Western Red Cedar's Journal

[ertyu]

Thanks for sharing WRC, I found your write-up about your change in perspective interesting.

[delay]

The cool thing about Asia is it often feels a bit like a dream while you are there, but it definitely does once you get back.

Interesting, I wonder. Moving to a country where you are richer than at home takes away restrictions. Perhaps that's what makes it feel like a dream? Asia is not a dream for Asians.

[Stasher]

I appreciate your reflection of "home". So many people I run into or hear from complain a lot about where they live and how bad this or that is. Until one truly spends time anywhere else, only then can they form a proper perspective and grounds for the criticisms if it is warranted. This isn't the case for you but something I am able to apply to my particular surroundings based on your journal and travel as well as others like 2B1S.

Cheers

Side note on clouds... how true on diversity. Living in the Canadian Prairies there is nothing like watching a massive thunderhead form while now being in the PNW clouds seem to have much less character but I appreciate them all the same.

[birding]

Ditto again on the clouds. On the way to work years back I remember the clouds looked like mountains and the distance and I was dying to move out west then. Maybe Cumulus clouds. At that job, one of the part timers who came back from retirement in the summers had a cloud chart at his desk. Similar to this one IIRC: https://science.larc.nasa.gov/edu/cloud-chart/

I’m trying to appreciate Home more these days, letting go of that grass is greener on the other coast yearning. So I appreciate that discussion as well.

[Western Red Cedar]

I appreciate your reflection of "home". So many people I run into or hear from complain a lot about where they live and how bad this or that is. Until one truly spends time anywhere else, only then can they form a proper perspective and grounds for the criticisms if it is warranted.

I've talked about this elsewhere on the forum, but I was pretty critical about a lot of things in the US as a teenager and young adult. In fact, I still am. The experience of living abroad for a couple years and traveling through Asia and Central America really made me appreciate things about the US that I had taken for granted. Most places have positive and negative cultural features. It is definitely easy to highlight the negative, but that time abroad helped me appreciate the natural beauty in the western US, an abundance of opportunities to earn income and improve myself, top-notch infrastructure, clean drinking water, amazing libraries and educational institutions, reliable public transit, and the creative spirit seen in so many great bands, writers, filmmakers and other artists.

[Western Red Cedar]

A New Chapter:

I had two general visions for how life might play out after we got back from our trip. One was a return to work so we could potentially buy a house and/or some land. The other was a year of adventures closer to our home base while DW worked. Perhaps some long-distance cycling trips and multi-day backpacking trips sprinkled in with some more low-key hobbies like gardening, resistance training, volunteering, and land management at the shire.

I ended up with a good job opportunity shortly after I got back. One I actually saw while abroad but that didn't get filled. I suspect we would have been fine financially without my return to work, but here is some of my thought process for the return:

• I felt like we are on the verge of a pretty significant cultural and economic transition with advances in AI. Previously, I assumed that I could go back to work after a multi-year break, or pick up income periodically until I hit traditional retirement age. If major disruptions in the labor market are underway, particularly for white-collar, creative work then I figured I should probably jump at a good option in front of me. Who knows what things will look like in 5 years?

• My new role is specifically focused on ecology and environmental restoration. This is a passion of mine, and fits within my web of goals. I'm working with dozens of highly intelligent scientists, attorneys, engineers, elected officials and other professionals on interesting projects across broad geographic scales. I would never be able to have the type of impact I can have through this professional avenue while working or volunteering on my own.

• I noticed I wasn't as mentally sharp as I was ten years ago. I think I'm slightly out of my "cognitive prime" so I wanted to see how an intellectually rigorous environment would impact me. I also wanted to take advantage of a good opportunity before I got too rusty. Thus far, I think that the work has pushed me to function at a higher-level intellectually. I have a lot of external demands that push me to read, learn, process and communicate in a way that I didn't without work. I'm also able to leverage more than 15 years of experience and that allows me to function at a high level even though I may be a bit beyond my cognitive prime.

• I knew the person who would be supervising me and they are great. Highly competent with a supportive, laid-back, friendly personality. Having a boss like that makes a huge difference.

• The new job is completely remote, but I have access to a nice office with other colleagues if/when I want it. I really enjoy WFH, and I have a large amount of autonomy. I can sleep in until 7:45, wake up and brew a cup of coffee, and start promptly at 8:00 with a walk to my home office. I can use my breaks to tinker in the garden and pick fresh fruit. I have a lot of meetings throughout the day, but I can use my lunch break to lift weights and take care of simple tasks like laundry or meal prep. It seemed at the time that there would be a large swath of highly capable and intelligent federal workers who would be looking for new, remote work.

• I felt like our travels were a bit self-indulgent at times. My vision for adventures probably represented an extension of that notion. This represents an opportunity to give back and make a difference beyond my immediate social circle.

• It is pretty amazing to get paid to learn new things. In this role, I'm learning something every day.

• The money is also nice. It opens up a lot of possibilities. Housing was always the unknown variable in our plans and the new income provides a lot of optionality when it comes to that variable. It is possible to avoid a lot of inflationary pressure with an ERE lifestyle, but I couldn't completely avoid it.

The type of work I'm doing now would have been beyond what I could have imagined for a dream job while I was in graduate school. As a more experienced professional, I now see it as a good or great job. While there are many interesting facets to the position, every job comes with downsides. I'm simply more aware of those at this stage of my life/career.

Since our return, COL is lower than ever and our NW is at a record high. While the job has plenty of upside, I'm also noticing the effects that prolonged bouts of sitting has on my body. Back pain that faded while traveling has returned, so I'll need to get back into yoga and probably return to a PT. I also have less time and mental capacity outside of work to take on interesting projects. That is probably fairly obvious, but after more than a year of complete freedom it feels strange to be back in a cycle where I'm working until 6:00 and only have a couple hours to cook, clean the kitchen, take a walk, and then I wake up to do it all again.

I'm aware that I'm getting older, and a lot of the ambitious physical goals I had will only get harder as I age. Recognizing this was probably the hardest tradeoff in the decision of starting up a traditional job again. Opportunity cost....

[Mousse]

I feel like I'm navigating the opposite path to yours as I learn to find, accept and appreciate the more self-indulgent path

The industry/focus of the new role sounds great! Congratulations and best of luck with this new chapter. Might there be any chance down the line of reducing hours a little, in order to keep all the positives but mitigate the back/health issues and rushed evenings?

[delay]

Back pain that faded while traveling has returned, so I'll need to get back into yoga and probably return to a PT.

Thanks for sharing! Many people develop lower back pain, myself included. The two things I've had good luck with are a sit/stand desk and a change of chairs. The desk allows me to alternate sitting and standing. I used to sit in a fancy high-end desk chair, which worked great until I was 45. Now I've changed it to a plain stool without backrest.

Especially the plain stool has made a big difference. Back pain plays up periodically like it used to, but the impact is much smaller. Perhaps it's all about having enough muscles to support your back.

[guitarplayer]

Perhaps it's all about having enough muscles to support your back.

I remember after running one of the marathons, I was surprised at how after running the 42 km my back was in so much pain. There was physio included in the whole marathon package so I attended it. Sure enough, the physio student who gave me a massage had told me that I needed to strengthen my back. After that I started the HIIT routine as described in the ERE book, doing burpees. I think it was just in time because now I work an office job and have no back problems at all. So I recommend doing ERE book HIIT routine with burpees to fix this issue (and many other issues I suspect - 'prepare for the earthquake' thing).

Set yourself a target of burpees to do in a row (I started with 100 I think), and every second day:

do n burpees at the start of each minute, rest for the remainder of the minute. Continue until you reach 100. When it becomes too easy, repeat with n+1 burpees.

This can be extended by increasing frequency (to daily) and number of repetitions (to 150, 200 etc). I had ended up doing 200 burpees straight daily for a number of years, though recently diverted from it and include a lot of pull ups and recently romanian dead lifts* too, but mix up with rest days, gardening etc.

*with a cast iron pot filled with bags of lentils using DW's pants' belt as a handle

But that burpees routine is so super simple, can be had in under 20 min each morning, works like a charm.

[delay]

I had ended up doing 200 burpees straight daily for a number of years, though recently diverted from it and include a lot of pull ups and recently romanian dead lifts* too, but mix up with rest days, gardening etc.

That sounds like good advice. I was never able to do push ups until my 50s, then I practiced daily, and after half a year I'm now able to do 10 real push ups (straight back, nose on the ground, and back up). Pull ups seem super human I'm going to try if I can reach 10 burpees a day.

[C40]

The new job sounds great. Hope it goes well