Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Where are you and where are you going?
disk_poet
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by disk_poet »

Great update. You're really making progress. It's a savings rate I can only dream of at the moment. Still hoping to crack the 42% on yearly average.

Good luck on your archery journey! Sounds like fun.

MeloTheMelon
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Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

It's a savings rate I can only dream of at the moment. Still hoping to crack the 42% on yearly average.
I think the biggest part for me is just not having a car and living in a super small / cheap apartment. So I'm sticking with the "broke" college student lifestyle :lol: I assume it will just creep up over time, but I'll try to keep it this high as long as possible. And I guess that I have the advantage that it's easier to not start buying things than to stop buying stuff you got used to buying regularly.

On the other hand, I have to admit that I envy you for your cabin, and I can see how just getting everything going there could be a big hit to your savings rate.

Good luck with increasing your savings rate :)

On the archery journey, that one might be a quite short one. I still have one last class left this week, but although it is fun, I don't think it is something I will keep up. The excitement is going down pretty quickly and I just can't see myself doing it for years

MeloTheMelon
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

End of month update.
Just got my paycheck and put another 1960€ into my investments.
Getting me to total of 27k in savings.

I actually managed to barely hit the 80% savings rate this month. Having 1.33€ left in the budget :lol:
It was kinda fun, especially when I had to make it work somehow in the last week. Figuring out what to buy and what not made me think a bit more about what I really need. With a bit more control on buying junk food, like crisps, or backed goods, hitting 80% would probably be a lot easier.
So I'm setting this goal again for October.

Other than that, I had my last archery class, it was fun, but it's nothing I want to continue doing. I think it was just a bit to monotonous for me.
On the other hand, I started doing the Fundamentals of Neuroscience course from Harvard via EdX. Not sure how this knowledge will help me in the future, but it's really interesting, and I love the interplay between physics, chemistry, and electronics, as well as the connections to computer science.

MeloTheMelon
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

October marks the end of my first year of the work life.
I always was into personal finance, but with uni and studying abroad, most of my savings usually went to cover tutition fees, rent, or other expenses. So I see October 2020 as the start of my ERE journey, even if I discovered ERE a bit later.

Positives of that year:

I saved up way more than I expected, which mostly came through reducing my expenses a lot more than I thought was possible without restricting myself too much. Right now, I think I am at a point where more optimization would not be worth the effort. I could maybe get my savings rate up another 1-2% but I don't see that worth the effort I would have to put into it. Especially because I will also increase the rate by just staying in my job and getting the annual pay raise.

I sold a lot of stuff. I still have a couple things in my appartment I want to get rid of, but I mostly managed to sell all the stuff I really didn't need. I also helped out my family a bit by selling stuff for them, and I am now starting to go through things stored at my parents place I accumulated over my childhood. All in all something I want to continue to have an eye on.

I read a lot, although not as much as during my studies, I still read a bunch of books (I think I'm at 26 this year so far). What I realised though is compared to the books I read in 2020, I switch from a bunch of fantasy novels to mostly non-fiction. I read a bunch of business books, some science, and some ancient philosophy. I don't want to say that reading fantasy has no value, I still read my novels at the evening, but I think those other genres have a bigger impact on my life. I also started to use the library more, but I still buy probably 50% of the books. The ones I buy are the ones I plan to read multiple times and I plan to take notes, mark sections, and write in the margins. The ones I borrow are the ones I'm not sure about if I will enjoy, if it has any useful information, or if I only read it for entertainment. I also bought some books second hand, but this is kinda hit or miss here because I usually read in english and 99% of books here are in german.

Negatives of the year:

Gambling on stocks, when I started to invest, I made some bad experience trying to make money on some hypes *cough* GameStop *cough*. All in all I only lost a couple bucks, but it taught me to not jump on hypes. I also realised that index funds are a lot less hazzle than individual stocks. For the future I would love to get deep enough in a specific industry to do active stocktrading in that industry. But for now I don't think the return on investment would be worth the effort I would have to put in to get there. This might be something to do once I am way further in my journey.

Starting a bunch of stuff and not finishing it. I don't even know how many projects I started this year that I dropped after a week or so. Some of them with the experience that I am just not into it (I count those as a win), others I dropped just because I had a new idea. This is something I really have to work on, because if I keep going like that I will just amass loads of unfinished projects and never get anywhere.

I wasted a lot of time online, mostly on YouTube. I just realized that most of the stuff I watch online is pretty much a waste of time, I wouldn't be able to tell you what I watched a week later. How much time I waste online and what I spend that time on definitely has to change, and is something I want to work on in the next year.


I will take some time this week to think about larger goals I want to achieve in the next 12 months, something I can use as a red line throught my monthly posts and hopefully posting it here will keep me a little bit accountable. I have some things in mind but taking an evening to think things through might keep me from switching things up one month in. So I'll post the upcoming goals soon :D

MeloTheMelon
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

So here are the goals for the next 12 months:

- Save 25k €
This shouldn't be a big problem considering my current spending habits, but I still want to track it just for the fun of it.

- Find something I like to do
I still have the problem that I don't really know what I should do with my free time, which leads me to wasting a lot of time on social media or YouTube. Because of this I want to continue to try out a bunch of hobbies, but I also want to keep in mind that it should have some long term value. Either by developing a useful skill or by creating a - small - stream of extra income.

- Read 24 non-fiction books
I simply want to up the amount of books I read, with a focus on non-fiction, science, philosophy, and maybe some personal finance / lifestyle design stuff.

Those 3 are the main goals for now. There are some smaller ones on my ToDo list, but most of them are one time things, so tracking them doesn't make much sense.

MeloTheMelon
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

Small update.
I've spent a bunch of time reading the last couple days. I still have a stack of books that were presents from christmas last year that I never got to read / was not in the mood to read. So I now have the goal to read one of them every month. For this month it was Dune, I don't think I have to say much about it, but the whole water economy was pretty interesting and made me think about how this relates to our current climate problems. CO2 being something we should extremely minimize the usage of and recycle it if possible.

Other than that I am also making my way through the books listed on the Wheaton scale wikipage. I read most of The simple path to wealth, and skimmed through the later half. Nothing new here, but I learned the function of bonds in a portfolio and that it is fine for me to throw everything in stocks (index funds) for now. I also skimmed through The millionair next door, but it just didn't grab my attention. It feels like not living in the US (no worries about healthcare and pension), not having a car, and not caring about status symbols makes a bunch of personal finance books completely useless.
On the upside I used the library to borrow the first and skim through the second, so I didn't pay for them which is a win.

On that note, I want to condense my own library a bit. I still love buying books, especially the ones I am going to re-read multiple times. But there are a bunch of books laying around I dropped or I know I will never read again, so I am looking into either donating them or selling them online. I have to do some research on what's the best / easiest way to do it and then sort through my stuff sometime on the weekend.

MeloTheMelon
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

October Update:

I managed to barely scrap the 80% savings rate again. But I upadted my budget to have a bit more leeway and I added an "improvement" fund. Which is meant for purchases to improve myself or my life. One thing on that list would be kettlebells or maybe some dumbbells.

I'll wait with the next networth update for a while. I'm postponing my investment this month because there could be some medical expenses this month and I am not sure how high those might be. Nothing big though, I just want to fix a problem with my teeth I had since years now and I have no clue how much my insurance covers. I'll know more about that in about 2 weeks, so after that I'll move whatever I don't need into my investments account.

Some small things that happened in October:
- Visited my family for an extended weekend, train tickets are pretty cheap, especially when I buy them early. The 5h trip cost me around 25€ for one direction. That was completely covered by the money I put into my travel fund over the last months. And to be honest, I probably ended up with a net postive, considering all the food my grandma gave me :lol:
- Decluttered and sold some stuff. Got rid of a backpack full of old clothes I never wore anyways. All of them were in pretty good condition, so I donated them to a local organization that helps homeless people. Sold a drawing tablet I bought ages ago and never used, and another good bunch of trading cards. Slowly, the piles and piles of cards at my parents place is getting less. It is literally a wardrobe full. I'm selling anything that's worth more than 50 cents as singles and everything else as bundles in small boxes. It's a bit annoying to sort through them, but every € I can add the the portfolio will pay off in the future.

Update on the 12 month goals:

- Save 25k€
No update, see above. I'll update this later.

- Find something I like to do
Really started to get into the whole Web3.0 and Crypto hype lately. I'm not interested in the whole crypto trading and mining stuff, but smart contracts are pretty cool and I started working my way through a 16h programming course for Solidity and Smart contracts. That's super interesting and a lot of fun, and I already have some ideas for small projects in the future. I'm not sure how long this will keep me interested, but in the worst case I added another sought-after skill to my software dev portfolio.

- Read 24 non-fiction books (23 left)
I read Emergency by Neil Strauss. He writes about his 3 year journey to prepare for a potential downfall of America. From learning about camping and survival in the wilderness, to urban survival, shooting, medical skills, and even how to get a second passport, and becoming broke on paper, he literally talks about anything. It was really interesting, although I don't think I will need much of it, but well you never know. I really enjoyed his sense of humor and writing style. So I'll probably pick up some other books from him in the future. Also another library read, so yay on not buying new books.
I'm already a bit behind schedule here, but I plan to read a bunch the coming weekend, and with Christmas around the corner, I'll probably catch up soon.

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seanconn256
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by seanconn256 »

Great job so far! That's an impressive amount of reading.

Have you done any projections as to how long it will take to reach FI (however you define it) ?

MeloTheMelon
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

seanconn256 wrote:
Wed Nov 03, 2021 10:59 am
Great job so far! That's an impressive amount of reading.

Have you done any projections as to how long it will take to reach FI (however you define it) ?
Thanks :D Honestly you get really far by just reading for an hour a day. I started to replace my idle YouTube binging and social media scrolling with books and that way I just fly through them. Another thing that made me read more is just dropping books I don't enjoy, or I think I won't learn anything from / already got everything out of it. Once I stopped caring about actually finishing books I didn't like the amount of books I read cover to cover increased a lot.


I haven't done any projections, but your comment made me curious, so I fired up excel and made some numbers appear.

Assumptions:
I continue to save an average of 1.900€ per month (22.800€ per year)
I get 5% ROI per year (adjusted for inflation, which I think should be alright for a global index fund)
Tax on profit from investments in Germany is a flat 25% (except for the first 800€, but I will leave that out for simplicity)

With expenses of 600€ per month (7.200€ per year). I'm currently a bit under that on a month to month basis, but I like to have some buffer.

I would be able to cover my expenses by taking out:
4%: end of 2027
3% (or 4% with taxes): end of 2029
3% with taxes: end of 2031

If I want to increase my expenses to let's say 1000€ per month:
4%: end of 2030
3%: end of 2033
3% with taxes: end of 2036

This also doesn't take into account that bonuses, pay raises, and side income increase the amount I save every year. And it doesn't include that I definitely want to at least work for 8h a week once I get there, and probably will do some odd jobs during ERE.

Conclusion:
About 8 more years if I don't do anything different, most likely a bit earlier.
Playing around with the numbers, if I can save an average of 2.000€ per month, I could shave off a full year, which is probably a bit more realistic.
Thanks for the suggestion, that gave me a way better perspective on the whole journey. Seeing the numbers and how adjusting the savings rate will move the ERE date was pretty fascinating. It also is a lot more visibile now that just having the blanket 10 years to retirement in my head.
If I have some time this weekend I'll make a sheet were I can enter my current savings and it calculates at which date the compounding would get me to my ERE number (around 240.000€)

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seanconn256
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by seanconn256 »

If you increase your spending by 1000€ our FI dates are pretty similar :)

In my experience doing the math gives you a lot of perspective on what something actually costs in terms of time spent working. Whenever I buy something I think of it's cost per year, and factor that into my FI date. Everything has a yearly cost because of replacements repairs etc. That helps mitigate sticker shock and has me thinking long term with my spending instead of just monthly.

I also like the idea of reading for an hour a day, I may give that a try.

Blackjack
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by Blackjack »

Hey Melo, wow, impressive savings rates so far!!! Being in Germany for ERE sounds great, where they have all the support systems in place for health assistance, etc, and cheap transport between cities on the train. Living the dream (although that 25% tax is really rough, just a different parameter to build your system around).
MeloTheMelon wrote:
Wed Nov 03, 2021 5:17 am
October Update:

I managed to barely scrap the 80% savings rate again. But I upadted my budget to have a bit more leeway and I added an "improvement" fund. Which is meant for purchases to improve myself or my life. One thing on that list would be kettlebells or maybe some dumbbells.
Having been a part of both camps of this debate: You will get the most utility for your $ getting a set of adjustable dumbbells, if you are newer to lifting weights and weigh <80kg, 25 kilos would be fine (though eventually you may want ones that go up to 50 kilos each). If you are more like 85+ kg, you may want bigger ones to start. Obviously dont bother with the fancy new ones, the old style of screwing the little plates on and off is just fine (virtually unbreakable minus some easy to replace rubber bits but it takes longer to set up when you are changing weights a lot). I don’t know about germany but here it is relatively easy to find a set on the secondary retail markets (Craigslist, Facebook marketplace, etc).

Kettle bells are fine for training a very small amount of movement patterns that build strength, but they aren’t great for anything that requires slowly growing weight or fixing injuries / bulletproofing most parts of your body (accessory work for wrists, elbows, shoulders/ ankles/ knees/ hips / spine that generally requires smaller weights and smaller incrementing). Adjustable Dumbbells can be used for both the accessory work and large scale movements, making them a nicer one size fits all solution. You can also jerry rig a kettlebell out of the weights if you ever really needed to, for doing kettlebell swings or something, though I’m not a big fan of those.

MeloTheMelon
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

Blackjack wrote:
Fri Nov 05, 2021 10:20 am
Hey Melo, wow, impressive savings rates so far!!! Being in Germany for ERE sounds great, where they have all the support systems in place for health assistance, etc, and cheap transport between cities on the train. Living the dream (although that 25% tax is really rough, just a different parameter to build your system around).



Having been a part of both camps of this debate: You will get the most utility for your $ getting a set of adjustable dumbbells, if you are newer to lifting weights and weigh <80kg, 25 kilos would be fine (though eventually you may want ones that go up to 50 kilos each). If you are more like 85+ kg, you may want bigger ones to start. Obviously dont bother with the fancy new ones, the old style of screwing the little plates on and off is just fine (virtually unbreakable minus some easy to replace rubber bits but it takes longer to set up when you are changing weights a lot). I don’t know about germany but here it is relatively easy to find a set on the secondary retail markets (Craigslist, Facebook marketplace, etc).

Kettle bells are fine for training a very small amount of movement patterns that build strength, but they aren’t great for anything that requires slowly growing weight or fixing injuries / bulletproofing most parts of your body (accessory work for wrists, elbows, shoulders/ ankles/ knees/ hips / spine that generally requires smaller weights and smaller incrementing). Adjustable Dumbbells can be used for both the accessory work and large scale movements, making them a nicer one size fits all solution. You can also jerry rig a kettlebell out of the weights if you ever really needed to, for doing kettlebell swings or something, though I’m not a big fan of those.
Yeah the 25% tax is a bit hard, although there are some ways to get around it and with the new government in germany there might be some changes to it in the near future. There is already talk about increasing the tax free amount 1000€ and some talk about reducing tax for long term investors. Other options would be to just throw my portfolio in a holding company and pay myself a salary, but I'll probably look into all of that in the future when I am closer to FI. Right now, I'm not even sure if I will stay in Germany or not :lol:

Thanks for the advice, I'll keep dumbbells in mind when I start looking into equipment, for now I'm still trying to figure out a routine that fits my schedule and that I can keep up long term

MeloTheMelon
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

Yesterday, I finally got my teeth fixed. After some bad experiences as a kid I somehow managed to not go to a dentist in more than a decade.
Over the years a cavity started to get pretty big, and that just added to the anxiety. At the end of October I finally got myself to set up an appointment, first only a basic check up, and then yesterday I went there to get all the stuff fixed that accumulated over the last years.
All in all, it was a lot less scary than I told myself, it also helped that the dentist was super nice and just plainly told myself what we have to do, without making any bad comments about the past.
So now I have one less burden on my chest, and I will definitely keep up with regular check ups.
This was also the reason I didn't invest most of my paycheck at the beginning of the month, I didn't know what needed to be done, and if my insurance would pay everything in full (they did, so no money spend here :lol: )

With this out of the way, here is the networth update for October:

With my paycheck and a good month in the market, I am now up to an even 25k in my portfolio, getting me to a total of 30k in networth.
Everything else was already mentioned in the post earlier, so not much more to add here.

MeloTheMelon
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

The last weeks I kinda got into alternative ways to live / build houses and all the stuff around it.

It all started with a film about a french guy who tried to survive on a 70m^2 bamboo raft without any help from the outside. Living on vegetables he farmed on the raft, the eggs of 2 chicken, and some weird algea, water via rain and a solar distiller and energy from a solar panel. It was a bit of a disaster, but interesting to watch. I could only find the german dub of it, otherwise I would link the video.

This film somehow brought me to the whole earthship concept and I binged some videos on it and loved the idea. There is one being built in germay right now - the first one actually - and all I could find out about earthhips in germany is that getting one approved is a nightmare. Even the one being built right now had to come to a compromise with the city and they had to connect it to water and sewage facilities.

Further on, I looked into off grid living. I played with the idea of buying a cabin somewhere in the middle of nowhere for years now. But it always seemed a bit unattainable. After some digging I found out that there are a bunch of old houses + land for sale in the north of sweden, and they are pretty cheap.
Only problem, I maybe speak two words of swedish and I would need a job there which I could do remote, because buying such a house would eat up all my savings plus a bit. And well, I would like to live in the country at least for a year or so before buying anything, after all I have no clue if I would like it or not.

All of that made me think though, and lately my life seems to be a bit boring. One reason for this might be that I lived in this city for about 5 years total, with a 2 year break in between, and I just love to see new countries and cultures, but I also hate the usual tourist stuff :lol:
In the past I used my studies to see different countries and live in them. I could do the same right now, getting a job abroad shouldn't be too hard. I think Jacob mentioned something similar in one of the blog posts, something about living in a country for 3-4 years instead of travelling somewhere for a week or two, and I totally agree with that.

Anyways, for now I'll be looking at some open positions in a couple countries I'd love to visit and maybe I'll say goodbye to germany once more in the upcoming year

MeloTheMelon
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

I wanted to wait with this post until my monthly update, but then thought it's better to write it now than forgetting half of the things until later in the week.
I just dropped Your money or your life after trying to get through the book for the last two or three weeks. I managed to read about half of it before I stopped. It just felt like a drag, and it had some counterproductive effects.

I think the whole calculation of money as life energy is great for something who spends most of their money on things. I don't, which had some odd effects. First, by having a good job, being able to work from home at least half of the time, and having a lot of vacation days, my "real" hourly rate is pretty good, it came out at around 15€ per hour spend on work related things, commute etc. included. It would be more if I take into account how much I save by living in an apartment provided by my employer, but I think that's a bit unfair since I probably wouldn't live in this city if I had to spend half of my paycheck on a one-room flat.
For someone with a low real hourly rate, the calculation could really make them think, and I get the idea behind it. For me it had a bit of the opposite effect. When I walked to the office in the morning and I wanted a cup of hot chocolate my brain just tried to use that number against me. Oh you only need to work 9 minutes for that, why not splurge, it's not that much anyways. Things like that. So this just completely backfired.
What works way better for me is thinking in 10's. E.g. how will I feel about the purchase in 10min, 10 days, 10 months from now. If I won't remember it after 10 months, like a cup of hot chocolate, is it really worth the money.

Next was the income/expense sheet marked with what works towards your dream / values and what doesn't.
Problem 1: I don't really have many expenses except necessities (food, rent, hygiene stuff), and the occasional book. Meaning 90% of my sheet would have neither a positive or negative effect, and for the rare things that I would count as negative, I know about them without looking at a list of my expenses. I make mistakes every now and then and I try to learn from them, but I don't need to track all of my expenses to figure those out.
Problem 2: Does the expense work towards my dreams / values. You know, that would be great to know. I'm soul-searching for my dreams and values since a couple years now and I still have no clue what I want to do with my life. Hence why I pretty much have no expenses. There isn't much to buy if you don't really want to do anything. If I had something to work towards and put all my time into I wouldn't be reading a book...

I'm a bit sad, because I heard so many good things about the book, but I guess it just didn't click for me :cry:
I'll still count it as read because, to be honest, it was more work to get halfway through the book than reading another book cover to cover. I really wanted to enjoy it, but well, nothing you can do about it.

MeloTheMelon
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

Update November:

First to the overall goals:

- Save 25k (5.5k):
This is a lot more than I expected, but with another quite good savings rate for October (~78%), getting a nice Christmas bonus, and my investments growing a lot, everything seems to play well together. I just threw most of my bonus into the portfolio, only keeping about 70€ if I need to spend a bit more for gifts than I am expecting.

- Read 24 books (3):
Like already mentioned in the last post, I attempted to read Your Money or Your Life.
Before that I read The Game by Neil Strauss. I didn't think I would ever read a book on Pick-Up-Artists, but he got me with how he tells the story. I don't care much about the advice given in the book, but it was a really fun read, and I learned a good amount about conversations and how to better keep them going. There were some other good lessons in it, mostly about communities and a tiny bit about business. And well, I guess it's a good introduction to the whole Pick-Up-Artist scene if you are interested in that.
Right now I'm in the middle of a text book on collaborative world building. I'm not sure what I will get out of it, but the topic is interesting and I'm getting a lot of insights into some of the bigger worlds in books and movies.

- Find something I like to do:
I still think the whole Web3.0 stuff is incredible, I just have no idea for a small project right now. But I know the basics, and if I ever get an idea I can jump right in.
For now, I'm not really learning anything new. I'm reading a lot more lately, and I have some smaller projects I want to work on. Like a simple website for my parents business, and some research on a writing idea.
December might be an option to try out some things, or at least make some bigger progress, as I have to take all my left over vacation days, which means I'll be on vacation for almost a month :lol: A lot of that time will be spent meeting with family members, and supporting my parents, but I should have enough time on my hands to do some work.

Other things that happened the last month:
I started journaling. One day in the morning I just had the urge to write down all my thoughts, so I did it. It helped a lot, clearing out my head and making more sense of some of my ideas. The next morning I saw the full page on my desk, and just sat down and wrote another page. That was a bit over two weeks ago and I have done the same every morning, before I start my PC or anything else. I just make myself a large cup of tea and write. It usually takes me about 30min to fill the page (basic A4 notepad, nothing fancy). It feels like I'm getting all the thoughts out of my brain and clean everything up for the day to come. And well, half an hour less screen time is probably a nice upside too :D

disk_poet
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by disk_poet »

Nice update! I also find journaling super helpful but have fallen off the bandwagon lately. Winter is a tough time for me to keep habits up.

I've played around with web 3 a bit myself but am also struggling with some real projects. What's the world-building book your reading? Sounds fascinating.

MeloTheMelon
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

Well, let's see if journaling will survive the upcoming vacation :lol:

The book is called Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers by Trent Hergenrader. It mostly focuses on, well, building a world as a group which could then be used for fiction writing or other things like Tabletop RPGs and so on. It's a bit academic and more like a text book, but uses a lot of examples.
I'm not sure if I'm ever going to use what he is writing about, but it gave me a couple ideas for stories.

disk_poet
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Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by disk_poet »

Thanks for the title. I played a lot of Pen & Paper RPGs growing up but once I moved cities my social circles changed and I haven't picked it back up since. My friends back "home" are still playing so I think it could be a nice read. I also feel like one never knows where these things come in handy. I think it'll definitely support your creativity.

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

@disk_poet Yes that's also what made me pick up the book. I played a bunch of Pen & Paper RPGs while I was studying in the UK. But now in Germany it seems hard to find a group.

While writing the paragraph I realized that it kind turned into rambling, but I'm stuck in a train for 5 hours and am pretty bored, so I'll just type what's on my mind.

I've been thinking a bit about my web of goals, it's just that I don't really have many goals or really do much :lol:
Obviously, I work which would have the first order effects of earning money, improving my programming skills, and saving money (or frugality) due to the really cheap employee apartment and some other fringe benefits, I might also add exercise in the mix, simply because I walk to work whenever I have to be in the office (about 2-3 times a week) which is a nice 30min walk for one direction.
But other than that, I can't really think about much. So I tracked what I did do for a whole day, and unsurprisingly I spend way too much time watching random YouTube videos, or just mindlessly scrolling through one of the many social media sites. Which lead me to just getting rid of that, ironically it was a YouTube video that talked about social media and video games destroying our dopamine balance that gave me the final push. I logged out of all the accounts, closed the tabs and shut down my computer for that day. I wasn't on any social media site in the past 5 days and let me just say it feels great and terrible.
Side note: I don't count this forum, simply because it doesn't promote mindless scrolling like modern sites, I usually just read a handful of threads I follow and answers some DMs, and to be honest I mostly use it when I am bored at work anyways :lol:
The good side is that I was a lot more productive. I kept on top of my household chores, got a lot of stuff done at work and did a lot of reading, which was my fall back whenever I had no idea what to do.
The downside is that I am bored, a lot. Especially after the first two days or so, once I cleaned up every corner of my apartment, and finished the books I was reading at that time. I also felt a bit bad if I simply just read for a whole afternoon. Yes, it's better than watching cat videos, but in the end I still only consume content. In my morning journalling sessions I realized that I often think about myself as more of an consumer than a producer. I mean, if I weigh both sides, how much I produce and how much I consume. The consuming side would always win. Now I can try to cut down even more of the consuming activities, but if I don't really have any outputs, they will never outweigh the inputs.
Now, there were some things I was interested in, and still am for some of them, that would let me produce something in return. One thing would be writing, another would be coding, etc. but in the past I always thought about how to turn it into a side hustle and make money with it, and I think that is where the problem was. I ruled out a bunch of ideas because I couldn't see how they would be profitable in the near future. Why do a project on the side that won't make me money if I could just work another 8 hours and earn money right now, was a common thought. I think that changed now, mostly because I was re-listening to one of Naval's podcasts episodes, there was this one simple quote:
When looking for a purpose to life, notice that most things are stepping stones, done for ulterior motives. True art, love, and play stand apart, as they are done for their own sakes.
This, combined with a habit of showing my work should solve the problem of not knowing what to do. Because it's not that I don't know what do, it's that I didn't want to do things that have no instant monetary value. But if I put that aside, and do what I want to do, for the sole purpose of creating something, who cares if I make money with it or not. I will most likely retire in 5-6 years, that's over three decades earlier than others my age, why do I care so much about earning extra money and maybe retiring a year earlier. I should just enjoy the ride.
Mentioned showing my work above, simply because I feel that in today's world, everything that isn't publicly available pretty much doesn't exist. The only way my time was really wasted, is if nobody can interact with what I did. And there isn't really any downside to just dumping whatever I do onto a website or something similar.

Morale of the whole mess of a paragraph:
I want to use my time, especially my upcoming christmas vacation, to start producing whatever is on my mind and with that start figuring out and spinning my web.

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