3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

[OutOfTheBlue]

I like how even in the midst of wondering and holding hypothetical scenarios in your mind, you seem to have grown quite comfortable with not knowing, which can be a source of anxiety for many!

This deeper sense of trust results in further "relaxing the personal will directed toward an imagined future" as a teacher puts it.

You know what you need to know when you need to know it, and not a moment sooner!

[ertyu]

Update: well, the job question has been decided. I am off to high paid job, location buttfuck nowhere, buckling down to save what i hope will be 35k over the next calendar year. Let's see how that works out.

@zbigi: I've avoided the oil countries until now; life there happens mostly indoors due to the weather and in compounds due to the poverty. Driving is a must. Half the expats there have nothing to do but drink, and the other half are there to dry out. It's not a lifestyle that appeals to me, but it's on my radar.

The decision to accept the awful but high-paid job puts fire under my ass to decide wtf I'm doing in a year or two -- most likely a year because this is very much a grind your teeth and bear it sort of posting for me.

@OOtB: thank you. Good observation, and good compliment!

[fingeek]

I'm curious - What is your motivation for exchanging your current flexible time/less pay for less time/more pay?

Personally, I've been focusing on going the other way - Starting to transition towards more time, more mental space etc. to avoid the otherwise inevitable cliff edge of going from 0% free time to 90%, and not yet having the discipline or plan to do something with that time. (This is based on my first retirement year experience, where I had neither and went back to work instead for the forced discipline)

[NewBlood]

@NewBlood, you asked about leveraging my experiences to do the same thing in a more favorable location, and in all honesty I would love a lecturer gig in the uk or western europe -- but the labor market there is different, there are many people with PhDs available to do the same thing. While I hope that won't be the case, Imo I'm only a competitive candidate in this line of work if I go to the locations others don't want to go to. So while I will certainly apply, I am unsure that a. there will be sufficient job openings and b. I will be a competitive candidate for them.

You never know. Most PhDs want to do research, not teaching, or seek higher-paying jobs. Private schools/universities are usually more flexible and sometimes less demanding in terms of credentials than public universities where everything is codified and if you don't check the right boxes you can't even apply. As an ERE-er you have the advantage of knowing how to live quite well on small salaries. Adjunct teaching positions aren't very attractive to PhD holders because they don't pay well and don't offer tenure. So there might be some opportunities. As you said, doesn't hurt to try for it in a few different countries, see what happens.

Good luck with the new gig and the savings goal! Hopefully having a fixed term and concrete savings target will make it more bearable.

[guitarplayer]

Hmm maybe double-check with yourself that it is not about status etc @ertyu. I remember your musings when you had been leaving the gig and how this was perceived as sort of descending to something less favourable in the eyes of people around at the time.

It feels nice when people reach out and say they need you.

You seemed happy enough teaching though.

[ertyu]

Good catch, thank you. I think you're spot on that there is a level of not-so-rational thinking at play.

Here is the bad and the ugly of what's going on, at the risk of damaging OOtB's good opinion of me . I think it's about anxiety. Money anxiety partly. Now that I'm somewhat rested after this year, it's started to dawn on me that I'm only saving 10k usd a year and i could be saving 30-40 (40 is "impossible" level. 30-35 is possible). Recently, I was part of a discussion of how expensive property has become in europe, and this left me feeling acutely aware of and afraid of how little money I have. And it's made me think I need to work 3 years at my current job to get the same benefit as working one more at miserable job.

If I have to be honest, it seems like the biggest freedom-from is running my life at any point: before, the desire to just rest and have a sane life, and now that i'm rested, the fear of saving too little.

Another aspect is, this gig being what it is, I'm going to have to leave at -some- point. Which point, I don't know, and it depends on me only partially. Circumstances might be such that I need to leave next year, or the year after next. That I can coast here for say 5+ years is not guaranteed. Which makes me want to make one last push at savings. So if it's anything, I am grasping on money because of the anxiety I feel. Haven't yet formally resigned this job, so technically I'm still employed here next year, there's time to change my mind. I do see the network of the anti-wog which generates the anxiety, now let's see if i'll be able to pull on the right thread to make it unravel rather than tangle up further.

[OutOfTheBlue]

So all options are still on the table, with the added benefit (or pleasant headache as we say in Greek) that it all depends on you?

Yay, that's a pretty nice situation to be in!

Being aware that anxiety might be pushing you toward one option means you are free to consciously acknowledge it without necessarily acting on it (following its lead). I know this might speak to a deep seated insecurity, but still, you can dialogue with that.

In the past, you mentioned that you're doing Focusing. One application of Focusing that stood out for me as I was exploring this modality, was that it can help in decision-making, where you go beyond a thinking approach. Invite a felt-sense of two future situations (What would it look like if I took option A? And what about option B?) and see if anything comes up as you listen to your "body" and get in touch with a deeper level of wisdom and intuition.

From a quick search, a relevant blog entry: https://focusingresources.com/2017/08/2 ... decisions/

[ertyu]

scarcity thinking isn't cured by current greed and glomming. It's cured by resting in awareness, going in the middle of your torso/chest, and revisiting and releasing the tension of all those times in the past when you didn't have enough

reposted here cause i need to take my own damn advice

In other news, I am not going back to my old job. Thank you, everyone who absolutely correctly pointed out that doing so would have been, in the last instance, an escapist choice. All-consuming, exhausting jobs are excellent at giving cover as to why you shouldn't deal with "all that" but should just focus on working and saving for now. The stress such jobs generate narrows one's focus to the immediate, to office drama and survival and other crap that, in the last instance, doesn't matter. So, thank you all for kicking my butt. @OotB, good post - it was useful.

I have emerged from this with two resolutions:

One, I will treat this next academic year like it's my last year of employment. This implies redoubling on no-buy and e.g. the running down of various accumulated household stores. I will aim for a savings target of 2,500 USD a month between September '24 and June '25 (10 months). In addition, I will orient towards deciding on a "what next" plan. This job is not a permanent solution: I will coast for now, but my strategy of geoarbitrage and profiting from choosing to work places others find undesirable is that I might need to leave at any time, the exchange rate might turn against me and make the position not worth it at any time, etc. I should live accordingly. I was trying to "coast" in a position where one cannot "coast" and this, (in addition to that whole business with financial anxiety that I''m avoiding) is making me freak out, and I've been dealing with the freak-out by efforting in basically any other direction but the one I should actually be facing.

One day, i will stop being an idiot, but given im 40 already, might have to give up on that one

[zbigi]

I think it's likely a wise choice. Putting your hand back into Gom Jabbar is not a great idea, unless the corporate Reverend Mother is really paying sick money.

[Henry]

One day, i will stop being an idiot, but given im 40 already, might have to give up on that one

Might as well see it through.

[Frita]

It sounds like the anticipated trade off of less money for some kickback autopilot instruction didn’t work. Lesson learned. Onward, @ertyu, today is the youngest you’ll be again.

[ertyu]

It is the end of the month. Two things merit an update, among the miscellaneous trivia (the miscellaneous trivia being, getting free appliances etc from departing colleagues, building up my legume stores again, etc).

1) It has been conclusively established I am completely stark raving mad when it comes to money. Completely, utterly irrational. Every sensible thought flies out the window and my deepest survival fears get activated. It's a complete nuisance.

2) I have completed, and I'm now on the third day of refeeding from, a 21d water fast for the purposes of autophagy. To address questions that might arise, yes I am aware the price of autophagy is the loss of muscle mass, and no, I did not measure either weight lost nor did a convoluted blood test before and after. I've said it before and I'll say it again: while fasting is a potent clean-up tool, what happens on the fast is immaterial. What happens off the fast is what matters.

In comparison with the extended fasts I did in my 20s, everything happened slower. Skin took longer to clear up, etcetera. My theory is, it's part age part the overall worse condition I'm starting from. So if you are fasting yourself, prepare to need to do twice as much as you used to. Another fast might be due in december/january, depending.

Dumb shit not to do: go run errands in 35C heat on day 19 of the fast, sweating like a pig. I exhausted all my electrolytes, fought nausea all the way back, had to sit on every bench to rest like an old lady, and puked in the sink as soon as i came home. I knew what was happening and mixed myself some lite salt and magnesium citrate in water and felt better, but yeah -- not a good experience.

The other thing I would caution against is commercial electrolyte tablets. They contain various B vitamins as well so I thought they'd be a good idea. By d. 15-16 I'd developed an instinctive retching response just thinking about them, is it the colorants is it the artificial sweetener, idk. But old school is the way.

I also appear to have spontaneously quit coffee. It started tasting bad to me at some point, and tea was too much trouble. So I slept all day and took my withdrawal headaches like a big boy. Head still aches faintly all the time and I have brain fog, but this is to be expected after being a heavy user for twenty years.

[OutOfTheBlue]

I've done some fasting, but never that long. Wow! That's inspiring! And I like how you come off the coffee drug spontaneously, in the midst of that process.

"What happens off the fast is what matters."

Could you expand a bit on that? What are you expecting to happen after this three weeks fast?

[guitarplayer]

oh crap, do I get it right? you were fasting for 21 days? If I get it right, I am genuinely stunned! I'd never think you are up for such things, I bet it's a potentially deep transformative experience.

[ertyu]

"What happens off the fast is what matters."

Here's what I mean: many people, and I in the past, approached the fast like the fast is the work. And it's true, you're going to fast, and your weight will be down oh-so-impressively, and your blood tests would look much nicer, and whatnot. So they think they're done. They did it, they accomplished whatever it was, etcetera. But the end of the fast is not where the work ends, it's where the work begins. The body will now serve you hyperphagia (and everyone thinks, nooooo not me until it's a year later and they've undone all the clean-up they set to do). The reasons why you wanted to not reach for that food become less salient to the conscious mind, automatic behavior increases.(Again, everyone thinks noooo not me, like they're somehow exempt from biochemistry).

The hyperphagia calms down eventually, but the fast won't fix the fact that we're all creatures of dopamine. Eating enough to be satisfied of something warm and nice feels good, and undereating, even if it's healthier, is miserable and requires constant struggle. I've always found the day to day deprivation and restriction much harder. This is the third fast of this length I do, and I'm still to be transformed into a paragon of health.

I'd never think you are up for such things

oof haha

but yes, this idea that a fast is a transformative experience is part of the problem. It's a powerful cleanup tool, yes -- but especially in the 90s when water fasting got big, i read books making all sorts of claims: that one's taste buds adjust to healthy food and one would be transformed into someone that never again wants to eat anything bad, that an extended fast would make you deep and introspective and solve your depression, that it would fix all your health problems and remove all your cancer, and what the hell not. Over time, I've grown to think that while it's important to recognize what a fast can do (it is now scientifically shown that going into chemotherapy fasted increases its effectiveness, for instance), it is self-defeating to see it as this miracle that would semi-magically fix you.

[OutOfTheBlue]

Magical thinking isn't very ripe in these forums, but these are still good point to make. Thanks!

Indeed, longer periods of fasting may be of little help toward a general and lasting overhaul if taken separately from a holistic approach to nutrition (like what you do the rest of the days) and more broadly to health.

[delay]

Over time, I've grown to think that while it's important to recognize what a fast can do ... it is self-defeating to see it as this miracle that would semi-magically fix you.

Congratulations on the long fast! Fasting from 20:00 to 14:00 is very helpful for me. I've sinned with food all the time for the past months, and I just don't seem to gain weight. Perhaps it's not a miracle, but it certainly feels like magic.

[ertyu]

@OOtB, the magical thinking got me hard in my 20s. I was quote-unquote "troubled" and with even less coping skills than now; I had no help and wouldve clutched at any straw that promised my depression would go away and I would finally be "fixed." When two extended fasts predictably failed to "fix" me, I was disillusioned and even more hopeless for a while. Maybe that's why I still come across so butthurt.

On the forum, I haven't seen the worst of the woo-woo (e.g. "it would cure my cancer") but I have seen the "the fast is the work" mentality: that you only need to go through your 6-day water fast and there, you're done, you're going to lose calculations-calculations lbs of fat a day and isn't that great.

@delay, do you tend to fit one or two meals in that timeframe?

In other news, just clocked 22k steps on d4 of refeed so I guess that's how long it takes to return to baseline daily functionality given liberal application of rich fish fillet soup and Brie.

[delay]

@delay, do you tend to fit one or two meals in that timeframe?

On the best days yes, two meals and one with meat and vegetables. Days that go less well I eat continuously from 14:00 to 20:00, like bread and figs and milk. On even worse days I eat a large amount of icecream, cookies or nuts.

[zbigi]

@ertyu Inspired by your gargantuan fasts, I decided to try out a 3 day one. However, I got some chest pain (specifically, it felt like heart pain) after two days, and decided to stop in the middle of the third day. Might be an electrolyte imbalance (I've been doing 10 mile walks in the summer heat while fasting), might be something else, but I decided I don't want to to risk screwing up my health just so I can say I've finished what I started. Did you have any issues like that?

Also, when googling the subject, I've found a chinese paper saying that intermittent fasting leads to 91% higher chance of cardiovascular disease and death. Coming from China, it might be bullshit, but let's keep an eye out for further research.

EDIT: wrong word