Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

[Jason]

Unless he turns into a douchebag like the guy in The Cats and The Cradle song.

[suomalainen]

@7w I think “Lonely” is a euphemism for horny.

@jace ha. Nice reference.

@aug get the wife back on her rocker, dude. And yes, balancing the kids’ need for independence against your own...instincts for continued intimacy that began when they were tiny little helpless things is extremely challenging. Good luck with that transition.

[7Wannabe5]

I would fire any therapist that used lonely as a euphemism for horny.

[suomalainen]

Meh. There are lots of “lonely” young men out there. Polite society and all that.

[suomalainen]

I've been thinking about this post for a long time. Let's see if I can pull it together since, as I write this second sentence, the thoughts that have been coalescing have only hinted at the barest outline of a picture.

1) I've sort of fantasized about a "life of freedom" for quite some time. In some sense, this is actually quite ironic in that I *knew* that I was digging myself into a hole when I borrowed $210,000 to finance my law school education and yet did not want to participate in the typical law school activities like law review nor did I envision myself being a biglaw lawyer for very long. "It's a hole that looks a lot like a typical lawyer hole, but *I'm* gonna be different!" Having dug myself out of that hole, my fantasies turned from not working biglaw to simply not working.

2) In connection with my fantasy of not working, I had this fantasy of "living free" in a vanlife/travel/nomadic sort of way. I totally ate up @spoonman's journal in 2014 until he stopped posting. I followed some vanlife blogs after that. Then I got hooked on @c40s journal. I fantasized about doing a build-out of a van and having cool adventures, etc. And then something happened. I don't know if it had anything to do with my general mental health improvements or if something else happened, but during one of my day-dreams, I thought to myself something like: "ugh. I'd want to take a shower. I'd want to shit in a flush toilet. I'd want to do something other than camp." A few weeks later, this train of thought pulled into the station:

I met a woman and her daughter in a ski lodge when I was in Colorado visiting my parents with DS2. She asked if she could sit next to us. She pulled out carefully prepared meals of sandwiches and a berry salad and some carrots or something like that. Clearly she didn't want to pay the high-priced ski lodge food prices. We got to talking and she said she and her daughter were locals from the Denver area and had stayed in their van in the parking lot the night before. "That's awesome, tell me more!" I said. So she described their van and how they use it to go skiing, etc. On the way back home, I start thinking about this conversation. "Well, shit, I could do something like that. She drives a couple of hours to the mountains to go skiing in winter and hiking in summer. I'd have to drive a couple of hours to do the same where I live (smaller mountains tho). I could totally do this." Then I thought about how much a van would cost; how much a conversion would cost; how often I'd go and what the amortized cost would be per trip; how much the taxes would be; how much I'd enjoy having the thing in my driveway all the time; etc etc etc. And then I realized: I don't want to shit in a bucket all the time. For a short period of time, sure whatever. But I'd eventually tire of this now-expensive thing and I'd have to get rid of it.

3) I read this article on how much free time people need to feel happy, which pegged it at 2.5 hours / day for people who work and 5 hours / day for people who don't work. Yes, people need free time. But people also need something to do. People need people to do it with (masturbation jokes aside). A desperate focus on escaping a full-time job misses the point. The problem is not the job (unless it's truly a shitty job).

And that's when #1, 2 and 3 coalesced - the real genius of this forum is the journal section. For the price of a few hours of consistent reading for several months or a year, you can live vicariously any number of lives - unscripted and somewhat unfiltered. You can follow someone's journey from inkling of an idea to a decision to a plan to execution to consequences. And every single journal leads me to this conclusion: nothing lasts, not even *my* fantasies. I will, with absolute certainty, get tired of any lifestyle I choose once I become adapted to it. The bloom came off the fantasy. A drastic change in lifestyle is not a solution to a current problem - it is your next problem.

4) I've continued my reading into meditation, having recently slogged through a dense book on the intersection of psychology and meditation. I may post some of my reading notes here some day, but I don't have the energy to try to condense my 6 (!) single-spaced pages of reading notes into something consumable by people with short attention spans. Burn. There's also another more popular-style book on meditation that I'm reading now which is also autobiographical which makes it a bit more readable even if it has fewer mineable sections. Anyway, one thought from the dense book stood out above all the rest: it was this idea that when you're at work and something annoying happens, like let's say you're put on hold or you're waiting for the stupid copier to finish printing out your document, rather than getting annoyed that you're being held up, use that time for yourself. Steal that 2 minutes from your employer and give it to yourself. Meditate for those 2 minutes: look inside your body and see if there's any tension held anywhere; check your heart rate and breathing and blood pressure; listen to the sound of the hold music or the copier and any background noises that you typically filter out of consciousness. That moment, right there, is a stolen moment in personal service in a day otherwise devoted to serving someone else. That moment, right there, is David Foster Wallace's water. That moment, right there, is where life happens.

5) Enhancing the thought from #4 and otherwise fulfilling a new year's resolution, I've been run/walking every day at work. There's a little out and back on a road on our corporate campus that's roughly 2.7 miles. I run when I feel like it and I take walk breaks as needed. I've had such foot and lower leg problems that I'm determined to just get out there even if it's a 2.7 mile walk. The point is just to get outside. Once I read and stewed on #4 for a while, I came to see how wonderful that 30-40 minutes could be. Here I was, at work, and I could take 30-40 minutes off in the middle of the day (around lunch) and I could completely put aside work and just focus on me. I've been able to put aside the monkey in the machine from time to time and it'll be a few hundred meters before I realize that I haven't had a single thought for a time - just a complete sense of blankness can occasionally settle over me. Most of the time, however, I focus on the music I'm listening to, or I try to focus on the sun or the trees swaying in the wind or really anything that keeps me in the moment of my surroundings and prevents me from being in my own head. The result is that instead of working a solid 8 hour day, I see that I'm really working 2 hours and then taking a few minutes to myself and then working another 2 hours, etc. I don't need to be in a van in a national forest for months at a time to notice beauty in my life and to be at one with nature - things that are important, beneficial and nourishing to me; I can do it 30 minutes at a time on the same damn stretch of corporate road that I've run on literally hundreds of times.

6) I realized I am over-committed - at work and at home. Over the last few months, and this is no exaggeration, the free time I had to myself was exactly 30 minutes a week. Far, far less than the 2.5 hours a day that the above-reported research suggests I would need. I was fraying. So, I take the personal time I need during the day at work to refresh per #4 and 5 and we've cut back on kids' activities and I've been playing racquetball with a new friend (and it looks like a third will be joining us).

And there it is - my own little slice of nirvana. Frankly, being a skeptic, I don't know how long this will last. Something will change, or break. Perhaps meditation is the sort of thing that one does not tire of in the way that one does not tire of eating. Who knows? For now, though, I am at peace having found a way to put to rest the twin spirals of stress-rumination and its anti-corollary fantasy-escape-rumination that have hounded me mercilessly since getting hit by that car. The answer is as simple as paying full attention to the program, getting bored with it, and changing the channel. Who knew?

[FBeyer]

...it was this idea that when you're at work and something annoying happens, like let's say you're put on hold or you're waiting for the stupid copier to finish printing out your document, rather than getting annoyed that you're being held up, use that time for yourself. Steal that 2 minutes from your employer and give it to yourself. Meditate for those 2 minutes: look inside your body and see if there's any tension held anywhere; check your heart rate and breathing and blood pressure; listen to the sound of the hold music or the copier and any background noises that you typically filter out of consciousness. That moment, right there, is a stolen moment in personal service in a day otherwise devoted to serving someone else. That moment, right there, is David Foster Wallace's water. That moment, right there, is where life happens.
...Something will change, or break. Perhaps meditation is the sort of thing that one does not tire of in the way that one does not tire of eating...

Incidentally I don't mind waiting in line, waiting for the bus, being put on hold, waiting for water to boil, etc anymore. There is an eerily calm place to rest wherever you are.

The trick is to realize you have that option and to recognize the opportunity when it presents itself.

[Quantummy]

Suo thanks for this post and the journal. This is helpful insight and articulates what I think about. Once dreams become reality, one sleeps again with new dreams. If you can optimize your current reality, then perhaps you don't set expectations too high for the next set of circumstances/goal.

Parenting through adolescence can indeed be difficult- the "fun" sometimes feels like doing a triathlon....every day. Spouse and I have more than 4 and have our moments of happiness and our moments of not. If we were to take a survey, each of us could have vastly different results at various times along the parenting path. With "empty nest" within binoculars range, we find ourselves eager for the next Safari.

[2Birds1Stone]

I too really enjoy your well thought out posts and alternate views to many here.

It sounds like this 30-40 minutes of free time is a coping mechanism for how institutionalized your feel you have become. It's only human nature to want the things we do not have, and today's dream can very well become tomorrows problem. Right now I'm one of those dreamers you describe, whose taken idea, to plan, to near execution......and maybe the grass won't be greener on the other side, then again I don't plan on living in a van indefinitely, or overly romanticize long term perpetual travel, acknowledging it's just a phase of life in our relatively short time on this planet.

I go back to chapter 1 of the ERE book. Once you've been in the cave long enough, it's easy to feel Stockholm syndrome, only to the confines of your own mind.

[TheProcess]

I've continued my reading into meditation, having recently slogged through a dense book on the intersection of psychology and meditation. I may post some of my reading notes here some day, but I don't have the energy to try to condense my 6 (!) single-spaced pages of reading notes into something consumable by people with short attention spans.

Would you consider posting some reading recommendations? I could use a little of that nirvana.

[suomalainen]

@fbeyer absolutely. Learning that trick has been a long time coming and is much simpler to say than do, but it ultimately turns on wanting to find those opportunities.

@quantummy exactly. I hope you start a journal here and describe some of those parenting challenges you've experienced. One thing that would be helpful in these forums is to add more "parenting lives" for me (and others) to experience vicariously. Many of the most active folks appear to be those that are on either side of the "smack in the middle of parenting" phase.

@2B1S Yes, coping for sure. But also I hope it's a practice I can continue forever. I thought about it today - meditation is no panacea; nothing is. It's just that a biological being has to take care of its baseline biological needs otherwise there's no chance at all for thriving (happiness). If you're not eating well, sleeping well, exercising well, extraverting well, introverting well...nothing else will make up for it. Meditation is merely the equivalent of mental exercise, or perhaps the "mental recovery" from a stressful day, like you'd take a recovery day after a hard workout. And I LOVE dreamers! I don't at all think people shouldn't dream. It's just that I think *I*, in my current circumstances, shouldn't dream too high. But when you do your dream, please, please suck the marrow out of it. It won't last, but while it does, let it consume you. In the same vein, my 30 minute run does not last, but when I'm able to let it consume me...it's an amazing brain flush. Everyone needs to find those things that nourish them and then needs to do them 100% for whatever available window they have. Live it up, man. This may be your only trip to Poland, your only vanlife experience, your only long-distance hike, etc. May as well have all of your attention on what you're doing than to waste time worrying about other times and places.

@theprocess Sure. I've done book reviews in my journal, which I bet you can find by googling this site with "suomalainen" and "book review". I can try to pull together a list of recent books. Some of the books I've read have really great bibliographies, so you could follow up on any particular ideas that strike your fancy with further reading.

[classical_Liberal]

Very insightful last post. I'm thoroughly enjoying your progress here, it seems to parallel some of the realizations @fish had with a similar family dynamic.

It seems to me 1-3 has something to do with acceptance. I went through a similar phase that, ironically, brought me to the idea of FI and these forums. About 5 years ago I was beginning to realize I will never get married/have kids and live the scripted, happy, american dream life. It wasn't a single, large conscious decision, rather it has been a decade of smaller decisions that lead me to the life I had. I began to grieve for the life i didn't have; which was ridiculous because I didn't really want that life. I just knew I probably would never have it given my choices, the option was quickly closing.

I decided to just accept the fact my life was what it was. I began to look for the advantages my situation offered, rather than dwelling on the disadvantages. I found easy mode FI, and the freedom to live in a van or perpetual slow travel if I wanted to! Hence classical_Liberal was born. You may be doing the same thing, but a bit opposite?

I have a very active mind and doubt I'll ever reach the level of peace you and others seem to find in meditation. The level you seem to reach over a lunch time run is better than I even surrounded by nature with days of nothingness.

[Jason]

This blog has turned into the ERE version of A Christmas Carol. A few months back it was a beautiful, dual fountainhead of piss and vinegar and now he's running through the streets hugging crippled kids. It's really a fucking shame.

[suomalainen]

A few months back it was a beautiful, dual fountainhead of piss and vinegar and now he's running through the streets hugging crippled kids. It's really a fucking shame.

Fear not, sweet child. This too shall pass.

[Jason]

I'm joking. A lifetime of striving and then death. Has to be a better way.

[suomalainen]

Yeah, an endless supply of cocaine. Is that fatFIRE?

[Jason]

Depends on how thick you cut the lines.

[suomalainen]

It wasn't a single, large conscious decision, rather it has been a decade of smaller decisions that lead me to the life I had. I began to grieve for the life i didn't have; which was ridiculous because I didn't really want that life. I just knew I probably would never have it given my choices, the option was quickly closing.

I decided to just accept the fact my life was what it was. I began to look for the advantages my situation offered, rather than dwelling on the disadvantages. I found easy mode FI, and the freedom to live in a van or perpetual slow travel if I wanted to! Hence classical_Liberal was born. You may be doing the same thing, but a bit opposite?

Yes, doppelganger, you hit the nail on the head.

[suomalainen]

This is old, but I came across it, I think on "pocket", which is a thing that firefox has when I open that browser. In any event, a pithy paragraph to capture where I seem to be heading:

Long ago, when I was 30 and he was 66, the late Donald Richie, the greatest writer I have known, told me: “Midlife crisis begins sometime in your 40s, when you look at your life and think, Is this all? And it ends about 10 years later, when you look at your life again and think, Actually, this is pretty good.” In my 50s, thinking back, his words strike me as exactly right. To no one’s surprise as much as my own, I have begun to feel again the sense of adventure that I recall from my 20s and 30s. I wake up thinking about the day ahead rather than the five decades past. Gratitude has returned.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... is/382235/

Or, to quote @jace piss & vinegar --> a Christmas Carol

[slowtraveler]

I admire the growth you've accomplished. It's inspiring to see someone who's gone from feeling so drained by their life as they progress and aspire for wealth change to still being on the path but feeling empowered and free. I look forward to seeing how your journey develops.

[suomalainen]

I don't quite know how to respond. The discomfort comes from the fact that I still feel so drained by my life, so that feeling hasn't changed. I also don't feel free*. I guess what I would admit to is feeling empowered, not from any "growth", I guess, or maybe it is, but rather from a simple change in focus. I'm still as miserable and blessed as ever, like two sides of the same life-coin; it's just that I decided to stop staring at the miserable side because it turns out you can't torture the miserable to make it become blessed - you just have to flip the fucking coin over. I don't know if that's really any sort of "growth" as much as it is just a dog that finally decided to stop eating its own shit.**

But thank you - the positivity from you and others in response to my journaling is likewise inspiring, no matter how...poorly I feel that I am able to verbalize and convey my raw thoughts and experiences. Your generous readings of sense where this is little is much appreciated.

* In some other thread(s), I think, people have recently discussed "freedom-to vs freedom-from" and "time agency" and things of that sort. I have to admit, I never really understood any of it. Life still has its basic requirements, all of which require work and bullshit, and each of those have derivative requirements and so on - it's work and bullshit all the way down. In that sense, I don't think there is such a thing as freedom-from or freedom-to or time agency, other than in the sense of you get to decide which shit sandwich you eat. I guess I don't know what it is, but "freedom" and "agency" appear to me to be poor descriptors of that most basic decision point and its follow-on effects. It's like a prisoner having the "freedom" to decide whether to join Work Detail A or Work Detail B today. To put it another way: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." ^* Perhaps a better descriptor would be "optionality" - FIRE gives more optionality than a desk job than a nazi death camp, but the act of choosing any option among 2 or 45 forecloses many or all of the non-chosen options and therefore subjects you to such chosen option's mastery (i.e., requirements). Ergo, one may rationally question the marginal utility of increasing the number of options that will ultimately be discarded unexercised.

** Metaphors, metaphors, galore.

^* Oooh, a nested footnote, NOW we're having fun! When people discuss free agency, they always seem to have it circumscribed within some optionality boundary. At what point, however, does the boundary fall away such that "optionality" and "freedom" become one - in the sense that a person would not consider their options limited (perhaps only un- or sub-consciously)? In reality, am I not just as "free" as a nazi death camp prisoner as I am at my desk job as I am if I'm FIREd? If so, FIRE is irrelevant to freedom; if not, I circle back to the footnoted movie quote. ^^

^^ A recursive footnote!