Early Retirement Extreme Forums

That's interesting, @7W5; I have similar curiosities I've wondered about with my own family, and of course the more you learn the more questions you end up having. E.g., it's always been a matter of family lore that my great, great, great, great grandfather fought with Francis Marion (the "Swamp Fox") in the Revolutionary War, but I recently found his pension petition, which curiously mentions everyone from the Revolutionary War efforts in South Carolina BUT Marion (e.g., Sumter, Locke, Williamson). That's not necessarily surprising, as the war in SC was very irregular, and I don't know if Marion was as famous when the petition was declared as he is now, but it's one of many rabbit holes I want to run down.

More than that, however, the family genealogy stuff strikes me as a great way to study history, as it provides a thread from which history can come alive. My own lineage is Scots-Irish, and the story of my family is very much the story of the Scots-Irish American settler, moving further and further westward into the frontier (another family legend, apparently true, is that Davey Crockett is a first cousin of mine, many times removed). For example, I'm reading a biography of Francis Marion now, and the Scots-Irish feature very prominently in the story because the Scots-Irish settled much of the backcountry regions of South Carolina at that time (Marion himself was of Huguenot ancestry).

Later on my family was fairly active politically, and in fact when I was in college I was able to find a bunch of correspondence to/from my ancestors that was housed at the school's library as part of their permanent state historical archives collection, and I collected copies of that correspondence into a book that I gave my dad for a birthday present.

Another curiosity I've always wondered about was what roles my family played during the Civil War, as I've seen conflicting statements as to whether they fought with the regular Confederacy, or with the guerillas (a euphemistic term for Quantrill's Raiders), or both, or not at all.

The DNA thing is tempting, though at least for now the temptation doesn't overpower my privacy concerns.

If most of your family was believed to be in the U.S. fairly early on the DNA linking can be pretty impressive. For example, I have extremely solidly genetically confirmed the identity of 35 of my 128 fifth grandparents born between (1714-1780.) The confirmation is quite solid, because I can see that I have many currently living genetic relatives dropping down from my direct ancestors' multiple siblings at that generational level as well as those below. So, for example, the majority of my confirmed ancestors at that generational level (7 up) were living in the North-eastern U.S. or were Quakers living in Maryland, but a few of my recently discovered biological grandfather's lines went or arrived in the U.S. further in the South. So, I am pretty much 100% genetically verified to be a direct descendant of Winkfield Shropshire II who served in Captain Richard Vernon's Light Horse Calvary out of North Carolina and also Reverend William T. Hill who represented Surry County at the meeting of the Provincial Congress of 1775 and served as a Patriot Baptist (after parting of ways with his Episcopalian family ) chaplain out of North Carolina.

I don't know how uncommon it is with all the new data available, but I have my DAR and Mayflower Society membership locked down solid on numerous lines at this point in my research. Also, a freakishly large number of those accused of witchcraft during the Salem trials are related to me through lines genetically verified back to just a generation or two after the trials.

It is also the case that the genetic evidence is the easiest way to trace back ancestry on lines where the records are more difficult to trace. For example, my mother's later immigrating Polish Catholic line and my father's later immigrating Irish Catholic line are more difficult to trace than most of the Protestant lines (especially the German lines, since they apparently kept excellent records all the way back to around 1500), but with a bit of applied mathematical logic, I can link currently living genetic relatives who are still in Poland or Ireland back to a shared ancestor or small geographic area. So, for example, even though my Jewish heritage is only 1% of my genetic make-up, I know it must have originated from same area of Poland that Bernie Sanders family came from (due to watching the episode of "Finding Your Roots" on which he was guest.)

I also have a particular doomer-prepper-educator interest related to genealogical research which is curiosity related to the permanence of literacy with my fairly obvious hypothesis being that it is more likely to be maintained along maternal line.

An update as it's been a month or so.

My stepmom died last week. I've written on here before about how her ailing health was a big factor in us moving back home, so that we could help my 80+ year old father take care of her. It's been a rough few years for my dad, as he finally realized he couldn't take care of her at home any longer, even with me down the road to help when she fell in the bathroom or to just sit with her so that my dad could run some errands and get a break. She ultimately made it just over a year in the nursing home, with my dad visiting her for several hours every day to feed her lunch, or to try to. When my dad called to say that she was on oxygen and a sugar water IV, I've learned enough from my hospital worker wife to know that she probably just had a couple of days left.

He is now a widower for the second time, as my mom died in her 40s from cancer. I'm worried about him, but I'm now even more thankful that we were able to move back home, because otherwise he would be in this town all by himself. He seems to be doing OK, attending my kids' sports stuff and continuing on as he had been. But I worry, with the funeral a couple of weeks out.

He's been quite visibly slowing down the past few months, getting skinnier, shuffling around one misstep away from a life-altering stumble. His mind is still all there, which is a blessing as he spends his days writing fiction and participating via Zoom in various writing groups, and he spends his evenings reading books as he always has.

In other news, I'm just continuing to love being fully remote, with a gym in the garage, a shoffice in the backyard, a chest freezer full of beef, farm share veggies, a long list of honey-do items to tackle, only needing to leave the house to drive the kids around to their various things and to the hardware store, and occasional trips to friends' houses or to our private "club" for a cocktail.

Sorry for your / your dad's loss. I hope he's able to find meaning and comfort in this life without her, as difficult as that may be. Are you worried just that he may [old age things] or are you worried that he'll "give up" and basically die of a broken heart?

suomalainen wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 13, 2025 1:56 pm

Are you worried just that he may [old age things] or are you worried that he'll "give up" and basically die of a broken heart?

The former. He's always been comfortable alone. As a career man he managed manufacturing plants, and would often only spend a year or two at one plant before moving on the next one, as a sort of profitability fixit guy. That meant that he typically flew out on Mondays and came back on Fridays, so he was only home on the weekends (or every other weekend), and in the interim he'd be living in some bare bones apartment with a mattress on a ground and a lawn chair facing a TV that sat on crates, eating his dinners at Chili's.

Since retirement, he spends his days reading, writing,* watching TV, going to church and participating in (and complaining about) various church group things, and he comes when invited to his grandkids' sports things and family dinners. I hope that is enough to keep him going, but his body is really starting to break down, for sure, and so I just don't know how to navigate what is coming with him.

* He's written over 50 books at this point, always dreaming of being a published author, and although I don't expect that to happen, it gives him something to do every day to write, talk with agents, and participate in critique groups.

Hristo Botev wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 14, 2025 1:51 pm

* He's written over 50 books at this point, always dreaming of being a published author, and although I don't expect that to happen, it gives him something to do every day to write, talk with agents, and participate in critique groups.

Do I understand correctly that he has 50 unpublished manuscripts sitting around? If so, how about just self-publishing? It's very easy these days and practically free.

jacob wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 14, 2025 2:14 pm

Do I understand correctly that he has 50 unpublished manuscripts sitting around? If so, how about just self-publishing? It's very easy these days and practically free.

Yes. I think the number is over 70 manuscripts. He's been writing for years. He's not bad (I've got an older sister that is a quite successful published writer). I think his issue is more that he's living as if the publishing industry is what it was in the 80s or 90s. So, to that point, I've encouraged him to go the self-publishing route on numerous occasions; and I try and tell him that a significant percentage of the books that I read these days are in fact self published. But he just can't be convinced; he is a career salary man (as am I) who wants the validation from the publishing institution that he's got a best seller on his hands. We last talked about it last week at my son's soccer game, and I think he's getting closer to being convinced that self publishing is a viable option. But it doesn't help that the people he is in critique groups with tend to have gotten published the more traditional route.

I can see his perspective. Even back in 2010, self-publishing still had the stigma of vanity-publishing in which one would pay $5,000 in exchange for 1000 books that would mostly end up taking up space in people's basements. These days it's a different story. With a back catalogue of 50 books, it could even end up making him a lot of money if he takes off. Regardless of how it's published, it's now up to the author to do the heavy lifting. The publisher will only focus on a few of the books they publish. An agent might help with arranging podcasts and library readings, ... but it's mostly up to the author.

If it's not about sales but validation, consider that Huckleberry Finn, Paradise Lost, Eragon, Your Money or Your Life, The Martian, ... were all self-published. Easy to look up examples he might admire.

The median book* sells around 350 copies over it's lifetime, so even if a traditional publisher accepts one of his entries the odds for any one book to take off are low, meaning the company will stop publishing the book. Whereas to Jacob's point, with self-publishing he can release as many books as he wants and potentially gain a large following. As a first time author, he's going to be offered a small advance and will have to do nearly all the marketing on his own anyways.So he is forgoing potentially hundreds, or even thousands, of readers in hopes of gaining the approval of half a dozen people.

*Including both traditionally published and self published

I asked Chris Ryan (NYT best selling** author of Sex at Dawn) whether he saw any advantages to traditional publishing. He said no, they actually ended up hurting his sales. The only reason he went with a traditional publisher for his second book was because he got a six figure advance.

**That's another can of worms. It's not an objective list and is editorialized.

I would ask him where/how they are stored to ensure that you can find them if he becomes incapacitated. Also, maybe ask him to imagine a day when his grandchildren want to read them. Perhaps he can create a list of the order they should be read.

WRT self-publishing, he can release one pseudonymously to avoid any embarrassment he may feel with his peer group.

A lot of work to get done, and no motivation, in part because the kids are out of school today.

So, a couple more updates, as typing words into this journal tricks my brain into thinking I'm being productive.

First, speaking of tricking my brain, I just finished Allen Carr's Quitting Alcohol book, and I found it very effective. The idea of doing the work to completely change your perception of some vice, as opposed to trying to use willpower to "deprive" yourself of that vice, makes sense to me. Remove the desire to have a drink, by being honest about what alcohol is and what it isn't, rather than try to discipline yourself to refrain from giving into that desire. Makes sense to me; but check back in in a few months and see where I'm at.

Second, I'm happy to report that the garage gym is getting very regular use from everyone in the family. DW and I are often in there at the same time in the mornings, with her doing some YouTube HIIT workout, with me doing either strength training (M, W, F) or cardio on the treadmill (T, R). And the kids are both doing strength training as well, alternating between leg days and arm days, as well as doing sprint training on the treadmill once or twice a week. A 2-car garage is a wonderful thing: in addition to being our gym (squat rack, dumbbells, treadmill), it is also our second TV room (with an old armchair and our old flat screen), video game room for DS, laundry room, craft room, and food storage room (the chest freezer is in there). And all that despite the fact that we do in fact park DW's 3-row soccer mom carpooling SUV in the garage as well.



Third, I almost applied for a new job today, not because I have any issues with my current job, but because an opportunity arose that would be an interesting mid-life career change, still as an attorney, but not in private practice. I even updated my resume, which I hadn't touched in 8 years. But, ultimately, I decided against throwing my name in the hat, because the job would involve doing the M-F long-distance commute, of the sort my dad did when I was in high school, where you fly out early Monday morning and fly back late Friday. The job wouldn't bring in any extra money, and might even be a bit of a paycut for way more hours, but it would be very interesting and exciting. That said, even though DW was on board with it if I wanted to do it, I don't want to be a weekend dad while my kids are in high school and middle school. And we certainly aren't moving unless it is an absolute necessity, and this isn't a necessity.

Fourth, a benefit of having done the shoffice project is that I have a much better understanding of how things work around the house than I did before. This includes basic residential electrical work, and DW now thinks I'm some sort of DIY handyman because she and the kids wanted a motion-activated flood light on the side of the house where the trash cans are kept, because it's very dark over there, and so I took the afternoon yesterday and found the electrical wire in the attic that feeds one of the other flood lights, and split that wire to feed the new flood light, which I installed in the soffit above the trash cans after joining the wire for the new light to the old wire at a junction box in the attic, using one of those handy fiberglass wire installer poles my neighbor lets me borrow whenever I need to run wire in my attic. A year and a half ago this project would have seemed like sorcery, because I didn't understand the basics of how residential wiring worked. But now it's a relatively easy (apart from crawling around in the attic) afternoon project.

And the light is a huge hit with DW and the kids.



OK, that's enough for now.

ETA photos, cuz I like photos. (Also, looks like the gym is also where the kids' uniforms get hung dried.)

Hristo Botev wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2025 10:21 am

Father ___, I need to remarry, can you recommend a widow who is a member of the parish?" And that's how DW grew up with an Ecuadorian grandmother, despite DW being of entirely Polish/German/Irish/French descent.

Cool. Did some of her Equadorian culture get passed down to DW? (Didn't want to hijack Suo's journal)

A little bit. Her Ecuadorian grandmother had children of her own when she remarried DW's grandfather, so it was a whole Brady Bunch thing. Everyone is close and grew up as family. DW has non-blood cousins who, throughout at least their early teens, didn't even realize they weren't blood related to their much paler more Slavic cousins.

That's really nice to hear.

Monthly update, I guess, as I knocked off a couple of larger work projects earlier this week and am lacking motivation to tackle some of the smaller backburner projects.

First, I'm still teetotaling. The Allen Carr book/method was tailor made for me, apparently, as it really removed all desire for alcohol for me over the course of a ~5 hour audiobook. Funny, I wasn't even really looking to quit drinking. My daughter had a sports tournament happening about 5 hours away, and the plan was for me to drive out there solo as she was taking the bus with her team, and then I would be driving her back after the tournament as the team was staying the night and she didn't really want to. So, that morning, I was scrolling through Spotify to see if I could find an audiobook that would keep my attention for 5 hours on what is a notoriously boring and straight stretch of interstate; and Allen Carr's Quit Drinking Without Willpower book popped up, and I was curious as I'd heard Nikki Glaser (sp?) talk about it on several podcasts and had also just heard Mel Gibson talk about Allen Carr's method on Joe Rogan's podcast, in regards to how he dropped a 35-year smoking habit overnight. So I figured I'd give it a listen to see what all the fuss was about; and voila, by the end of that car trip I'd gone from someone who very much looked forward to my happy hour martini with DW every evening to someone who has a mental image of skull and bones anytime the thought of alcohol crosses my mind, which is not very often.

DW hasn't objected to me dropping alcohol out of the blue; we've replaced our evening cocktail with sparkling water, or with a walk around the neighborhood, or with just chatting in the kitchen as dinner is prepared. I'll still make her an occasional cocktail on demand when she's had a particularly trying day. And when we go out with friends she'll still have a drink or two. But all-in-all she's grateful that me no longer drinking means she is really just drinking 1-3 drinks a week as opposed to 1-3 drinks a night.

I think I said it previously here, but when you've been a chronic, every day drinker, it feels like you've gained superpowers when you remove alcohol from your system altogether.

The most immediately noticeable improvement is in sleep quality. It took me a couple days to adjust to not having alcohol as a sedative to get me to sleep, but it's clear that even a bad night's sleep without alcohol in your system is more restful than a good night's sleep with alcohol in your system.

Another improvement is no more brain fog. "Hangovers" were rare for me, but regardless, 1-3 drinks in the few hours before bedtime left me with a bit of brain fog the next morning that I didn't even really notice until I stopped drinking and the brain fog was gone.

Another improvement is in impulse control. When drinking it was quite normal for me to, after finishing dinner that was more than enough for me from a calorie perspective, I'd end up snacking up until bed time, no doubt consuming in after dinner trips to the pantry a caloric amount that equaled what I'd had for dinner.

And as for food, it's just much, much easier for me to eat healthy throughout the day without alcohol in my body--it's been pretty much nothing but fresh, whole foods for me since I quit drinking, and not surprisingly I'm down 10 pounds in just a month and a half.

With alcohol gone now I see it as inevitable that I will finally get rid of the midsection layer of fat I've carried around my entire adult life.

Second, it's crazy to say, but we just got back from taking DD on her first college visit. She's young still (a HS freshmen), but she would like to play soccer in college and the schools she's looking at (non-D1 schools) have no prohibitions on when college coaches can talk to you. So we took a trip to what is DD's first choice for a school currently (it is also my first choice and DW's), and we did the campus tour thing and met with admissions and met with the soccer coach, who showed a lot of interest in DD and invited her back to practice with the team and stay the night in the dorms with them and do that whole thing.

Third, DS has become absolutely obsessed with golf, and it's been really great for him. With the school soccer season completed he was trying to decide if he wanted to play a spring sport, in addition to playing club soccer, and although he has played his share of little league and travel baseball, DW and I were really trying to dissuade him from trying out for the school baseball team, because it has been and continues to be a bit of a sh*# show. So he was considering golf and track (he's a pretty decent mid-distance runner), and he ultimately decided on golf because he likes playing, and given that's the case, it's hard to turn down getting to play golf for free 5 days a week. Well, now that he's on the team his competitive juices have kicked in, and he's become absolutely obsessed with the game. The local golf club has a deal where "junior" golfers can pay $50/month for a membership, which means unlimited play and unlimited range time. Well, the club is losing their shirt on that deal with DS, as during the week of spring break DS was at the golf course from sunrise to sunset, playing multiple 18-hole games a day and spending hours at the range.

It's been really, really great for him. Unlike soccer, golf is 100% an individual sport and that has been a welcome break for DS. Also, it is in fact a gentlemen's game, and that is an aspect of the game that DS takes very seriously. As a 6th grader he is learning how to engage in conversation with adults outside of school and church, and it's also been great in making him become more responsible altogether. Not surprisingly, given his time commitment and obsession, in just a few weeks he's gone from being the lowest or second lowest scoring kid on varsity (we were surprised he even made varsity as a 6th grader), to being the 3rd best scoring kid on the team, behind 2 kids who got the golf "bug" a couple of years ago and have been playing obsessively since then.

Fourth, the Prius recently hit the 150K mile mark. We bought it used with 75K on it, and so the 75K we've put on it have been almost entirely for the kids' travel sports and for my travel to/from my "home" (non virtual) office. It's still consistently getting over 50 mpg, which is wonderful.

Fifth, the house continues to come together--slowly but surely. The sod has been installed and it looks absolutely glorious; I'm living the suburban, ranch-dwelling dream indeed! We're having a back patio installed, which will be great. And then the next project is for me to finally tackle the bathrooms and take care of the mold issue we've got thanks to there being no exhaust fan in the master bath, exacerbated by the "flip" the prior owner did in which he shut off one of the doors to the bathroom that had allowed for better airflow even without an exhaust fan.

Relatedly, I just finished building the kids the world's largest backyard kickback wall (maybe? it's 10' H and 24' W); though now I need to get some nets up around it as the kids keep skying balls into the neighbors' yards.



That's it. Finances and spending are fine; still rocking somewhere around a 50% savings rate, which is fine given how much we spend on the kids. DW continues to work at the hospital 1-2 days a week, entirely for the healthcare insurance. And I keep keeping on working about 30 hours a week in the backyard shoffice.

Thanks for your journal update and congratulations on losing 10 lbs!

Hristo Botev wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 27, 2025 9:17 am

Another improvement is in impulse control. When drinking it was quite normal for me to, after finishing dinner that was more than enough for me from a calorie perspective, I'd end up snacking up until bed time, no doubt consuming in after dinner trips to the pantry a caloric amount that equaled what I'd had for dinner.

That's recognizable, I feel the same impulse after drinking! I grab cheese or dates or cookies for, like you say, a full dinner or more worth of calories. Not sure if it's impulse control or if alcohol somehow makes my body ask for sugar. I guess now that you're teetotalling, this is no longer a live question for you

Slight heart attack this morning when I noticed moisture all along the interior walls of the shoffice, after a very wet weekend. Moisture coming up from underneath the floor?!?!? Eventually I realized, however, that our pest guy was here this morning and had taken it upon himself to treat the shed and shoffice in addition to the house. Whew; that would have been a nightmare.



ETA: Also, more evidence of how bad I am at drywall work.

Hristo Botev wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 31, 2025 8:41 am

ETA: Also, more evidence of how bad I am at drywall work.

Ha! One of the downsides of DIY is that all your mistakes are visible to you even if others don't notice them at all. It's a small consolation that the skills learned from DIY also makes mistakes done by professionals equally visible... unless you paid for them to make mistakes.

This is a good interview with Paul Kingsnorth at Lambeth Palace. His views on AI as the anti-christ are particularly interesting:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dfWNMktE3xc

chenda wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 01, 2025 1:18 pm

This is a good interview with Paul Kingsnorth at Lambeth Palace. His views on AI as the anti-christ are particularly interesting:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dfWNMktE3xc

Thanks. I'll check it out.