Anesau - Just Starting Out

[Anesau]

Yes. Which makes the right answer seem obvious. But unfortunately it seeming obvious does not make it feel easy.

[ertyu]

Fear of what?

For me in my 20s it was, what if i get it wrong and i set my whole life on a wrong course -- though idk if it's the same for you. I spent a lot of time feeling anxious and afraid, too, I think it's normal

[Anesau]

Yes, pretty much that.

I have a technical job and only a little over 1 year of full time experience - my worst case scenario is that I quit my main job, the contracts dry up soon (and/or I'm too stupid to complete them), then I can't find a new job quickly, and the longer I have zero job the longer the gap on my resume grows, and therefore it just gets harder and harder to be employed doing something I enjoy (or at least don't hate).

[mooretrees]

I think you can do a decent job of addressing your fears now that you have named them. I’ll butcher this, but Tim Ferris had a talk about fear setting as a Stoic practice. Write down all of the fears and beside each one write down the worst outcome. Then think about if you have any skills or abilities that you can use to address each fear.

I did something like this when I went to part time work. I’m the sole breadwinner of my family of three. Each fear got a line (fear of being poor) and then I started thinking about how to address the fear. It was really helpful to name the fears and think about how to address them.
Good luck and report back!

[Anesau]

Well, a lot of my life has changed, and I finally got settled and remembered that keeping track of stuff in this journal would be useful to future-me! ...it only took me something like a year and a half.

General update: didn't keep doing the freelance work on top of full-time work, but I did eventually burn out on my living situation (being far from most of my family, in a senior-dominated area where pretty much nothing was walkable) hard enough that around March '24 I had a moment of "f*** it, the things I'm scared of [ex. not being able to find a job] can't be much worse than this" and quit my job.

I moved to a medium-sized city where the strong majority of my close family members are, and decided not to immediately start applying for things, to give myself a six month break. Even though I had savings and had planned on paying my own way, my family was extremely generous and wouldn't let me use up my savings for those six months; my parents paid half my sister's mortgage, and in exchange my sister let me stay with her rent-free. My mom's house was right next door, and she kept bringing me groceries and delivered restaurant food. (My parents also are pretty wasteful with buying a lot of strange food they don't like, so there was a lot of weird pantry stuff that was about to be thrown away every couple weeks that made it into my diet instead). Overall, even though I offered to / expected to pay for things, my parents especially were very insistent on helping with almost all of my expenses. The only things I really paid for were insurance (health/car), gas, and occasional luxury things (I took a 2 month improv class for $100).

Because of this, my wealth actually increased noticeably over this period, because the growth on my index fund far outstripped my expenses.

I was on-call tech support for my family (my mom got a lot of use out of this with a new online job), helped with some chore/house stuff, and was the kid with the time to go emotionally & logistically support my grandmother pretty frequently after my grandfather died, so I hope I wasn't a complete free rider, but I still recognize that this much more indicative of luck & community than any personal virtues.

Once I started seriously applying again, I got a job pretty much exactly comparable to my previous one in about two months.

Large goal overview:

Publish 500,000 words total in a public places (book, blog, etc. Not sure yet whether to count forum posts.)
Build 3 public software projects that are at least somewhat useful/interesting to others
Live somewhere where all my basic amenities (groceries, park, library, etc) are within walking distance, and where I like the local culture (i.e. more people close to my age who are active in community events)

Thanks to the months of free time, 1 and 2 are well underway, depending on how you count things. I've published ~110k words online... of fiction on a sci-fi forum, not really the blog posts or something that I think I originally intended. I'm also working on building a video game with a friend and a phone widget (mostly for personal use) solo, so I have 2 software projects in active development.

I think(?) I might have succeeded at 3. There are groceries in my neighborhood (although it's not the grocery store I use, as it's ~4x as expensive). I am an easy walk from multiple parks, and theoretically a <25min bike from every other necessity like the library, though I've not tried this yet. I generally like the local culture, in that it is easy to find groups of people within 10yrs of my age doing things I'm interested in.

Updated monthly expenses:

Food - $125
Gifts/social tax - $50
Health ins - $168
Rent - $1475*
Transportation - $240**
Personal/household/misc - $100
Utilities - $100
Nicotine - $50***
Subscriptions - $70****
(Total - $2378)

This is approx. 40% of my take home pay; I donate 10%, and save the other 50%

* The city I live in isn't actually that expensive (I have a reasonable expectation that I could get a decent studio apartment for $900 or a room in a shared house for maybe $600), the trouble is that I live in a one-bedroom apartment in a very nice new-development neighborhood. I don't particularly care about living here except that all of my family and my one friend in this new city live in this same neighborhood, and I walk to see one of them (or one of them visits me) about every other day. If I moved, rent would be a lot cheaper, but I think I'd see them much less. There don't seem to be people looking for roommates in this neighborhood (~everyone here is decently wealthy).

** Car insurance + gas. It's a 20min drive to work. It'd be ~1hr 20 mins by bus, or 40 mins by bike (the biking infrastructure is leagues better than it was in Florida -- which is to say that it seems like the infrastructure designers considered that there exists anything except cars at all -- so I'm considering giving this a try if I can find somewhere to shower near work).

*** Currently paying the stupid tax. I used nicotine mildly (~2mg once a week) in FL for almost no cost with no issue, but while unemployed it unfortunately became a much worse addiction.

**** $36/mo phone, $14/mo Spotify, $20/mo AI. I could cut the AI with little problem -- I find it fascinating and enjoy playing around with it, but it's not like I need it. I'm planning to switch my phone back to my old $8/mo plan soon, given that I only originally got the nicer plan because of my mother complaining about call quality (but now I live down the street from her).


Overall, I am very far from where I want to be (ideally <=$1300/mo). If I stopped paying the stupid tax and also went down to $900/mo rent, that alone would get me down to $1550 before any other changes, but "stop overpaying for housing" is the next hardest hurdle in my life right now, just because I want to be as close as possible to my community.

[Anesau]

Correction: apparently my health insurance is $168 per pay period, which actually makes health costs minimum $336/mo assuming the only expense is my insurance premium. This is the cheapest plan my employer offers (they pay a portion of it).

Following the ERE link to ehealthinsurance and looking at the cost of insuring outside of work, it looks like the cheapest HSA plan is $439/mo.

The total cheapest plan is $220/mo for "catastrophic" coverage, which covers nothing until you hit your out of pocket max ($9200 in network, $27,600 out of network); this might make sense if I had an HSA and could put the difference ($116/mo) in tax-privileged savings for personal coverage in case of emergency, but I'm... not convinced the math is in my favor otherwise? During the next open enrollment period I'll have to model average cost under both plans.

[Anesau]

The overarching goals, outside of fiddling with budget numbers, is just to become less reliant on globalized trade/infrastructure.

Specific subsets I'm thinking about:

• Heating/cooling: One benefit of living alone is that I have thermostat control, and I've kept the heat off all winter so far (it's chilly but not excessively cold here). I have one blanket that basically is my cape when wandering around my apartment, but occasionally also boil water for a hot water bottle. I probably should gain some muscle -- I've heard that more muscle = faster metabolism = more heat generated, so I may spend less time shivering? I feel like I also remember reading that people exposed to cold for extended periods of time naturally have more of their fat as brown adipose tissue, which is a better insulator. I could just turn on the heat, and probably would if there was a meaningful danger of my pipes freezing or something, but I'd like to have as minimal reliance as possible on electricity for my body to function correctly.
  
  For the summer, I'm hoping opening the windows all the way will be enough to reduce AC reliance, but I'll have to give that some thought before I get there.
  
  I also need to get a better understanding of how to use clothes correctly to handle weather, since I got hypothermia (slurred speech & confusion) for the first time this winter due to being stupid & unprepared. Thanks Florida.
  -
• Transportation: I'm currently too reliant on gasoline for movement. I need to acquire a bike -- to-do list next week is to check out local BuyNothing groups, item swaps, or Craigslist used to see if I can get a starter bike just to get good at biking again. Until I do so, I probably could borrow a bike -- my parents have the highest-end bikes money can buy that are shockingly easy to go far on, but only use them for an average of 30mins a week.
  
  For shorter distances, I'm pretty sure somewhere I have the old $5 skateboard I used to get to & from High School. I still frequently use my old HS backpack that has specific straps for easily carrying the skateboard when not riding it. If I can find the skateboard (& helmet), that'd be an easy setup for getting to the library.
  -
• Food: I'd like to be less reliant on outside sources for food, and I feel like theoretically there should be some way to grow food in an apartment. I need to do more research on what can grow near windows given the lack of outdoor space.
  
  My mother also has an indoor grow kit she's offered to give me for free, given that it was just collecting dust in her garage. It's a grow light + hydroponic(?) kit, I think intended mostly for smallish herbs. I need to check whether the electricity cost to run it + whatever specific fertilizer / upkeep items make sense compared to the output, but it might be a nice middle step if I don't get enough sunlight.
  -
• Housing: thinking more about housing, there are a lot of empty lots in the city I could (nearly) afford to buy outright with no mortgage. I'm physically capable enough that I might be able to build something myself there -- one option I've seen is "shed conversion" tiny houses. Would have the benefit of making sure I only have as much house as I can physically maintain, plus some of the empty lots are walking distance from everything I could need except my family members who all live in the very expensive neighborhood.

I'm in love with my floor bed ($30 mat to sleep on, plus a fitted sheet, a pillow, and the one blanket I wear around my apartment). A benefit of it is that I just fold it up and shove it in the closet when people are visiting me, to make more space. My current bedding setup would play nice with living in a tiny house / RV / trailer situation.

If I don't set up a small house on land, I might go the small trailer route: my sister's girlfriend lives in a small (pickup truck towable) standalone trailer thing that she just has parked on a friend's property. I've visited it, and it was a delightful setup -- I feel like I could definitely do the same thing if I wanted.


I'm already pretty independent of travel -- most of my social connections outside this city have faded enough that I think I'm done flying to visit them, which is both fortunate and unfortunate depending on perspective.

[zbigi]

[*]Heating/cooling: One benefit of living alone is that I have thermostat control, and I've kept the heat off all winter so far (it's chilly but not excessively cold here). I have one blanket that basically is my cape when wandering around my apartment, but occasionally also boil water for a hot water bottle. I probably should gain some muscle -- I've heard that more muscle = faster metabolism = more heat generated, so I may spend less time shivering? I feel like I also remember reading that people exposed to cold for extended periods of time naturally have more of their fat as brown adipose tissue, which is a better insulator. I could just turn on the heat, and probably would if there was a meaningful danger of my pipes freezing or something, but I'd like to have as minimal reliance as possible on electricity for my body to function correctly.

I'm rather sceptical of the cold adaptation idea. It's an interesting thing to try out when you're relatively young and fit, but I wouldn't rely on it being viable throught entire lifespan. The cold will make you more susceptible to respiratory illnesses, which are more problematic for older people. Also, the cold increases joint pains, which is something you have to worry about only after a certain age.

[jacob]

Research has been done...

• Physically active people have a higher cold tolerance than physically inactive people.
• Subcutaneous fat insulate just like clothes (there's a direct linear relation between the thickness of subcutaneous fat and how many clo units that corresponds to.)
• The skin of fatter people is colder (follows from the physics above).
• Muscle tissue has a (rather) higher metabolic rate than fat tissue even at rest.
• The burn rate of muscles stay higher for many hours after physical activity, so a person who is active on a daily basis generates more heat than a weekend warrior.

As such the perception of being cold is highest in a sedentary person with high body fat. Not only is less heat generated from within, but it is also better insulated and thus the nerves on the surface of the skin sense a lower temperature. Conversely, an active muscular type with a lower BF% have their nerves much closer to "the source" and as such feel warmer both to themselves but also to others as well as thermometers. The latter also loses heat more quickly which would be relevant when the generation rate can't keep up with loss rate e.g. hypothermia.

PS: I've wondered whether the expression of having a "hot body" used to be literal, because in this sense it is.

[zbigi]

[*]The burn rate of muscles stay higher for many hours after physical activity, so a person who is active on a daily basis generates more heat than a weekend warrior.

I've noticed this. In winter, my feet often feel cold after I wake up and are cold through the day - until I go for a long walk. After I return, for the remainder of the day, the feet no longer feel cold.

[Anesau]

I have lowish muscle and also very little body fat, to the point of being nearly underweight, which is probably just categorically the worst quadrant to be in as far as heat. I'm prioritizing muscle, but it seems like having at least a little more fat would be useful -- I don't care much whether my skin feels cold if the fat keeps heat internal, as long as I do in fact have sufficient internally-trapped heat.

[Jean]

I have lived with no heatiin for a few winters, and right now, i only make a fire when i have laundry or if my gf is expected to be around.
Main problem is humidity, but mostly because of the mold that might develop. From what i read, the mold are what can cause respiratory issues, probably allergies? I don't know. But watch out for molds to know if you should heat more.
To be confortable in the cold, wear a hat. It makes a huge difference. Other than that, just layer clothes.
Main advantage of cold habitat is that you'll need about the same amount of clothing to do something outside than do sit in front of pc inside.

@jacob
It might change from people to people., but cold skin doesnt equate felling cold. I don't really care about cold feet or cold belly skin above my fat. The cold starts to feel unconfortable when i start feeling cold inside my belly. The sensation can even be located somewhere around my liver.

[Anesau]

@Jean I've heard the same thing about mold being the biggest issue (though I've heard it more in conjuction with a place being hot & humid, rather than cold), so I'll keep an eye out!

Things I'm thinking about this week:

• How can I effectively participate in gifting culture? I already moved away from non-consumable gifts a long time ago (because giving people misc things, in my experience at least, tends to often just create clutter that has to be donated a couple years later). My go-to gift has been soap, but a) I've recently (within the past year) made a lot of friends who are very sensitive about smells or ingredients in soap, such that they probably won't use gifted soap, and b) gift-quality soap is expensive. Current ideas:
  • Homemade soap? I have no idea how this is done or how comparatively effective it would be, but it could be a fun net-positive hobby. Also the people whose favorite scents I know tend to like herb smells (mint, rosemary) that I should be able to grow under that free grow light I got.
  • Watercolor paintings? I'm taking a watercolor class with my sister and would rate my skills as "at least not wholly terrible", and small (postcard-sized) watercolor paintings would be the type of thing that indicate thought & effort. They're also easy to display for people that like them as a gift, but easy for someone who doesn't like them to perform the necessary social rituals about it then use it as a bookmark for a while until they throw it away.
  • Whittling? I used to be into whittling birds, which is not expensive but is time consuming (at least at my skill level). May have the same benefits/drawbacks as watercolor paintings.
  • Something else? I'm still thinking about "what is either practically useful or easy to get rid of with no emotional/social pain" that also meaningfully fills my social obligations & can be thoughtfully tailored to individual people. Some particular friends also already get 'other' type gifts -- ex. I have one friend where we write each other short fiction for the other's birthday.
• I got a blood draw for the first time this morning. I'm still on team "most medical care done on healthy people is a waste", but a family member was very insistent given my nonstandard diet, and also I haven't been able to donate blood (to check ex. iron levels the easy way) since I accidentally lost 10lbs and dropped below the minimum donation weight.

[ertyu]

Here's one I'm doing right now: I bought people cards, but instead of writing in the card, I tucked in a note with my thank-you message about how awesome they are. The card can now be reused.

Tailored to others' tastes is clearly most important. But what do you mean when you say, -effectively- participate in gifting culture? Do you mean at low cost to you? Or do you mean in a way that generates no waste? In a way that leaves the other person happiest? And so forth. Considering what "effective" is for you will bring you a long way towards answering how you can be effective.