Purple Journal

[purple]

I am going to take a stab at writing a journal. I feel like it's time to get out of my head a little bit. So, I am hoping the journal will help me to formulate my thoughts, add a layer of accountability and of course help build some connections with the community. I am extremely glad I found this forum because it really fills my need for a thoughtful interaction with people. I love the focus on the life design rather than hack money-optimization.

---

Here is some background about me.

I am in my 30s, living in a cold city in North America and am gainfully employed. I have been in the personal finance space since about 2017 when I got fed up with blowing money. Back then I slowly started examining my expenses and questioning what brings me value and what doesn’t. I got pretty thoughtful with spending, optimized a lot. I practised of delayed gratification and minimalism. My possessions were very simple.

In 2020 I partnered up with my SO. They are an incredible DIY-er and very much on board with the non-conventional lifestyle. In fact, they are probably a lot closer to the Renaissance ideal than I’ll ever be (hello there, my self-limiting thought). They are much smarter than me, able to figure out non-trivial solutions, they encourage me to examine my beliefs and learn new skills. However, they are definitely not a minimalist. : )

In a sense, my SO and I come from completely opposite angles. I am inclined to reject the spending and live very simply and my SO finds creative unconventional ways to fulfill their desires. I think we’ve been slowly converging towards the glorious middle.

---

As you can probably tell, English is not my native language. I speak fluently but I am always striving to achive the natural elegance of the native speaker. Maybe my writing will get better over time but don’t hold your breath!...

Moving on, here are more biographical details relevant to my ERE journey.

I grew up in a third-world country. North American standard of living seems both luxurious and insanely wasteful to me.

To give you some context, I did not have my own room up until I moved out in my 20s due to the size of apartments. I was used to having regular power outages, months long lack of hot water (yay bathing using the water heated up on the stove), not having a bathtub/shower in the house, etc. So, the ability to take a bath feels like a true first-world pleasure to me.

As a result, I am really really good with not wanting much. I also question a lot of things that are a “given” in this society. For instance, I really don’t understand multiple-car households. Even one car seems like too much for me.

---

So where I am now?

As I’ve been living in the NA, I explored a lot of luxuries offered by this part of the world. I did initially buy in into some of the consumer treadmill, mostly gorging on “experiences” (travel and eating out). I had my share of expensive electronic purchases.

I got tired of consumption. I feel like simple money-optimization doesn’t cut it anymore. I am after the lifestyle design.

How do I create things? How do I grow things? How do I build things?

How do I design a life where the distinction between work and play doesn’t exist anymore?

---

Here are some of my interests that I will probably ramble about here.

- Gardening (indoor and outdoor)
- Money
- Reading
- Emotional well-being and well-being in general
- People, relationships
- The great outdoors
- Skill acquisition
- Baking
- Wildlife watching
- Questioning the axioms
- etc etc etc

---

Anyway.

Hi.

[purple]

The garden season is winding down for the year. I had very little spare time this summer so plants were quite neglected. Despite neglect, I still got stuff out of my hobby!

- My freezers (yes, plural) are bursting with delicious cherries I harvested.
- I have two full buckets of delicious plums.
- Tomatoes did not produce as much yet probably the harvest will satisfy our consumption from now until November.
- Potatoes have been successful. Next year I'll plant more of them. They are fricking delicious.
- Self seeding onion and chives (need to freeze them) mean 0 effort for lots of freshness every year.
- Cucumbers suck for the second season in the row. I think the current patch just doesn't work for them. They were very productive before in a different location of the garden. I need to relocate them somewhere for the next season...
- Garlic produced delicious cloves despite being planted in the spring. Want more next year. Hopefully, will transition to the state of growing my own garlic every year.
- Peas got eaten by hungry wildlife.

There are still things to do for the next season
- Collect seeds from tomatoes
- Collect seeds from cucumbers
- Fertilize the trees
- General clean up of the garden
- Mark branches for pruning.
- Plant garlic

Overall, gardening is an incredible hobby that produces both results and fun. I do get frustrated with the tight deadline (everything needs to be done at the same time lol) but I miss it every winter.

I am thinking how to expand the garden and lower the costs.

I grow plants from seeds in a light/temp controlled environment. It would be great to lower the costs of running that. Maybe next year I'll try using more of the natural light. The problem is we keep the house quite cool and it's too cold for the seedlings. They need to be about 5 degrees warmer than us.

More to come on the garden joys...

[purple]

I am having hard time articulating thoughts. There is so much stuff floating in my head that I don't really know where to start. Well, got to start somewhere, right?

Motivation and Joy

I've been reading these forums and people's diaries for the past few weeks and one thing becomes really clear: I need to dig in my motivations. I think I took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in a pretty severe burnout. I am grateful to my past self for the efforts I made and how far I came but reality remains reality. I paid a huge price for my accomplishments.

For the last decade or so my motivation was based on fear. I interpreted failure as an existential threat. Objectively, that was strange (I was not surviving in the wild...) but subjectively that is what it felt like at the time. I pushed myself to succeed really hard to establish in the country I knew nothing about. I completed an intense educational program. I built a largely successful professional life here. I struggled a lot with understanding how people around me interacted but I got some moderate success there too. I did a lot.

I hit a motivational brick wall about 6-7 years ago when I literally ran out of steam. I lost most of my ambitions both professionally and in life. I felt so directionless, lonely and lost. Some of it was brought on by immigration, some of it was the consequence of a hard-core breakup I experienced. I wanted changes but didn't exactly know how to implement them.

Ever since I've been slowly digging myself out of this hole. Finding FIRE and latching on to figuring out personal finance was a first step. I didn't know what a credit card was when I moved (my home country didn't have them back then). I learnt about investing and tax advantaged accounts. I read a lot about minimalism and money hacks. I implemented tons of changes. I was really interested in FIRE and.. felt a passion for something? Maybe it was freedom to stop performing? It was much less fear driven than everything around me at the time. I felt like building something for myself (and not escaping from something dire).

After I coupled up with my SO I had a whole new set of challenges to overcome. Our lifestyles were so different that I had to dig really deeply into my assumptions, approach to things, learn how to talk about my feelings with my SO. I live in a house now but I've never even heard the word "furnace" before moving here. It was interesting and frustrating. It also consumed all the mental space I had for a while. Adjusting to the cohabitation and to the completely new way of life was a project on its own.


So where am I now?

I feel stable enough to pursue something else. I did tons of internal work to let go of my fear. I feel a lot more capable and more resilient. I am not in a survival mode anymore (ha! took only about 15 years!).

I have no idea what motivates me anymore.

I don't feel much of the childhood wonder. My curiosity is usually getting squashed by the overwhelmed feeling. OMG I have to do something again??? I am very high functional, I write lists and cross them off. However, even with my hobby gardening I feel the need to do stuff. I don't feel the excitement of doing stuff. I get happy when my flowers bloom but I wish I didn't have to do the work for that to happen.

It's just frustrating and disappointing. I know I had this ability to get excited by the process. I used to love my own brain and everything it's capable of. I loved learning. I loved seeing results of my efforts.

I don't think I am unique in this feeling. I was reading the journal of AxelHeyst before and saw a very good formulation of similar feelings. Can't find it now though. Basically, how huge internal pressure to perform something "or else" sucks the joys out of the act of doing and then ANY project becomes undesirable.

Eh.

Do I have a plan?

Well, acknowledging the problem is the first step I guess.

Dealing with internal pressure. Do this OR ELSE FACE THE CONSEQUENCE. <- this shit needs to get addressed. I am not in survival mode anymore. In fact, my life is amazing and rich and I am very happy where I am.

Moving away from passively consuming stuff and finding a way to play within my current circumstances. I stopped watching Netflix years ago. I engineer my work in a way that is slightly more satisfying to me.

But what else?

That's a big question. Couple of months ago I hanged the towel rack and felt happy doing it. It was such a small thing but it created joy. I don't know how or why that joy was created. But I need to tap more into it.

OK.

This is probably enough for today. I will come back to this topic later. There is a lot to unpack.

[Violets]

Your garden sounds lovely! (I also love growing and eating potatoes and want to grow more. Potatoes are so great.)

I have beans, kohlrabi and cucumber closeish to harvest in my fall garden that I planted on Aug 1, but I live more southern and it doesn't frost here till later in the fall. I know my beans will be harvestable, but I'm unsure if the others will make it in time.

I can understand the feeling of needing to do something and not really wanting to do something. I feel that way about most things I do, but I chalked it up to just being old now and the novelty having worn off. (The first times I gardenned on my own every development I photographed and crowed about each new growth, now, not so much. I used to just...really enjoy pouring myself into doing anything now, eh, maybe. )

[Jean]

You must come from a very hot place if you qualify somewhere you can grow cherries and plums as cold

Regarding motivation to do thing.
If i take gardening as an exemple, maybe the work itself is annoying, but isn't the work a good excuse to just be outside and look at your garden, the sky ant the surroundings? Or to be exausted enough for your so to offer you a lemonade or a massage?
The work can be annoying, but if the work itselfs has a meaning, it often gives a different meaning to very enjoyable things, and thus makes them more enjoyable.

[purple]

Your garden sounds lovely! (I also love growing and eating potatoes and want to grow more. Potatoes are so great.)

I have beans, kohlrabi and cucumber closeish to harvest in my fall garden that I planted on Aug 1, but I live more southern and it doesn't frost here till later in the fall. I know my beans will be harvestable, but I'm unsure if the others will make it in time.

I can understand the feeling of needing to do something and not really wanting to do something. I feel that way about most things I do, but I chalked it up to just being old now and the novelty having worn off. (The first times I gardenned on my own every development I photographed and crowed about each new growth, now, not so much. I used to just...really enjoy pouring myself into doing anything now, eh, maybe. )

Hi Violets, thanks for stopping by! Always good to meet a fellow gardener

Do you know if it is possible to ripen the beans indoors? Tomatoes are super easy (just put them in the dark) so I eat tomatoes for two months after they were harvested green

I find that finding novelty in the garden is easier than in other aspects of life. Every season I add plants or try to do something different so in most cases it yields different results. I find this state of experimentation and observing different plants grow a lot of fun. This year's new thing was garlic which did not work that great but we did harvest some bulbs.

Do you plant same things over and over?

[purple]

You must come from a very hot place if you qualify somewhere you can grow cherries and plums as cold

Regarding motivation to do thing.
If i take gardening as an exemple, maybe the work itself is annoying, but isn't the work a good excuse to just be outside and look at your garden, the sky ant the surroundings? Or to be exausted enough for your so to offer you a lemonade or a massage?
The work can be annoying, but if the work itselfs has a meaning, it often gives a different meaning to very enjoyable things, and thus makes them more enjoyable.

Hi Jean! Welcome to my journal

I agree with you, being outside gardening is great! Also, I love being in tune with the seasons, it feels very natural to me. Garden growth through different stages and I like watching them. This is all about the mindset, how do I not dwell on the negatives of having to weed? Lol.

I also think that gardening and project work in general helps to combat the sedentary lifestyle. So I think about all those older people who remain active due to never ending supply of chores. It's a better alternative than plopping in the chair for hours. But yea, it's still annoying sometimes.

Pondering your last sentence. Giving meaning to more enjoyable things. This is a good thought. Thanks for it, I'll see how it plays out

[WingsOnFire]

Oh how I relate to loving to admire the flowers in breath taking bloom, and just strolling about the garden, checking what is new, the cutest little grape clusters, the first cucumber, and on and on. But at the same time feeling completely run over by my lush garden, with weeds just popping up and growing faster than I can keep up. Without a greenhouse, the growing season is very short as well. I have a cherry tree, apple trees, two plum trees and a pear tree, but they are all quite small and some of them are not making any fruit yet.
I've managed to grow a tiny watermelon, but of course it didn't have time to grow large and ripen. Tomatillos have been self seeding! And they make a bunch of fruit and are very low effort.

I made some mistakes when I first worked my garden, after a large prickly bush fence was removed from the middle of it. I made way too large flower beds that I didn't plant tight enough, and some perennials just failed to grow, so weeds galore. I would need to take out the perennials and re-plant them tighter and turn some of the areas back to a lawn.
There is less lawn now than when I purchased the house, but it still feels like so much to mow.

I don't live in my house right now, my daughter wanted to live in the center of the town and the option was for her to move in with her dad or that I would move with her (which was way better option for all of us). Relatives live there now but they are just not the kind of people who will get stuff done and the garden will quickly overgrow.
I have health issues and low energy... So I have decided I want to sell the house. I miss living in it in one way, but not another.

[purple]

Oh how I relate to loving to admire the flowers in breath taking bloom, and just strolling about the garden, checking what is new, the cutest little grape clusters, the first cucumber, and on and on. But at the same time feeling completely run over by my lush garden, with weeds just popping up and growing faster than I can keep up. Without a greenhouse, the growing season is very short as well. I have a cherry tree, apple trees, two plum trees and a pear tree, but they are all quite small and some of them are not making any fruit yet.
I've managed to grow a tiny watermelon, but of course it didn't have time to grow large and ripen. Tomatillos have been self seeding! And they make a bunch of fruit and are very low effort.

I made some mistakes when I first worked my garden, after a large prickly bush fence was removed from the middle of it. I made way too large flower beds that I didn't plant tight enough, and some perennials just failed to grow, so weeds galore. I would need to take out the perennials and re-plant them tighter and turn some of the areas back to a lawn.
There is less lawn now than when I purchased the house, but it still feels like so much to mow.

I don't live in my house right now, my daughter wanted to live in the center of the town and the option was for her to move in with her dad or that I would move with her (which was way better option for all of us). Relatives live there now but they are just not the kind of people who will get stuff done and the garden will quickly overgrow.
I have health issues and low energy... So I have decided I want to sell the house. I miss living in it in one way, but not another.

Yea I hear you on the desires vs reality check. It sucks that health doesn't let you to be more active in accomplishing your vision... But again maybe it's a nudge to explore different interests!

I find mowing such a huge waste of time.. Really don't understand the obsession with lawns. I've been slowly ripping them out and letting clover overtake the grass so maybe in a few years there will be nothing to mow too!

Also, good to know that tomatillos are self seeding. I've been resisting planting them even though SO wants them. Now there is an extra bonus to try them out! I love me some self seeding plants

[WingsOnFire]

Oh I wish there was no lawn in my garden.. I have a some dry sections that have some moss and such, and a bit of some long grasses and bluebells etc which I just let be like that. A huge section of the lot is completely wild and the grasses and flowers and weeds grow quite tall. My idea of getting rid of some of the lawn was to make flowerbeds, and the one where I planted tiny wild strawberries as undergrowth are doing great, as there is no room for lots of weeds to take root. I like clover too. Moss is very lovely in areas that don't get a lot of traffic. Ideally there would be paved pathways in between flowerbeds, areas of moss and other low growing plants (thyme is great!), some pretty ornamental grasses and wildflowers, garden beds, bushes and trees, some rocks, and no lawn!

Digging off the lawn is very hard work though.

[WingsOnFire]

And yes, just let a few tomatillos fall down and they should sprout next year

[purple]

Since my massive realization of "I don't want to live in the state of perpetual vacation, consuming experiences and being entertained", I've been asking myself The Question.

What do I want?

There is a lot to unpack here. My reasons for pursuing the unorthodox lifestyle fall into two categories.

1) I don't actually know what it is like to live the dream North American lifestyle (white picket fence, car ownership and all that). I've never even experienced suburbia until my thirties (not even through friends who lived there). I don't see much appeal in it.

2) Instead of wasting the resources on acquiring new crap, I want to use the tools I learnt in my two different cultures.

Part 1)

I got introduced to the joys of suburbia through my SO. To them this lifestyle makes sense. They understand it, they see the benefits. However, given their own semi-ERE tendencies they play the game of how to achieve this lifestyle while being playful, resourceful and creative, instead of throwing $$$ at everything.

We sometimes talk how we don't really fit here because our life is just so different. One of the neighbours recently made a comment as to how we always working on the old car. It was one of those "silly you" comments that look benevolent but might or might not be back handed. We laughed at it afterwards because we know exactly why we keep working on that old car.

My SO has no interest in apartment living or alternative arrangements so I think for us it is either suburbia or potentially rural/cabin style life in the future. So I better turn house maintenance into my hobby. I've struggled with it in the past as I used to live in tiny decrepit apartments that required.. no maintenance (hence being decrepit). But now I think I am embracing this attitude.

I think the goal here is similar to what Jacob summarizes as living a 60k lifestyle on 15k. Obviously, my numbers will be different. Where will I land? Who knows.

Part 2)

Western capitalism is based on creating waste (also, it's called abundance of choice haha). I hate waste with passion. It doesn't really matter what it is. I get very upset if I see random garbage in the forest and I get upset when I am supposed to waste my time on earning money that buy gadgets that I don't want. The capitalistic lifestyle is design to produce incredible amount of waste because we are supposed to chase the next thing. Exponential growth is the mantra. Old things get forgotten because new things come on horizon. I am supposed to want new things and shill out money for it. Making coffee at home is not cool but buying coffee in Starbucks is amazing.. and then I see the plastic cup in the forest and get upset.

I don't have a personal crusade against capitalism. I've seen life without it (or with very limited capitalism) and it ain't pretty either.

Cashless societies are not as romantic as they sound and most people live in extreme poverty. They are at the survival level and "try to grow enough food for yourself to eat" level. Foraging out of necessity is very different than hobby foraging.

However, I am designing the ability to develop my life in the best of both worlds. There are undeniable benefits of capitalism (ability to invest? yay!). There are undeniable benefits of building robust enough existence that you can enjoy your life outside of the consumerist race.

Here comes the part where I my projects become my hobbies and vice versa.

For example, there is my canning hobby. I have vivid memories of having to can because food needs to be preserved. Throwing food away was not an option. So, now I took those memories and created a food pantry filled with various preserves. Technically, I don't depend on it for my survival but it's nicer and healthier than stuff I buy in stores. And it's delicious. I want to do more of it.

Can I treat my work as my project? I saw this idea somewhere on the forum and ran with it because it makes so much sense under my paradigm.

Can I get away from feeling forced to do anything and enjoy designing my life?

[delay]

Can I get away from feeling forced to do anything and enjoy designing my life?

Thanks for your philosophical thoughts! If I look around me, people don't seem to design anything, they just stumbled into the place where they are now. For example, in the ERE book, the author becomes frugal when he tries to live on the resources available to the average human, then stumbles into investing when wondering what to do with his savings, then starts to dislike his job and a solution in the form of living off his investments presents itself.

So it seems you can choose between the options you have, but you cannot design an arbitrary life.

[jacob]

Thanks for your philosophical thoughts! If I look around me, people don't seem to design anything, they just stumbled into the place where they are now.

I think it depends. Science is very much about stumbling into something, going "hey, this is interesting!", and developing a theory or a map to (re)find it again. Once the map exists, however, engineering is very much about deliberate design of some vision within the given map. Plans do exist and some people do make them and follow them. The end-goal of specialist-type education is for people to make a plan to design their career. See https://www.sloww.co/ego-development-th ... dt-stage-4 This all falls apart at stage 5 but is recovered somewhat at stage 6 using a larger map.

[purple]

Thanks for your philosophical thoughts! If I look around me, people don't seem to design anything, they just stumbled into the place where they are now. For example, in the ERE book, the author becomes frugal when he tries to live on the resources available to the average human, then stumbles into investing when wondering what to do with his savings, then starts to dislike his job and a solution in the form of living off his investments presents itself.

So it seems you can choose between the options you have, but you cannot design an arbitrary life.

Thanks for stopping by, delay!

I agree that luck plays a role in shaping our direction. Stumbling into something may provide us with really useful information (omg stock market exists???!!).

However, I disagree that people don't design the life they live. We all make multitude of decisions every single day. Some of those decisions are huge (getting married, moving continents, committing to a profession). Some of those decisions are much smaller, like "will I go out or will I cook at home?". Both of these types are designing the lifestyle.

For instance, if I live in an extremely traditional society, I might be forced at a certain age to get married. It may be actually *physical force* or it could be huge amount of social pressure and a risk of being excluded. Or it could be a purely economic reasoning. For a long time in human history, unattached humans struggled to survive individually. So, the collectivism/clan living/marriage were largely forced out of economic necessity.

This is the type of "force" I am talking about. My lifestyle design decision to come to the ERE forums and start studying material here came out of a string different lifestyle decisions I made. I knew ERE existed for years but it just didn't fit my philosophical concept. Now I am at the point where I want to understand more.

The underlying (unwritten) question of all of this is Who am I when I do not conform to expectations projected onto me?

Or more simply put - Who am I?




Hi @jacob, thanks for your comment! Your metaphor is a much more concise way to say what I was trying to do

Also, reading the article you linked now. That is very interesting and very applicable to the questions I am asking myself. Thank you!

[purple]

Garden update

There are still things to do for the next season
- Collect seeds from tomatoes - DONE
- Collect seeds from cucumbers - DONE
- Fertilize the trees - DONE
- General clean up of the garden - DONE
- Mark branches for pruning.
- Plant garlic

Accomplished first 4 tasks over the last week. Garden is in a pretty good shape overall. One thing I still need to address (and I didn't put in the list because I hated even thinking about it) is to clean up unpicked cherries. Oh boy, I have lots of them. One of my trees developed a mildew before I got to pick them so I left the cherries. They got partially eaten by birds and wasps (don't start me on wasps!! the MFs!!). Now the wasps are gone but there are so many cherries to pick.

The first rule of the gardener is to never leave anything rotting in the garden so cherries definitely need to get addressed. I started the clean up but I need to come up with the good solution of how to take cherries off the tree.

Anyway. Other stuff is going smoothly. Got to take care of smaller things like pruning raspberries, gooseberries, digging out flower bulbs or mulching. Hoping to finish everything in the next week or so.


Phylosophizing

I've been reading "Die with Zero" book. While I've been in the personal finance space long enough that main ideas don't strike me as particularly novel, the details are interesting to digest.

For instance, the concept of memory dividends. I haven't really thought about my memories this way. However, it makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. Now in my 30s I really capitalize on the experiences and adventures I had early in life. I feel that a lot of self-knowledge comes from my ability to reflect back on thing and re-invent myself through them. Re-interpreting and re-living experiences is such an interesting source of inner strength.

I do feel that the author overemphasizes the importance of travel though. It really feeds in the millennial narrative of "50 countries before 30 or bust" which I don't find that appealing. While travel does provide bright experiences and pushes you out of routine, it also gives an easy pressure relief from otherwise uninteresting or burdensome daily life.

I think that the payoff of building a life where you don't actually feel the huge need to "vacation" is much higher than going on trips. Not saying there is a 100% dichotomy, just something overemphasized in the book.

Anyway.

I get the point that the author is trying to get across. Sacrificing best years of your life under the assumption that you will live forever doesn't really play out that nicely in real life. There is a reason that actuarial tables have a cap on the maximum human age.

So all of this brought me to the question of how long realistically do I want to work for full-time? How much would be enough? What is my ***realistic*** life span? What is my best case scenario and how realistic would that be? Do I actually need to think about it right now?

I checked out the longevity calculator for my age/gender group. It's interesting to see that probability of surviving next couple of decades is 90%+ but it starts dropping pretty significantly after that.

At which point living further will become a gamble rather than the tail risk? Obviously, the probability of death increases every day but the rate of increase is very different depending on the age.

I don't have any answers. I am not even sure I am asking the right questions.

The less theoretical question to ask is - what kind of experiences do I want to have in life? How is my everyday aligned for those experiences? In other words, what is important for me?


...



OK enough of questioning.

Time to go wash my garbage bin because the smell of something disgusting stuck there is really interfering with my goal of having a life I don't need escape from.