Five Years, Lord Willing

[jacob]

So, then ... Chapter 6 ... what about it?

Extra credit if you can work in some references to Dante's Inferno about it.

[Jason]

This is embarrassing. Not in that erroneously congratulating a merely overweight woman for being pregnant way (people should really wear post-it reminders on that one), but in a "I'm just a fucked up kind of guy who can't get his shit in order" kind of way. So, well, no big surprise forthcoming.

Although I am sitting in an avalanche of unread purchased books, including a mystery written by some unknown New England writer who I'm sure is busy working his day job watering flowers at the garden center at this very moment, a book that I bought during an expresso bender during my summer vacation. I mean its got a painting of a fucking light house on the cover for Christ's sake, and I would make a really uncouth analogy about what I tend to buy during different type of benders depending on the substance abused during said bender but then you would put me in the cooler, which if nothing else, would bring an amusing level of irony to this whole exchange. In any event, I got in my head that I needed to McLuhan this and read a library copy of ERE. So my wife gets the book and gives me the dreaded "It's out of county and I can't renew it so you better read it quick" speech. Well, and please don't take this personally, it's not exactly a page turner and the content is such that I wanted to read a chapter at a time and then do that whole Kung Fu, walk the earth contemplation bit for a while. So one day I wake up and lo and behold, there's nothing green in my pile. I ask where it went and I get "I told you, you can't sit with it forever, I had to return it." So at this point, the only extreme earliness to this whole endeavor is the return of the book.

Upshot, I have to buy it and get back to my review. And I'm a sucker for extra credit, so Dante it is.

[Jason]

Like so many, I have blown past numbers (415K, primary residence not included) that I thought were once further down the road. I have nightmares of being a featured idiot in the PBS documentary that will be made about this time - "Shithole America" or whatever they eventually call it where I'll be all hollowed eyed, waxing about my past inflated retirement accounts while I take an uncompensated break from lugging shoe boxes at "Ivanka World" while everyone watching thinks "it was so obvious, why didn't he sell?" Which makes me think, with everything going on in the world, can men sell women's shoes anymore? I guess it's a good thing I don't know which means I haven't been in a mall recently. I knew 400K was a plateau, but I didn't realize how much. It's obviously not a huge number, but I feel at this number I have "assets" where before I just had savings. I also have guilt which is insane as I've been broke ass for the most of my adult life. I mean Warren Buffet once made $600 million in day when Gillette was bought and I greatly suspect he didn't feel a pang of guilt. But its weird just waking up and saying "Hold it, I'm the same basket case I've always been but I made over a grand yesterday because I finally decided not to blow through my money as soon as I got it and bought some dumb ass mutual funds instead?" I still feel poor and on the precipice of doom which is probably a good thing but now i'm thinking how did i live like that before. Then again I know a lot of much wealthier people who are fucking downright miserable because their wife got fat while they were busy getting rich which actually happened to my childhood's friends parents. It was incredibly sad seeing her sitting in her muumuu at the kitchen table, her husband saying he's divorcing her and on top of it we accidentally kicked in the basement window. What I'm saying was that if you told me two years ago I would have this I would have said where do I sign but now that I have it all I feel is worry that I'll lose it. I'm not complaining but it does not provide the peace I thought and I start to think well peace is "$800K" which well I'm reasonably certain is just fabricated nonsense manufactured in the bowels of Fidelity Investments. I didn't even know that I needed to care about money and now that I do its sucking the joy out of things. My wife says stop looking at the stocks but I'm like we made $100 on Cisco alone today. It's not materialism but I'm suspecting it might be identity and that is not good because I can see this like a golden fucking noose choking me to death as it does so many others. And the fact that the complete fucking racist lunatic/idiot running this country is having a flame war with his North Korean nuclear button doppleganger but because my shit is greener than Kermit's I'm kind of Ok with it.

[EdithKeeler]

What I'm saying was that if you told me two years ago I would have this I would have said where do I sign but now that I have it all I feel is worry that I'll lose it.

I have had the thought lately that “holy crap, I’ve got more money than any member of my slightly white trash family has ever had!” And then immediately start thinking; “should I transfer it all into a money market to protect it?” And then I have a flash of myself gently stroking my account and creepily whispering “My Precioussss” as my hair falls out.

And then I remember to thank god and the universe and fate and myself—all contributed, I think—and I send a check to the Union Mission and Heifer International And trust that the future will take care of itself.

[slowtraveler]

@Jason

Congratulations on your success. I sometimes feel the same way, worried about a huge market crash. If I'd sold, I'd have missed out on so many gains. So now, I am simply adding to my conservative investment (Wellesley/Global) and letting my index funds run their course.

Wish you luck on growing your mid 6 figure assets.

[Frugalchicos]

@Jason,

I have way less money than you, but I still check the stock market constantly and have the fear of losing everything in a near future. Sometimes, I also say "perhaps we need to stay and save like crazy one more year, just in case, it will be safer"...Screw it, we already won Jason, we developed habits and gained some skills that will always help us to stay afloat and excel among the others.

Keep it up, save and enjoy as much as you can. Set a goal and stick with it.

Cheers brother

[7Wannabe5]

None of us will be safe when the oil peaks out. However, many of us may already be dead.

[Jason]

@ EK

An attitude of gratitude (the cliche most favored by every recovering crackhead I ever met) is often the great emancipator, especially from anxiety. In light of your comment, I will donate money to the hospice that took care of my father during his final days. They were nice.

(@) ST

Good plan. Thank you.

(@) FC

The habit formation is a good point in that the gains are a result of stock market increases, but the initial principal is a result of behavior modification. In my younger years, drunken sailors would say I spent like a drunken sailor. The psychology, partly due to passing of time, partly due to not wanting to lose $, I guess is normal. Stock market opens in one minute!!!!

(@) 7W5

The thought of death does provide a form of relief.

[7Wannabe5]

@Jason:

Well, my most challenging case scenario is something like I am 75 when SHTF and I am left with the care of one or more theoretical dependent descendants. I could write this responsibility off if I could honestly say that I don't want my kids to have kids, but since that is not true, I am stuck with dealing with SHTF as one of my possibility nodes. Otherwise, I could just accumulate large stash of morphine and Kevorkian machine.

[Jason]

What we and everyone shares in common is our own inevitable decline proceeding our departure from this great earthly ball of ever rotating and never ending bullshit. I will not have grandchildren to take care of or who will take care of me and I'm assuming if i did I wouldn't like them much in the same way my grandmother revealed that she did not like me (alzheimer's if anything is truth serum. I visited a woman I worked with who has dementia and she revealed so much shit that was obviously true I couldn't stop laughing all the way home. Dementia people can be quite interesting that way, if you can get over that whole cheating at board games shit they pull without even the slightest hint of compunction).

The difference between us is that I have no descendants that may be helpful/burdensome. I got windows down, Canned Heat blasting, open road as I Thelma and Louise my ass into the fucking beyond. I can actually see it now when I dare to look.

[Jason]

That's the problem with doing vs learning. Most people are in the doing-camp and the world seems to have been designed with the doing-camp in mind. Those are the ones who are conveniently comfortably doing the same couple of things for a lifetime. Maybe physics and playing the piano. I'm also in the learning camp, so I usually take a clockwise spin, starting with arousal at the top and then moving around until I hit boredom.

I lifted this from another thread because it's stuck in my mind like those stories you hear of people having their lunches at McDonald's ruined because some construction idiot nail gunned a drill bit into the back of their heads right as they bite down on a Big Mac. I would actually prefer a concentration camp to a doing-camp because at least there's a lot of down time in the former. And the one time I did got to camp they made me learn how to steer a canoe which even at that early stage I knew was going to be as productive as teaching Ted Bundy Elizabethan courting rituals. But the issue I am struggling with is change and in order to change you can't just learn. You have to do. Or not do, which requires doing or not doing something else. The thing I enjoy doing the most is nothing so I don't need to learn that. I really don't love doing anything. Except, well, doing nothing. And the world is based on doing something with the exception being nothing which is kind of unfair to people like myself who love doing nothing. I do like learning but no one cares how learned you are especially those who don't value learning which seems to be the majority in a society where doing is prioritized. This very issue was discussed in Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in America where during the Jacksonian democracy intellectualism became equated with well, non-heterosexual activity and doing became revered and not just doing but doing in the sense that anyone can do it which set the stage for a democracy with doing as opposed to learning as the criteria for leadership which kind of explains current events.

I am still struggling with food bills. I read in Frugalchico's blog about Aldi's but the closest one to me is not close and difficult to get to and the cost would be offset by time and potential road rage incidents. I met with my tax guy yesterday and he is 71 but has more women than he ever had because he's alive. He is dating the head cheer leader now even thought its been over fifty years since she rooted for anything. These women are all destitute because they didn't plan and their dead husbands didn't care enough to leave them anything. It's sad except when I remember how the cheerleaders blew me off so I'm not crying for them.

[classical_Liberal]

...

[Jason]

I tend to agree that our society highly regards/rewards doer’s and have been putting some thought into this lately (ha).

I think there is also the notion of "doing" equating to working/occupation. My industry never fires anyone so you have guys literally falling down on the job. For ERE people doing exists outside the workforce but generally speaking "doing" is career long as opposed to learning which is life long. What I have noticed is that there is never a switch between the two and it rears its head as one gets older i.e. doers cannot become learners. If they weren't bit by the learning bug early, it's not going to happen later. These are the people who refuse to retire or when they are finally forced to, you see them hanging out at your local deli talking with people they used to work with or planning the next reunion or rehearsing in front of the mirror for next months condo board meeting.

All I know is that once I get this money problem solved, I am giving the middle finger to such concepts as "Its not what you know, its who you know" "You need to get along with others" etc. In all honesty, I enjoy people more when I am free not to get along with them because I think generally speaking, its the natural state of things. Civility is some enervating bullshit.

[classical_Liberal]

...

[Jason]

You are making insightful points. I guess at some level this is merely the shop versus AP English debate in the context of retirement. Maybe I'm being judgmental and shouldn't demarcate types of learning.

[Mister Imperceptible]

How’s it going Jason? Your journal has slowed down in 2018. Have you run out of ways to be a douchebag? Or are you just reading that much? I enjoy all of the misadventures.

[Jason]

@MI

Thanks for the inquiry. Please, do not fret my child, for there are many mansions in this douchebag's house.

Along with my reading, I have engaged in a few new activities:

(1) Mental Health- I have gone back into therapy and its been very beneficial. We live in a world where three (3) of the most important things in life i.e. balancing a check book, picking up women at funerals, and watching your mental health are not taught in school. I feel I've mastered the first, reached a JLF 4th level of Renaissance Man proficiency in the second, but am seriously lacking in the third. I doubt this is a surprise to anyone.

(2) Creative Writing Project - I never like to talk about it, but I have something that I believe in and decided to complete it. I'm 20% there. My wife and spoke about a combined a vacation/writer's colony joint venture over the summer.

(3) The recent revelations of the Facebook story, not the data mining side (fucking duh), but high level employees having serious reservations about it's ultimate purpose, have made me take a very hard and serious look at my internet use. I think it's become a real issue for me and we have started a program to de-net. I mean, I just know too much worthless shit about sports, politics, celebrities. What good is it. Do I miss watching videos of zaftig girls pulling down trees while zip lining? Of course. But I do feel there's a positive side to it as well..

[Mister Imperceptible]

Damn it! Damn you Roger!.....it’s so senseless!

These all sound like positive developments. I recently deactivated my Facebook as well.

Your creative project sounds exciting. Distill all those douchey tidbits into a concentrated and explosive volume. Very interested. Makes me think that I need to start writing as well.

[Jason]

Distill all those douchey tidbits into a concentrated and explosive volume. Very interested. Makes me think that I need to start writing as well.

Actually, the reason I am excited about this project is that it is completely non- auto-biographical. It is piece of fiction based on a news story I read about which inspired me. The characters are nothing like me. And there is no swearing. My favorite writer is probably David Milch, specifically Deadwood. He would lie down on the floor, envision the characters and then inhabit them. He's a genius and I am not but I am trying to work off that template.

I encourage you to write as well. For clarity, sense of purpose/accomplishment and therapeutic value.

[Stahlmann]

(1) Mental Health- I have gone back into therapy and its been very beneficial. We live in a world where three (3) of the most important things in life i.e. balancing a check book, picking up women at funerals, and watching your mental health are not taught in school. I feel I've mastered the first, reached a JLF 4th level of Renaissance Man proficiency in the second, but am seriously lacking in the third. I doubt this is a surprise to anyone.

Is this neuroticism?
I scored on it a litle bit above average on it under qualified tesr. I see we share a bit the same personality traits.