Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Where are you and where are you going?
Jason

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by Jason »

Augustus wrote:
Sun Dec 23, 2018 2:49 pm
and practically every survivor had to choose whether to stay home and care for their sick dying spouse/parents/children or save themselves flee and leave them for dead.
I would like to think that there was a Sclass of The Medieval period to advise people on the matter.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

OTOH, Thoreau could walk for 4 hours without encountering another human.

Jason

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by Jason »

Do you think that had as much to do with people seeing Thoreau coming and running for cover? At that point, wasn't he just like the Unabomber of the 19th century? I could see people spotting him and saying "Oh, shit, there's that Henry David guy who lives in a shed by the pond, trying to get over himself. Let's get the fuck out of here before he sees us. I heard he asked Jeremiah if he could measure his pubes."

I'm guessing Suo won't mind me jacking his thread today, being that's he outside handing out gold coins and playing with all the crippled children in the village.

suomalainen
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by suomalainen »

I had to copy and paste this over from @cimorene's journal. For me, this is way more schadenfreude than the MMM-divorce (although that too was a bit of a cold shower):
cimorene12 wrote:
Thu Dec 27, 2018 10:37 pm
Financial Samurai Working Again
I was interested in the recent article where Financial Samurai explained why he was returning to the workforce, beyond running his blog. I've been reading some stuff lately by disenchanted full-time parents who wished that they could spend more time with their kids while they were on the corporate treadmill and then found out that the grass wasn't as green as they thought it'd be.
...
I refuse to believe that with $213k/year coming in, it's actually necessary to get a 9 to 5.
In the article there's also some noise about needing money because of a coming recession/bear market - No. Fucking. Way. That he's going back to work because he needs the money. Although, if that's true, then something something WSP is full of shit. Anyway, this is the real reason he's going back to work:
I think it would be nice change of pace to be a part of the 95%+ of dads who don't see their kids for 40 - 60 hours a week...
This is 100% me being a prick, but I. JUST. LOVE. THIS.

Judge me. It's fair. But I am savoring the irony as it dribbles down my chin like fat from a steak. Or like Denethor eating tomatoes.

Image

Hristo Botev
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by Hristo Botev »

No judgment here. I was thrilled to get to leave the house today and go to my office, thanks to my in-laws coming into town last night and watching the kids today. Peace and quiet and the chance to focus on adult things.

prognastat
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by prognastat »

I think being FIRE it would be nice to spend some extra time with your kids, but I don't think it'd be healthy to be around them all the time.

Also speaking about MMM it looks like he just started a video series on his youtube. It's a little awkward in that acting like a badass in text is easy compared to on video when you're adorably Canadian.

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

suomalainen wrote:
Fri Dec 28, 2018 9:46 am
I am savoring the irony as it dribbles down my chin like fat from a steak.
prognastat wrote:
Fri Dec 28, 2018 11:46 am
adorably Canadian
lol, ‘tis the season!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-RQxD4Ff7dY

suomalainen
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Year in Review

Post by suomalainen »

My 2018 retrospective could probably be summed up as: I always knew what the end result would be; I just couldn't stop (re-)calculating it.

The evidence (skip until the asterisks if you don't want to read the laundry list of proofs of my stupidity):

In August of 2017, I re-engaged in this journal after only a couple of posts since 2014 with a fairly clear diagnosis and prescription (the first loop):
suomalainen wrote:
Tue Aug 08, 2017 12:14 pm
I think the theme has been that since the accident, my internal life has been thrown topsy turvy in a way that has been very difficult to get a handle on. I started reading IlliniDave's journal today, the "Journey of Mindfulness" title catching my eye. Something he wrote really resonated with me and my struggles -- "I think too much." There's a certain myopia to the thinking and even the thinking about thinking.

When it comes to early retirement (or "freedom", which seems to be what retirement symbolizes for me), it's like navel gazing and picking out each piece of lint as it gathers, or more graphically, picking at a scab to see how it's healing. I don't know that it's healthy. So, the struggle has been, as it seems to have been at least in the early entries for IlliniDave, to learn to live in the moment.
...
I dunno. Too many thoughts...but as I walked to my office today with my lunch, the thought came to me "I'm feeling miserable. But I could just choose to be happy. There's nothing objectively wrong with anything I'm doing or anything I have. I have a very safe job with colleagues and clients that respect me. It pays very well. It will eventually enable me to retire and try something else. I'm not the janitor or the cafeteria workers who work just as long as I do but don't get paid nearly as much..."

And yet. and yet. I'm not satisfied. Perhaps I never will be. But what if I could just choose to be satisfied? Could it possibly be that easy?
From my 2017 retrospective wherein I grapple with the solved problem (2nd loop) and even ironically note that I solved this problem years ago!:
suomalainen wrote:
Sun Dec 31, 2017 7:16 pm
Somewhere along the line around 2010, I had the realization that I could work and save my whole life only to retire and then die the next day (perhaps obvious is the underlying assumption that I don't love working for money). "Fuck that", I thought, so I decided to try to be at peace with my finances and to be patient with the process, knowing that I had selected a good process that would eventually get me to where I wanted to be financially. Things were good. And then I got hit by a car.
....
a nagging irritation that financial independence was not actually an end. It was an answer begging for a question. So, for the last few months, I've been trying to puzzle out all of this
Wherein I made my third loop, this time with brevity:
suomalainen wrote:
Tue May 29, 2018 11:47 am
So what if I just stopped stressing? I don't have a money problem. Why do I keep thinking about money? It's stupid.
In June, having read more about my problem, I wrote about it in terms of ruminating, my fourth loop:
suomalainen wrote:
Tue Jun 26, 2018 9:33 pm
Deliberate mindfulness. Force quitting zombie processes. Stop thinking and stop planning - for a while you can just live. Quit pursuing unattainable goals. Reframe when you feel stuck. Stop ruminating.
In August, the fifth loop came about, but with a slightly different framing - the hint of realizing that my feelings were not me:
suomalainen wrote:
Thu Aug 23, 2018 4:25 pm
I like that: a thought is just a thought and a feeling just a feeling, nothing more. Another thing I read mentioned having a mantra like "this too shall pass" to help remind you that difficult thoughts, emotions and even situations are typically fleeting. In addition to "this too shall pass", I also like "and yet, somehow, life moves on".
And in September, the sixth loop reflects that I'm feeling more confident about the calculated solution, so much so that I'm even offering advice to others (perish the thought):
suomalainen wrote:
Thu Sep 06, 2018 6:50 am
Choosing an option does require foreclosing other options, at least temporarily, but it's important to remember that no external situation (job) that you choose will bring you happiness. There's no magic. If you're not content (with your life), commit to being content (with it). Maybe that requires an external change, maybe not. Choose contentment. External factors are mostly secondary once basic needs are met and if there's one thing you know from ERE, it doesn't take much money to meet your basic needs. Maybe you already have all the tools you need to be happy, so you don't need to put so much stock in this one decision. It's just a decision and one that can be easily changed if the first one isn't the right, or perhaps more accurately WHEN the first one turns out to have run its course and you're ready for the next one you can just move on to the next one without regret.
And also in September, I surprise myself with my lack of psychosis:
suomalainen wrote:
Wed Sep 26, 2018 12:17 pm
1) Some (much?) of my heightened anxiety over the last few years is related to poor stress management and the poor narrative I construct around it. I have been working on new strategies to deal with stressors/triggers and/or to practice "reframing".

2) I've been feeling weird. Like, the days just blend together and there's not much to really recommend them, but also not much to complain about. And it's that latter thing that has me a little weirded out. Like there's this niggling suspicion or feeling that I've given up or I'm being institutionalized or that (a grand) life is passing me by. It's just so...NORMAL. And I'm just so...FINE WITH IT. What happened to my grand aspirations? What happened to my complaining?!
And in October, I reached my eighth loop and my first meta-loop:
suomalainen wrote:
Mon Nov 12, 2018 10:23 pm
I've been in the habit of ruminating about feelings that arise, trying to find out what such feelings "meant", or perhaps "Meant" (a thing that God was trying to convey to me). Obviously, such feelings always Meant that something in my life had to change, that something wasn't right, and I was the lone poor bloke who couldn't figure out what was likely obvious to everyone else. But I was wrong about feelings. Feelings just are; they don't necessarily Mean anything. If ruminating on the (non-existent) Meaning of feelings puts me in a negative psychological state, a turn towards happiness doesn't require teasing out some Meaning or Truth from an ambiguous feeling and making big or complicated changes. The first step is as easy as turning away from ruminating about the Meaning of feelings.
And in November, by the ninth looping, it has become ho-hum routine:
suomalainen wrote:
Sun Dec 02, 2018 2:11 pm
I was able to step outside of myself for a bit and notice that the cloud hanging over me was a cloud that was held in place...by me. Releasing it let me notice that all was not shit in the world. I think some of this is letting my anxiety get out of control and not doing enough to mindfully bring my blood pressure, heart rate and breathing down on a regular basis when I get amped up from work or kids or stress or whatever.
Capped off in December by a tenth loop in connection with reading a book about Buddhist meditation:
suomalainen wrote:
Thu Dec 13, 2018 10:30 pm
I really like that idea: liberation from the craving to capture pleasant feelings and escape unpleasant feelings, liberation from the persistent desire for things to be different than they are. I have been a slave to this idea for far too long - thinking that money/ERE would solve this problem. No matter where you go, there you are.
***************

Apparently I'm enough of a dumbass that it takes me 1.5 years and at least ten* repeated "aha moments" to come to the same conclusion that I started with: money isn't my problem. I am my problem. And ten moments aren't enough - number 11 from a new book on meditation I'm reading (written by psychologists who developed a mindfulness based therapy to treat depression):
[This next passage really strikes a chord as it overlays perfectly with the idea of rumination:] “the effort of trying to free yourself from a bad mood or bout of unhappiness - of working out why you’re unhappy and what you can do about it - often makes things worse. It’s like being trapped in quicksand - the more you struggle to be free, the deeper you sink…When you begin to feel a little unhappy, it’s natural to try and think your way out of the problem of being unhappy. You try to establish what is making you unhappy and then find a solution. In the process, you can easily dredge up past regrets and conjure up future worries. This further lowers your mood. It doesn’t take long before you start to feel bad for failing to discover a way of cheering yourself up…[This happens] because our state of mind is intimately connected with memory. The mind is constantly trawling through memories to find those that echo our current emotional state...It happens in an instant before you’re even aware of it. It’s a basic survival skill honed by millions of years of evolution. It’s incredibly powerful and almost impossible to stop.” Pg 8-9.

From Mindfulness - An Eight-week plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World. Mark Williams and Danny Penman.

[Comment from my reading journal:]Rather than struggling to understand the difficult feeling - ruminating - the idea is to observe it compassionately and without judgment and letting it go like watching a cloud float from one horizon across the face of the sun until it disappears beyond the other horizon.
Which is all a very long way of saying that I have decided to be at peace with my job, my kids, my finances. My job isn't so bad - in fact, it's a pretty effing good gig. Kids are expensive**, but when I have sufficient time to myself to recharge my batteries, I am MUCH better able to engage with them in positive ways. And money is a solved problem so long as the apocalypse doesn't happen, and if it does, money will be of no use then anyway. How do I "decide to be at peace"? By doing what I knew was the answer 1.5 (and 8) years ago - just letting go of the negative thoughts and feelings as they come. By not focusing on them. By choosing to watch them appear, giving them their space and giving them leave to go.

Now, I will say that my current magnanimity may just be a function of having a week of work where nobody was around and I had nothing to do, so I watched my CLE videos and played games on my phone all week. But even if that's true, that gives me hope. Maybe @augustus was right all along - I just need some more time away from work where "more time away" does not equal "full retirement"; it just means a good solid break now and again, and to that end, I bought additional time off for 2019 and will seek to go to 80% time at some point in 2019.

Here's to wishing for everyone else clarity of thought as you align your 2019 goals to your values. Merry New Year.

Image

* MMM's divorce and Financial Samurai's fleeing his child were external "celebrity" validators that (i) money only solves a narrow selection of problems and (ii) being at work while you have kids at home has non-financial benefits.
** The highest cost of which is on my sanity. New parents - please don't chime in on how you'll prove me wrong by craigslisting a crib and all that.

edit: fixing italics
Last edited by suomalainen on Thu Jan 31, 2019 10:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Jason

Re: Year in Review

Post by Jason »

suomalainen wrote:
Sun Dec 30, 2018 10:49 am
Capped off in December by a tenth loop
To think Dante navigated Hell in just nine.

Merry Christmas, Suo.

Aspirant
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by Aspirant »

Thanks suomalainen. I think this blog has saved me thousands on therapy costs 😁

suomalainen
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Bug vs Feature, happiness vs not-unhappiness, revisited

Post by suomalainen »

Another weaving together of disparate thoughts/experiences/threads:
  1. I had the pleasure today of having an old friend reach out to me for the first time in years to tell me that she wanted to clear out her accounts and leave her kids behind and that when she had that thought her next thought was "Suomalainen will appreciate this." Heart, warmed.
  2. When I texted another friend with the exchange with the first friend, he replied with something like "It's nice to see that unhappiness is pretty common" as he's been going through some depressive episodes and asked for my advice about seeing a shrink ("go. best money you'll ever spend.")
  3. I just got back from an anxiety-ridden trip to see my parents, where I actually managed quite well by detaching (non-attaching) myself from the environmental anxiety and just looking at the pretty trees and putting on my uber-patient mask. Notwithstanding this, I had a few minutes of pure bliss as I was skiing down this absolutely stunningly, achingly beautiful Colorado landscape.
  4. I met some people in hot tubs, ski lifts and lodge lunch tables, each of whom had stories that confirmed for me that doing a thing in search of long-lasting happiness inevitably results in less happiness the more you do the thing. Hedonic adaptation.
And the resulting tapestry?

Happiness is not the baseline goal. I don't want to be happy. I want my baseline to be not-unhappy. Happiness is then sprinkled in from time to time and is best (most happy) when it is unexpected.* In fact, given human neuro-biochemistry, happiness-scarcity is a feature, not a bug, of life, and therefore manufactured happiness should studiously be avoided. To put this in more generalized ERE terms...what if resource-scarcity is a feature, not a bug. What if...what if...FIRE, in the sense of accumulated resources (as opposed to accumulated skills)...is actually a bug and not a feature?**

Mind. Blown. :o

* I believe in psychology this is referred to as something like intermittent reinforcement.
** Once again, I think @jp is ahead of me. I think she sorta made this point in a post a few weeks ago, perhaps this one viewtopic.php?f=21&t=10360&p=180786&hil ... al#p180786 (references to "skill capital" and "because I lean towards the homesteading version of ERE.")

FBeyer
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by FBeyer »

William and Penmann's book ranges in the top third of books to change my life alongside: ERE and the KonMari method.
The meditations, their order, and what they teach you is supremely well chosen. But I only realized that after using the book for more than 3 years.

Judging from the online availability of their guided meditations, I can see that the moving meditation is the least favored (as well as the raisin meditation). Which is funny, because mindfulness basically comes in three categories: Sitting, Walking, and Eating.
Learning to meditate while moving (specifically walking) is IMO the most holistic solution to mind/body problems humans can probably conceive of. Walking is so tremendously healthy for humans; if you can tack on meditation at the same time, you're looking at seriously changing how you experience -and live- your life.

daylen
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by daylen »

FBeyer wrote:
Thu Jan 24, 2019 5:34 am
Which is funny, because mindfulness basically comes in three categories: Sitting, Walking, and Eating.
I have had the same effect doing light labor work such as weeding, dishwashing, or transplanting for extended periods of time. Once an activity becomes subconscious the conscious mind is allowed to wander.

FBeyer
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by FBeyer »

Which is why we use boring activities to meditate: To learn how to bring our attention back to the task at hand. The more boring the task, the harder the training.

daylen
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by daylen »

I have never seen much point in meditating regularly. If I am interested in something, then I pay attention. If not, then I go into "Ne search mode" to look for new connections that could be useful. There is a reason we experience boredom: creativity can save your life or give you an adaptive advantage over your peers.

Jason

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by Jason »

I was recently instructed in beginning meditation techniques centered on breathing. Being able to stop and appreciate your breathing slows everything down. I suck at meditating.

FBeyer
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by FBeyer »

Meditation only comes with one real difficulty: more than any beginner can handle easily. Getting comfortable being uncomfortable while meditating is the first stepping stone IMO.

It's like learning to do a barbell deadlift, but you don't get to try with anything less than 100 kg. It's not that it's impossible, it's just a lot harder than any newbie will be able to handle unless they are either supremely strong of will, or gets help from others.

Jason

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by Jason »

That's it. Getting comfortable being uncomfortable. The irony is that its really just a different discomfort than the one I usually live with but have grown comfortable with because it's what I know.

suomalainen
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2019 Goals

Post by suomalainen »

I didn't want to post this until I was sure I could accomplish the first and with two hours to go, this one can be checked off.

1) Dry January - DONE
2) Formally meditate daily
3) Informally/spontaneously meditate / get outside my own head from time to time
4) Exercise daily
5) Starting weight ~243 pounds; end the year ~200 pounds
6) Added after reading the below: ACCOMPLISH LESS - BE BORED MORE

Also, copying this from @hristo's journal, emphasis mine on something that really resonated from an achieving vs being / present-in-the-moment-mindfulness perspective:
jacob wrote:
Sun Jan 06, 2019 9:37 am
This talk of the constant need to be productive and organized wrt child rearing reminds me of this:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/an ... -debt-work

Supposedly, burnout is more prevalent in the Millennial generation compared to older ones. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist in other generations. I've experienced various levels of burnout over the years and I'm wondering whether it's a result of having spent decades in a combination of competitiveness and organized use of time that begins to spill into all aspects of one's live. That basically taking an activity that's inherently motivating and imposing an external structure (schedules and measures) to make one more productive eventually removes inherent motivation for ALL activities---even basic tasks---as this spills over into the rest of one's life.

The result is that the mind with it's limited amount of decision and planning-energy starts sorting and ignoring all the high-effort/low-reward efforts. A result might be that nothing gets done for its own sake anymore. Fun is gone. It's all about striving and achieving and anything that doesn't satisfy one of the achievement metrics one has internalized, it can't be done.

Also: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/produ ... -eggs.html
Also, in reading the linked article, I realized I'm burned out. The twin jobs of work and parenting have maxed out my mental load. Maybe some day I'll again have the energy to do something other than these two things. Until then, taking some basic quality time for myself (daily meditating, daily exercising and occasional personal getaway travel) will have to do. I can be no more productive than providing for my family and raising them (and some days not even that much). It's funny. When I was younger, I judged parents for being selfish - not individually selfish, but family selfish - they couldn't see anything outside of their own families. Now I realize that they were so family-centric not because they were selfish, but because they just didn't have anything left to give.

With this lowered-bar attitude that I mentioned in my last post, I don't despise my life any more. I even have kinda liked it. Weird.

classical_Liberal
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by classical_Liberal »

I distinctly remember a conversation I had with my father when he was about my age, I was probably 12 or 13. He was encouraging me and my brother to get out and play with a couple of the neighbor kids after a recent move. The standard, you need to make new friends thing. I asked him why he never hung out with any friends; he had a couple fishing buddies, but that was about it. He answered by telling me that men his age didn't really have time for friends anymore, too busy with work and family. I remember spending a lot of time thinking how I never wanted that to be me... I wonder how much that thought process influenced my decisions to not have a family of my own?

I know there has been quite a bit of angst(for lack of a better word) in the journals for you and others wrt how difficult it can be to find self-time and focus on ERE with spouse and kids. I read, but rarely participate because I don't have any experience in this to offer opinions. You all seem to be coming to good conclusions on your own, and that's an awesome thing to read! I will add something though. My job provides me with the opportunity to interact with an inordinate amount of folks in their 70's,80's and beyond. I can read people and social cues very well. Those who have a long term partner, and good relationships with kids and grand kids are substantially more likely to thrive and be happy as elder adults than those without. It's so evident actually, that it's become a very large matter of concern for me.

As someone who thrives on freedom, it takes a metric shit-ton of evidence to push me towards considering more commitments. So don't take this amazing benefit you have lightly. The relationships you foster with your family today will have enormous benefits to you down the road. Much more than money can ever buy.

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