play in the dirt and listen to the wind gust through the trees with no particular stake in time I must work around. It's funny, but in a way "deadline" was a well-conceived word, although I don't think it's minter had the nuance I've adopted in mind.

Days like yesterday are what allows me pursue retirement without fear.

But the inhalation of life was brief. I received word that my aunt, who has recently retired from the faculty of Syracuse University, reached an agreement to buy a house "back home" yesterday morning, and if all goes well she'll close in June and move in July.

For the family that is great news, but it reminds me that I still have a ways to go. Back comes the resistance. The resistance then feeds unhappiness and my tenuous little connection to feeling fully alive snaps.

1,819 days.

That seems awful. But by way of comparison, looking at the last significant event in my life, I have been single again for about 2,324 days--a span that feels rather short. The difference is that one I resist and the other I do not.

So the obvious trick is to reign in my mind and not let it get into histrionics over that number and wishing it were some other. Every one of those numbers represent 24 hours of opportunity to gestate my atrophied ability to live. It would be a horrible waste to spend them in a pained state wallowing in the muck of resistance to what is. The pointlessness of that endeavor puts it beyond everyday stupidity.

I have an affinity for rivers and love them as analogies. Today's perhaps tortured analogy is that it is immensely foolish to sit thirsty at the riverside waiting for the water five years upstream before drinking.

I was about to say, "Unfortunately the weather today is not supposed to be so good as yesterday." But, the weather just is. There's no reason to live less just because it may rain for a time.

I've got myself in a lather this morning! Let's see if I can manifest any of these words.

[Chad]

Belated happy birthday. I'm really enjoying your posts.

[1taskaday]

I really enjoy your posts as well,I think my search for just being able to BE, as opposed to thinking and doing constantly, is very similar to yours.

Please keep writing these type of posts as I'm sure they are helping a lot of people who read them.

[IlliniDave]

Practice

Between the upcoming holiday and some strategic use of leave, I should have a 4-day weekend just ahead. I'm going to use it to practice being retired, which could equivalently be stated as practice being alive.

Last time I talked about the fallacy of waiting for some event in the future to experience happiness/fulfillment/contentedness, whatever you want to call it.

Intellectually I'm well aware of the trap, but through doing a better job of paying attention to where my mind is at on an ongoing basis, I see that awareness of the pit is not enough to keep me from falling in.

I'm also learning that the internet is the last bastion where I flee to avoid life and myself. More accurately, it's where my mind/ego flees to suppress the part of me that wants to just live.

But I seriously question whether I have the strength to shut the modem/router off on Thursday evening and leave it off until Tuesday morning. I've even considered putting them in a box and mailing them to myself.

I find it somewhere between comical and sad how much of a struggle it is for me to throw off much of the mental clutter. So with that in mind I'm going to go out of my way over the weekend to conduct search and destroy missions against physical clutter. I'm hoping that elicits sympathetic resonance in my noggin to streamline what happens up there. I'm also going to visit some of my lonely places in the mountains nearby where I like to go and sit and disconnect from my regular life.

A good plan I guess, but I feel like a fraud having to go through these demonstrative rituals to approach what is supposed to be a natural state.

Nevertheless, march on I will. And if none of that works, there's always Patron.

[DutchGirl]

If your computer has a password, you could change it to something really difficult, write that on a note, and then mail the note to yourself (or put it somewhere else so that you have to get up and get it, and can change your mind in the process).

[IlliniDave]

If your computer has a password, you could change it to something really difficult, write that on a note, and then mail the note to yourself (or put it somewhere else so that you have to get up and get it, and can change your mind in the process).

That's an interesting idea, but I don't want to lock myself out of my computer (I do a lot of writing and such on it), just want to disconnect irrevocably from the internet for 4 days. It's pretty pathetic that I need trickery to do so.

Maybe I can do something with changing my router password, but last time I tried that it was pretty much a disaster.

I'm probably going to have to do this entirely through self-control. Not always my strong suit.

[henrik]

If your router has a remote control feature, you could have an IT literate friend or acquaintance disable and re-enable your internet access as you instruct.