The Real Philip Deal

[zbigi]

There are two layers to every Dostoyevsky work - the psychology of characters (written with amazing insight in time where psychology wasn't yet a thing) and his meditations on the consequences of abandoning God by (previously) Christian societes. Many readers only notice the former, as it's way more in your face, but the latter is more interesting IMO. I've read BK twenty years ago so don't remember much from it, but AFAIR this was his most overtly philosophical novel of them all.

[candide]

I feel like we might have hijacked this journal through a tragedy of the commons -- I mean I can't point to any one comment that is wrong, but the overall result doesn't seem right.

It looks like people have an appetite for more participation on the forum, and this is a thread that has come alive. We should probably start more threads, as well spin off some of these...

Practicing what I am preaching:
viewtopic.php?p=293613#p293613

[candide]

... spinning back in from the spin-off thread:
viewtopic.php?p=293759#p293759

If you like history and are interested in the world before modernity, I recommend the books by Will Durant.

[philipreal]

Beginning of October Check-in

First, thank you everyone for the recs and discussion. I was lazier than I expected (also just in some pain - hard to focus) so I haven't really gone through any of them yet, but I will keep them in mind. I did finish reading Kegan's The Developing Mind which I found interesting/valuable—maybe I'll make a post about it sometime—so now I am able to start something new. The injury ended up being a fracture in my elbow (right radial neck), and not a particularly bad one. Currently I'm just in a sling, and if the x-rays I get in about another week continue to indicate that the fracture is minimally displaced, it should stay that way only a few more weeks. Also, my (dad's) health insurance plus the optional accident insurance I chose to get when I started my job means I likely won't be spending my own money at all to cover medical bills, although I will ultimately lose some money thanks to missed music stuff.

Spending:
I spent 740 dollars in September. This included more eating out (and a couple ordering ins right after I broke my arm) than I want to do in the future. I saved some money this month by getting some veggies from friend/family gardens and trying harder to use up what I already had in my fridge/freezer, and while that may not be as possible in future months, I expect it to be offset by advances In buying cheaper ingredients more in bulk—it's lentil time. I bought new running shoes this month, but didn't have any other notable car or other "one-off" expenses, so I'm just gonna skip amortizing for now and call it even. I can get more granular later. In short, I'm pretty happy with this, and can see some ways my spending can go down in the future. Savings rate was about 83%, with less income from music than I usually have.

Future plans:
I've been pretty convinced that I don't actually want to do law, at least not right now. With this in mind, I think my current plan is to continue working and saving, try to do more music as is possible, and aim to get FI while picking up skills and doing things I'm interested in along the way. First step for music is healing and rehabbing my elbow, so that will be my main focus for now.

[philipreal]

Elbow Update!

It is healing so well. I only had to keep it in a sling for two weeks and now I don't need that. I have regained most of my ROM, and while I'm not supposed to do any heavy lifting with the arm for a few more weeks, I can do the vast majority of my usual activities normally. Awesome!

I've been alternating reading journals here and actual books, and I'm very glad to be doing both. I read Fumio Sasaki's Goodbye Things, and while it certainly had many good tips and reasons to declutter and be more minimalist, I was struck most by a quote he included at the beginning, "We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves." Perhaps connecting this with Kegan 3 it could be more like, "We believe that other people must be right about whether we are happy/successful/etc or not." In any case, I'm finding it valuable to think about to what extent I'm doing things for external approval, and trying to interrogate its usefulness in those cases. I think me sort of internalizing these external societal ideas of success contributed significantly to why I wanted to go into law. Of course, now the question is if I'm just switching out broader societal ideas of success in my internal goals with ERE ideas of success, but I at least do significantly prefer the ERE ones. I will say I don't think so since I feel a much greater sense of intrinsic motivation towards things generally aligning with ERE, and I think this would have been true at any previous point in my adult life had I found out about it earlier.

In WRC's journal there was a point saying something like "If you want to do something post-retirement you should be doing it while you're still working." I think this is a very good reminder to figure out what matters to you and actually focus on it. This isn't original, but I'd like to expand a little to "If you want to do something, you should be doing it." and taking a step to "If you want to do something, you do it." It can be indicting to work backwards from my Dos to determine my Wants, with a lot of things not really matching up with the ideal(?) Wants I have in my mind. I think for the next little bit in my journal I'll go through some of my ideal Wants, and consider how I can get my current Dos to match up with them. Maybe this is just a way of renaming goals as Wants and creating a WoG, but I think it will let me get into more detail for each Goal node.

Starting with:

Physical Health
Breaking my elbow has been a reminder that health is probably the biggest constraint on what I am able to do. Being completely unable to use my dominant hand for basically a week (after that it could help with some minor things) has shown me how much I take my daily functioning completely for granted. Having more money would not have helped it heal faster (at least not to any appreciable degree). It also showed me some of the value of my social bonds. I was able to get rides to/from work from my parents, and my roommates helped me out with some cooking and other stuff in the apartment. I got well wishes from a good amount of people, and that was nice.

Anyways, back to health. Mine generally is kind of mediocre, at least in my mind. The pros are that I can do a few pistol squats, and can get out and run a few miles if I have to, but it won't be fast. Otherwise, I've never had great upper body strength, can't do unassisted pull ups, and am probably around 30 pounds heavier than I would ideally be with this amount of muscle. I want to have good health so I can keep my body functioning well for a long time, so I can be ready for just about any physical demand that I want to do, and I want to do more hiking/get into backpacking kinda stuff. I think ideally for these outcomes I want to aim for more process-oriented thinking, but it's also true that I'm planning on visiting Japan with friends next summer. I want to summit Mt Fuji and be fairly comfortable doing it so I can enjoy the process a lot and let my mind wander at times while I'm up there. I'd be grateful for tips/recommendations from forum members who do stuff like this.

To get there, here are things I will Do:

Exercise 4-6 days a week. I don't have a gym membership and am happy with my little home gym setup, but it will make it inconvenient to get cardio in during the winter. I'll try to do more running outside while the weather is still alright, and transition to more strength/endurance weight workouts as it gets colder. I'm gonna go for a run after I get home. I want to build a more specific plan for this.
Average > 10,000 steps a day. My job is sedentary, but I can easily get my steps up by using my walking treadmill/makeshift standing desk I have at home. I'm already pretty good at this but I want to get more consistent and am posting this as a reminder.
Stretching/Yoga/Meditation. I'm not that flexible and want to improve on this. I've seen many people mention yoga and meditation as helpful for them, I'd be interested in trying some sort of meditation and if I can improve flexibility while doing that it would be good. I also want to get more specific on this.
Not eat out unless it is with a group of friends. Eating out with friends only happens like 1.33 times a month and is an important way for us to hang out since they are pretty not ERE-minded. Maybe I could work on setting up more different ways to hang out but that is a job for a different post. The point of this is to cut out eating junk food for me just for lunch or otherwise because it's easy. Being very regular about my meals will help me tailor my diet as desired, and will also have other good effects of saving money and getting better at cooking.

[philipreal]

Beginning of November Check-in

Money:
In October I spent roughly $750, including three copays for elbow check-ups. However, I didn't have any other notable expenses, so once again we'll call it about even. I bought some groceries more in bulk (relatively big bags of rice, beans, lentils). It's looking like I'll have like $600-700 worth of medical bills post-insurance once this all resolves, including the copays I've already paid, however...

On the income side, I got a $4500 payout from my accident insurance! Even after accounting for medical bills and lost music income, and vaguely accounting for any other related expenses, I'm going to profit over 3k from my bike accident. I guess it's true: biking really does save you money . Overall, this month I had a savings rate of about 92%, although I feel like it's cheating to not include my non-copay medical bills. They'll be included next month, although I'll also get three paydays in November. Current NW about 52k.

ERE-adjacent things:
My workplace had a Trick-or-Treat thing where we could bring our kids/grandkids in and have them go around the office and get candy. I thought it would be lame to just buy normal candy, so I decided to make some fudge. I hadn't ever done it before, but it turned out pretty well, I made it in three layers and the middle layer was a white chocolate peanut butter layer that I made orange with food coloring to make it look Halloweeny. In a perfect world I wouldn't have had to go and buy ingredients strictly for the fudge, but I'll work on that for next time I suppose. Really happy with it, and there's still enough left after the kids all got some to have it for the Halloween party happening at my apartment tonight. Great!

I kind-of started the Warrior Diet. I make one meal for myself per day, but then if there's free food at work, I'll have some. I think it's working out pretty well, I've stayed fairly stable weight-wise which is what I want for now as I finish up healing. It generally means I have to go pretty protein-heavy in the meal I have at home which maybe isn't good for absorption? I don't know if that's real or not. In any case, I'm not feeling too hungry during the workday, and I like how easy it is to just be able to get up and go if I want to without thinking about breakfast or packing a lunch. First concern is that eating too much work food won't be awesome for me (currently the usual selections range from fresh fruit to donuts and candy, with varying availability) Second is that it may be difficult/bad to work out in the morning, which is the time that makes the most sense for me, and then eat little to nothing until dinnertime. We'll see how that goes.

I signed up and am in the process to start volunteering some piano-playing time at the local hospital. Should be nice for me, and I want the people there to also find it good for them.

Final Thoughts:
I feel more alive than I used to, at least in the sense that I find more meaning in my time. Before, I think I thought of myself in a more disconnected way, where it's like "Okay, I'm at work, turn this part on. Alright, now I'm home, turn this part on. Maybe turn all the parts off beside the one that watches random Youtube videos mindlessly." Now I'm much more aware and considerate of the fact that all uses of my time and all of my behaviors add up to me, so everything I do can be and is important to me since I'm important to me. This has already reduced time-wasting behaviors significantly without even really trying. I've also been reading books at a pace I haven't since middle school, except the ones now are actually informative for me instead of the next YA whatever in the online school library. I'm undoubtedly going too fast at times and missing some wisdom, but I'll be able to review later.

[delay]

Creating something, whether it's food or music, does make one feel good. I recognise the "Watch YouTube videos mindlessly" part... it's so easy to slip into when I'm low energy. Thanks for sharing your journey!

[brainstorm]

I feel more alive than I used to, at least in the sense that I find more meaning in my time. Before, I think I thought of myself in a more disconnected way, where it's like "Okay, I'm at work, turn this part on. Alright, now I'm home, turn this part on. Maybe turn all the parts off beside the one that watches random Youtube videos mindlessly." Now I'm much more aware and considerate of the fact that all uses of my time and all of my behaviors add up to me, so everything I do can be and is important to me since I'm important to me. This has already reduced time-wasting behaviors significantly without even really trying. I've also been reading books at a pace I haven't since middle school, except the ones now are actually informative for me instead of the next YA whatever in the online school library. I'm undoubtedly going too fast at times and missing some wisdom, but I'll be able to review later.

Loved reading this! In my experience, living more intentionally is *hard* work, but it pays for itself. It's only by active and intentional decisions will you look back on a day/year/life and think, Man, that was a great ride. It also makes me appreciate and understand how so many choose to be more passive in their approach - there's a lot of collective exhaustion. "We travel the wrong path because it is so well worn" and whatnot. Keep it up!

And glad to hear your elbow is on the mend!

[philipreal]

Midmonth Update

I went hiking at a nearby state park. The weather was beautiful, and I was surprised by how (Very Relatively) hilly it was compared to the area closer to where I live. I was a little disappointed at the level of "wildness" to it, since if you were ever at the top of a big hill you could just see multiple farmsteads around and at one point closer to the edge of the park I could hear somebody working with power tools in their garage. I still enjoyed my time, though. I saw a few deer who ran away very quickly at any point they saw/heard me, some cool plants and birds, most of which I had no clue what they were, and one surprisingly chill chipmunk, who I hung out with for like 10 minutes and named "Beaver." To get in I checked out a state park pass from the library, which felt good.
https://imgur.com/a/lD7zzOw
https://imgur.com/a/jQU9g8G
https://imgur.com/a/fG2VdUI

We had a symphony concert this past weekend and that went well, many people offered me their good wishes and were glad my arm was better. I've also noticed a significant improvement in my pistol squat ability. I did my first one sometime this summer and have had inconsistent training for a while, but after finding it difficult to do any more than a few for a while, it's now a lot more comfortable and I can do 10+ in my right leg and slightly less with my left. I have lost a little weight but it feels good to know my corresponding strength has increased. I continue to read books.

Future planning:
I find it likely I'll move to some sort of Semi-ERE-like plan for the future. I feel very confident that I can cover my spending doing any job for even just part of the year while still continuing to overall save money. I also feel very confident that I will continue to do some level of income-generating activities for nearly all my life, at least music performance and likely other things as well, in which case it's not crucial I focus on hitting a FI number. While it's true that money compounds, and getting more of it sooner would allow it to compound more, skills and experience also compound into new opportunities and essentially a new me. I think it's more valuable to me to do new things and learn and take risks and figure out what sort of person I want to be continually becoming throughout my life than to get a little extra money earlier. What's more, since I have not really progressed in any sort of career ladder, I'm not missing out on much to pivot early.

What does that actually look like?
Currently I have 2 basic ideas. One is that I would mix some amount of seasonal work with doing workaways/WWOOF and other ways to get valuable experiences/skills at low cost. For time between, I work on my other skills and/or do interesting travel. The other idea is that I stay with my aunt and uncle for some time. They have a place near Sequim (between Port Townsend and Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula) where they do a little farming and raise chickens and have enough space to have another person around. I'm not sure how they'd feel about letting me stay long-term, but I definitely will find out, since that option seems really good. As a bonus, my aunt already has a lot of connections within the local music scene, and experience working within it that I could learn from. My uncle also does a good amount of mountain biking which could be very cool to try. And of course, these two ideas aren't mutually exclusive.

What skills do you want to learn?
I want to learn things that increase my self-sufficiency/decrease my financial/ecological footprint, like growing my own food, repairing stuff, building stuff, bushcraft, etc. I want to continue improving at music performance and would like to at least try composing and teaching to some extent. I want to continue learning Japanese and keep learning more languages past that. (this feels a little disconnected tbh, will continue to think about how this can connect with other things I want to do or if I should stop.) I want to improve my health and physical abilities, ideally by doing some skill or joining some group. I feel like it's a bit of a waste if I have to block out specific time to exercise at home instead of getting physical challenge through other stuff I'm doing or things that benefit me in more ways. I should also learn more about how to invest well. I'm sure I can add to this list but I'll stop it there for now.

How about right now?
Well, I'm not going to go anywhere for at least a few months. I have an apartment lease through May, musical commitments through the end of April, and I think spending a bit more time before making major changes to my life won't be bad. I do have a good amount of smaller project ideas that I will give some updates on as I do them in the future.

[philipreal]

November recap

Money:
I paid off my broken elbow medical bills, my spending not including that was under $700, pretty neat. This month was a Big income month, with 3 paydays and also a holiday/end of year bonus that I didn't know existed. I also still had music stuff and sold a couple things I don't need on ebay. Thanks to that, my savings rate even including the medical bills was close to 87%. NW broke 60k.

Cool things:
I did actually play piano at the hospital for the first time. It wasn't anything crazy, I played a few pieces that I knew, noodled around with some other pieces that I knew, and just noodled around some for a bit over an hour, receiving a few kind words as people move in and out. I'll continue to do it and work on increasing the repertoire I can play/improvise around with at any given time.

I went to a climbing gym with some friends. That was fun, I don't really climb (have been to that gym once before in my life), but I know many people on here do, and I can see why. Got a little scraped, and my arms were sore afterwards, but a good time, and I'll hope to do some more climbing in the future. I probably won't make the climbing gym a regular thing right now though, it's kinda far away and at least a little expensive considering I already have sufficient workout equipment at home. I will add some more grip strength work though.

I've been reading Umineko When they Cry, and currently I'm somewhere early on in the 4th of a total 8 parts. It's Very interesting/entertaining/thought-provoking. Assuming it keeps up its quality, once I finish it (won't be for a while), I will hopefully write up some sort of longform thoughts about it. I think it is and will continue to say a lot of things that may be philosophically interesting to ERE people, but I will hold off from going further about it right now.

I fixed a clog in our kitchen sink drain. We were experiencing that if we ran the water for any more than like 30-40 seconds in a short time it would start to back up into the sink, so not awesome when washing a bunch of dishes. However, it was usually manageable, which is probably why it got put off for a while. I got a small hand drain auger v cheaply off Facebook Marketplace and got in there and broke up something at least like 15 feet in there and now it runs well. Very glad to get that done just in time for:

Thanksgiving!
I ate thanksgiving dinner on Thursday with my parents, and helped do some of the cooking, it was very good and nice. I also surprised my mom some by playing a piano piece she had asked me if I could learn a month or two ago. She loves the piece and I'd been working on it consistently which she hadn't quite expected. It was very meaningful for her, so I'm glad to have put the time in to get it to a reasonable level, and I'll keep working on it so I can play it even better. There's good chunks of it where you want to work at really bringing out the melody with the weaker fingers of your right hand while the stronger fingers are playing chords or parts of chords, so being able to vary the amount of force with which you're pressing down different keys at the same time with the same hand is difficult and valuable to get better at.

Then, on Sunday I roasted my own turkey, made mashed potatoes and stuffing, and gravy out of the turkey drippings. I ate that with my roommates, and will have leftovers for a while, accompanied by the turkey stock I'll be making this evening. That was very fun, I hadn't roasted a turkey before. I ended up spatchcocking it, which was difficult because I don't have shears or anything, so I ended up abusing my standard chef's knife a bit in order to cut out the spine. It certainly ended up working out well, I got juicy turkey cooked more quickly than if I had just roasted it normally.

I'm also thankful for ERE! The blog/community/book have definitely helped accelerate (both vector magnitude and direction) me towards living and thinking in a way that is more self-reflective, more complex, more intentional, and more in line with my values/desires/the part of me that isn't satisfied when I see the way people around me live. I still have a lot of work to do to figure out the things I want to be doing and the ways I want to be being long-term, or to get close towards any sort of self-actualization. But I feel pretty sure I can do it.

Looking into December:
It'll be a busy month, there's a bunch of Christmas-adjacent music gigs. Otherwise I'll take it as it comes.

[philipreal]

December Recap. I'll do a more general post about the past year and the new year in a little bit.

Money:
I spent $580 in December. I had no notable big expenses, got gifts for my family cheaply, ate out with friends a couple times but otherwise spent Very little on food. I feel pretty good about this. I could possibly have spent less, but also I kind of put off a little bit of spending that I'll just end up doing in January. Also, my energy bills will be notably higher for upcoming months, I've tried implementing some things but I don't think there's that much I can do in my apartment with two relatively un-ERE-minded people. I brought in $6300, with about a third of it being music income, which is pretty cool! Savings rate nearly 91%. NW up to about 65.5k.

Music things:
My brother was home for Christmas, it was very good to see him, and also I got him to help me in the prelude/postlude for the Christmas Eve service church I play piano for. I try to do something a little special on Christmas and Easter and this year I got him to accompany me on piano while I played violin, finding a couple arrangements online and also making one myself, and that went very well.

I played music for a wedding for the first time. One of my music connections asked me if I could the Thursday before the wedding that was on Saturday, but I was able to and it went quite well. It reminds me that I definitely could make more money from music if I figure out how to/put in effort to market myself even just a bit.

For one group of concerts, I tried to change up my mindset a bit while playing each night. For one, my focus while playing was to play better than anyone else in my section, another was to play my best for the audience in general, and another was to play my best for my parents who were in the audience. I couldn't keep these foci in my mind the whole of each performance, but they definitely existed and I experienced playing my comparative best when I was focusing on playing better than the others in my section. I thought this was an interesting result, but not really unsurprising. I generally do very well when faced with competition and keeping my mind on it could help me be more focused on playing my best for longer. However, I also think it may have helped collaboratively as well. It caused me to listen to my section more closely and thus likely match with them better. In any case, it didn't result in differences so notable that an audience or likely even my fellow musicians would notice or think something of it, but I felt like it was helpful for me.

Other:
For the month of December at work, we would all sign up to bring in treats of some kind on some day, which was a pretty nice system (certainly contributed to lower food bills for me). For my day I collaborated with some of my coworkers around me to set up a taco bar, where I brought some homemade refried beans, mexican rice, and queso, and between all of us it turned into a very good spread that also cost me quite little to make.

I didn't do much this month besides work, play music, hang out with friends/family, read, and a bit less exercise/japanese practice than I wanted to do. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with this month.

[philipreal]

2024->2025

Wow! I took a look back at my spending for 2023 and 2024 pre-ERE, and it was painful to see. I spent about 16.5k and 14.7k in 2023 and 2024 respectively. I spent nearly $250 in January of 2024 on eating out/ordering in alone, and when I look through the comparatively many shopping transactions, even for some of the larger ones, I have no idea what I was spending on. Even if "my ERE progress" stops right now and I never do anything interesting for the rest of my life, I'll have been very thankful to have read Jacob's book and have been here. It's been a catalyst for a good amount of improvement in my life.

However, I don't have any plans to stop. As I've realized how very simple it can be to have unlimited free time, as I've read more, as I've thought more about understanding other perspectives, I've had to ponder the "freedom-to", of what do I care about, should I care about that, how to choose, of what meaning there really is to any of this, all that silly stuff. And I really don't know! (not that there is "an" answer to find). I think I'm getting much better at considering many more factors/perspectives/yields and flows, but I am really feeling unsure about how to put them together coherently. I can see how this and that decision would affect these many outcomes, but I don't know how to weigh the different factors. I can obviously look for homotelicity, but I also have to look at the relative size of the vectors, and that there will always be opportunity costs, and I just don't have a real goal of the system-becoming that I am. (Or I do, and just don't know what it is?)

To sum-up, in 2025 I want to put significant time/effort into figuring out (to a greater extent) my purpose(s), to build my cathedral, all that, and also to put more meat on the bones of my various capitals so I'm more prepared for whatever those purposes will be. Which are kind of duh goals, but I like them. I would like to join an MMG, and now may be an especially good time if an MMG3 is created. My current basic plan is that I continue working where I am until around midsummer (I have an apartment lease, some musical commitments in the area through the end of May, and my parents would like me to housesit for them in June). After that, I travel for a few months, do some car-camping, visit Japan with friends (this is already semi-planned), summit Mt Fuji, visit some family on the West Coast, attend EREfest, do multiple workaways both in the US and outside of it, and come home to parents for the holiday season when there will be many musical gigs and easy opportunity for some seasonal work. By then I'll have some new and better ideas, and if not I will have had a lot of fun and still have made money.

I'm also noticing that to some extent I feel like I can only justify doing such a trip if I'm still overall saving a good amount of money for the year. I'll continue thinking about this to figure out what extent this feeling is me overelevating the status of financial capital and what extent it is me prudently avoiding a pre/trans fallacy of "oh i've just gotta go find myself" and then I waste all my money. While I could just keep working and save enough for a more traditional FIRE, which really wouldn't take too long, I'd rather not. I think it's very likely that enough things I want to do in the future will throw off incidental money, especially as I get more and more skilled at more and more things (doing music where I am already throws off enough money that I could cover my current expenses). If I turn out to be wrong about that, it'll be pretty easy to get back on the money track for a bit then.

I'm excited for 2025 and I wish you all the best for it as well. I hope to put up some posts that are more specific to different activities/goals/ideas than my monthly update-type posts, but I won't promise anything yet.

[FunkyFreedom]

Hi Philip,

I’m trying to start reading through folks journals to get current. Your journal has been quite popular! I like the part when you decided to not go to law school!

I learned about WWOOF and worksaways and want to learn more about them. Plan to learn more this weekend.

I have some book ideas. Check out David Steinde-Rast’s TED talk on Gratefulness! He is both a Benedictine Catholic Monk and a Zen practitioner. The monastic traditions of various religions have way different perspectives than you’d hear in a church. You seem very grateful to me, or you have moments of gratefulness and mindfulness that make it into your journal. What would happen if you try to bring more mindfulness and gratefulness into what you are already doing? Maybe you’re already doing the thing you’re meant to do? Especially with being able to cover your costs playing music!

Also, if you’re going to Japan and intending to meditate (which I think is a great idea!) why not learn about Zen a little bit? You kind of remind me of a Zen monk a bit! Not spending much money, learning lots of things. I believe Axel mentioned Daoism. I love the concept of “Wu Wei” or non-forcing. It’s an interesting concept to look into. In general the Eastern religions or philosophies are very different from Western ones. It might be interesting for you to read a bit in that area. Alan Watts is fun. Joseph Campbell and the Hero with a Thousand Faces and the symbolism in mythology is fun (there’s a documentary on that too).

Question for you - does music put you into a flow state (see the book “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as a reference on that concept)? I’m guessing it might, or it might if you do it in a certain way or can pour yourself more fully into it. Also, what if the question “What Makes Me Happy” is the wrong question? What if we aren’t built to be happy all the time (Book: “Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier” by Arthur C Brooks & Oprah)? Instead is it more about meaningfulness with moments of happiness? Also I’m noticing that you are setting and working towards your goals. I saw something today on Facebook talking about how dopamine kicks in when we have goals in the real world and make progress towards them. It seems like you are doing a lot of that, and you seem to be feeling a sense of reward from your successes. Maybe a sense of purpose doesn’t need to have a specific goal or activity other than setting goals, working towards them, and being successful at that?

Just some thoughts. Your journal is way more interesting than mine, it feels like. Maybe that’s because I’m older and life is more boring for me (which is not a bad thing, necessarily!). I may try to make my posts more succinct or add summaries at the top,

Your journey is a fun one to follow and I look forward to checking in what happens next!

Sincerely,
Funky Freedom.

[philipreal]

Thanks for your comment! I certainly do want to learn more about Eastern philosophies/religions, I know that I currently know very little but I often find mentions of their influence in writings I respect. I am reminded of someone misremembering the koan in their journal a bit ago and saying "what is the sound of two hands clapping" which I found very funny at the time.

Question for you - does music put you into a flow state (see the book “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as a reference on that concept)?

I'd have to read the book to be more sure exactly what is meant by "flow state," but I'd say yes it does at times, and that's probably at least part of what I was trying to test with my little experiment mentioned earlier. To put it in perspective of what I understand of flow states already (requiring a good enough match of challenge and skill), to just play the music itself at a solid level isn't enough of a challenge. However, when I was listening more closely and trying to play better than my colleagues, that increased the challenge to better match my skill, and put me more in a flow state for longer.

I'd agree that just asking "what makes me happy" isn't a good enough question (unless maybe someone defines happiness in a very interesting way) and would broadly want to include questions for meaning, purpose, the opposite of these,* and surely others I'm not thinking of right now. I'm not looking for some magic-drug-analogous constant pleasure.
*It may be as valuable to find out what things one really dislikes, finds meaningless/harmful/etc.

This kind of brings me to the question of if I'm already doing what I'm meant to do, which I want to be able to believe is true, but I don't want to believe it in a way that keeps me from doing new things, at least right now. That is to say, I want to always be satisfied with myself and my life, to be able to take a linear path forward from my current actions and like where that leads. However, I want (more?) to be improving, learning new things/skills/more about myself/others, increasing what I'm capable of, etc. In this endeavor I'm guided some by a goal of optionality (prepare to be ready for a wide space of possible goals) and inspired partially by a quote in mountainfrugal's journal that I really liked, "You're not in danger, you're just uncomfortable." While I could stay here and do a lot of different things, and many of them would be interesting and difficult and all that, I think I will be much more able to hit good uncomfortability, to learn more about myself, to encounter unknown unknowns, if I do some new activities in new places (also it excites me more).

It's fun to hear that my journal is interesting, sometimes it feels like I really haven't done anything yet (which is true to an extent, I really am just working the same job and doing some music on the side just as I was before ERE, now spending slightly less and tracking it better). I haven't thought too much about how I present my journal updates, although I'm sure a good amount of thinking could go into it. I think you'll probably fall into something that works for you.

[philipreal]

January Recap.

Money:
$657 went out, $5908 came in. Savings rate nearly 89%. NW is... taking a little hit today, but still over 71k*. I'm not able to get my expenses much lower without getting rid of Rent/Car expenses. Getting rid of my car wouldn't be practical within my longer plans, and I will be getting rid of my rent expense for at least some time once my lease is up.

*Actually, in the time to write this post it moved up over $500. It's kind of interesting to start seeing larger and larger swings in my money, even intraday. In any case, I have no reason to sell anything soon, so I can weather whatever market fluctuations come.

Music things:
Music income would have also cleared my expenses twice over this month, and I've still got plenty of gigs coming up in February. I filled in for another local violinist in a gig for the college I graduated from and ended up being the concertmaster/lead first violin for most of it (there was one piece with a full orchestra and then a lot of smaller chamber-like groups accompanying singers). Fortunately, I'm pretty good and can do that well and did do that well and received compliments for me doing that well. As a result of that, I got asked by the conductor of the college's orchestra if I could come in and lead a sectional rehearsal for the violins, and did that. I don't think that went quite as well, partially because I don't really have any musical teaching training/experience, but it was alright and I even got paid for it. (Does that make me an adjunct professor now?)

The ease in which I've been picking up music income combined with seeing things like Axel's report that he will likely reach FI this year make me feel more sure about aiming for "Semi-ERE" where I prioritize skill acquisition and doing cool stuff more than reaching FI quickly.

Reading:
This month I didn't have/make as much time for reading as in some previous months, but I did go through a lot of what David Chapman has online (In the Cells of the Eggplant, Meaningness, and Vividness). Pretty good stuff! I might make a bigger post about what I thought of them, or I might not.

The Physical Self:
I joined a weight loss challenge at work midway through the month that will last until around the end of March. I'm currently in the lead, although I had a strong start by drinking over a half gallon of water in the 30 min before the initial weigh-in. I'm at a weight where I could stand to lose 20 (real) pounds or so, so I'm going to try. Hopefully losing some weight will make me more able to do cool tricks on my gymnastic rings. I've been pretty consistent with exercise since the start of the new year, although I haven't been consistent with a specific program of exercising.

Japanese:
Using some motivation from the new year, I've continued to work on this, and have made some small, consistent progress. This practice is one of the things that most falls by the wayside in weeks where I'm really busy with music, but I've at least kept up my reviews of what I already know in those times. One thing I need to make sure I do more before I visit Japan is get some speaking practice in, since I've done pretty much none of that. I'm also considering if I should aim at taking one of the Japanese proficiency tests sometime. I feel sure I could do N3 by the summer, maybe N2 by some other point. It is inconvenient that there are 0 test locations within 500 miles of me.

Other Things:
I started cooking food for when there are DnD games in my apartment. I liked the mindset I was using when I chose to ask if people would like me to do this, and I'll detail it a bit in a separate post. I think I will try to post journal updates more than once a month, whenever I have something to say.

[philipreal]

Extending your reach

If you want to reduce consumption/generate enjoyment/do whatever in the world, there's not much you can do all by yourself. While not quite in the same terms, the implications of this are considered in more detail in the Wheaton 8->9 thread (viewtopic.php?t=13271). Not that I'd consider myself at those Wheaton levels, but the discussion there, along with a more general expanding of my perspective, helped guide my thoughts and actions in this instance.

December: Cookie distribution.
Last December, I participated in a cookie exchange at my workplace which resulted in me having about 6 each of 10 different kinds of cookies to take home. I could have eaten all of the cookies myself, but instead I thought about it. While I was sure I would enjoy eating each additional cookie and that I could eat them over enough time that it would not be harmful to my health, that is to say, the marginal utility of each cookie to me would be positive, I was also sure that the marginal utility to me would be low past a few. I thought instead that if my parents and roommates all got a sampler of the cookies, there would be much more total enjoyment of them, and that I valued that increased total enjoyment more than eating more of the cookies. It's not that I felt that I was giving them cookies altruistically, or that I had some obligation to do so, I just valued the enjoyment of the cookies by the system of them and me instead of the system of just me. So I did, and we all enjoyed the cookies.

January 11, 2025: Soup time.
A couple weeks later, people were playing DnD at my apartment as they often do. I'm not currently in these campaigns because I've been busy and chose not to, but they're my friends and I have been in them before. I was warming up some leftover soup for dinner while they were playing, and I saw one of them pulling up Doordash to order in some food. I joked around a little about him potentially being a treatlerite to which he respond something like "Yeah, but I'm hungry." In response to that I gave him some of my leftover soup, which he enjoyed. I similarly thought about this from a bit of an outside perspective, where I who is at least partially the system of "Us" gained by him not having to spend on doordash, by not having some random person drive to a restaurant and my apartment, even if "i" lost a bit of my soup. I also noted here that while I can't completely control other peoples' (spending) choices, I definitely can control some of them if I'm in a position to give them what they want.

January 22-Present: The Chef.
With this in mind, I decided to ask everyone playing DnD if they'd like it if I would just cook a meal each time they come over to play, and they'd pay me a bit mainly to just cover ingredients. They all agreed, and I've done it so far for two sessions, where they'd normally order in food a majority of the time. What's particularly nice about this in my eyes, is that it's not just overall good for the system of "Us," in that the total monetary consumption is reduced, but it's also good for everyone individually. They all get a healthier meal of roughly equivalent quality to ordering in at a much lower cost, but I also get a meal+leftovers at the cost of free to me, and I get to work on improving my cooking. I had been noticing that when I cook for myself I tend to generally just go with cheap/lazy options, so this gives me a great reason to try harder and try using some slightly more expensive ingredients.

Conclusions:
If you've already been trying to find actions that are homotelic to two or more of your different goals, try also using a similar mindset to find arrangements that work towards broader goals of yours that are homotelic to the more individual goals of yourself and other people. I'm sure to some people this may be an obvious thing and you've been doing this already, but it's been a new way of thinking about it for me, and so far I'm finding it valuable.

[philipreal]

February Recap

Hey gang! Had a pretty cool February!

Money:
8109 dollars in, 1073 dollars out. I bought plane tickets to Japan for this summer, although I used my credit card rewards points to cut the cost of the flight to about $380, so without that I spent about 690. I didn't have any other notable expenses, although the utility bills are high and I stocked up on some extra food items that will go towards cooking for my friends. I did my taxes this month and had a 2k refund, which is why the income is high. I also had my 23rd birthday at the end of the month and as a gift my parents decided to pay (reimburse) for my flight to Japan so I'll get some money from that that I'll include in March's income. NW is up a bit above 78k, investments weren't awesome this month but that's how it goes sometimes.

Investments:
The vast majority of my money is in the S&P 500, which unlike a fair chunk of the forum, I'm totally fine with. After learning some more about AI this month, I think there's a reasonable chance it causes huge societal changes within the next 5-10 years, and that companies will use it to make egregious profits. Moreover, if that possibility happens, it's the world where I most want to have a significant amount of money pretty quickly. If society stays much the same, I know I can make over 5-6x what I need to spend pretty easily and have a good time, so I don't need to worry about investment returns very much. There are probably better ways to prepare for this, but I also figured out this month I definitely don't want to take an active investment style*, so this is fine for now. Am very willing to hear out suggestions though.

*I experimented with buying Nvidia short-term for earnings in my Roth, and I actually was quite lucky with my timing and got a few hundred dollars in profit, but decided I really do not have any sort of edge to expect future profit, and also I do not enjoy having to worry/think excessively about how my investments are doing.

Cooking:
I continue cooking for the gang, made some recipes I was really happy about. It's been kind of interesting noticing how little people's enjoyment of the food correlates with how difficult/labor-intensive it was to make.

Other:
I don't have much to say, the month feels like it went by pretty quickly. I was pretty busy with music gigs/work for a lot of it. I was in pit for a musical, had a random corporate event jazz gig, and a normal symphony concert, along with my church piano playing. I've been exercising pretty consistently but with a very inconsistent routine of what I'm doing, so big aim for March is to get a consistent routine for that and my Japanese practice. The weight-loss challenge at work continues, I'm still in the lead and have probably lost about 2 actual pounds a week (disregarding the water weight I added for the start). It's actually been really easy, I haven't counted calories at all, just eat about once per day and eat a little less than I normally would.

[AxelHeyst]

Great stuff philipreal. I love the development of cooking for your dnd gang. I was just having a similar thought about how 'difficulty to prepare" and "enjoyment" don't always correlate. I recently learned to make morel risotto, a favorite of my gf's, and it's the easiest thing in the world.

[philipreal]

Music Updates

There's been enough happening here that I thought I'd make a separate post before doing my usual monthly update in a few days.

Had a normal concert with the local symphony orchestra which was nice. I also had a small, low-paying jazz combo gig at a local retirement home. Notably it was the same one that my grandparents used to live in, and my grandpa would sometimes hold little concerts there playing the piano while my mom would sing. So it was cool to be back there playing music. It was also nice to use their baby grand piano instead of my low-quality electric piano/amp as I've done for a couple other combo gigs. The attendees all enjoyed it a lot so it was very fun.

Moreover, the band leader who organizes these sorts of gigs was very impressed, saying I was "the best in town... ..NO one plays like that in town!!!" in texts afterward. While I don't think he's quite the best critical source, he certainly has a significant amount of jazz experience. While some of the improvement in sound for the gig definitely just came from being on a good piano instead of a bad electric one with a bad amp, I would also put a significant chunk of it due to the piano playing I've been doing most Saturdays at the hospital, and I wouldn't have started doing that if not for joining the forum, so thanks ERE for that. I'll be thinking more about how to improve my playing because I still feel like there's a lot of low-hanging fruit for me to work on jazz-wise, I'm not at the same level as I am with my violin-playing where I can feel confident of my standards of what is "good." To some extent I feel like it can be a similar case as with my DnD cooking, where some types of effort, even effort I feel is really valuable, doesn't really matter in regards to the final product (and vice versa that some things I put little effort into can be extremely valuable). I also can't be sure but it's possible how well this gig went prompted the band leader to work harder to schedule more combo gigs, since a couple new ones were scheduled. The band leader's a pretty old guy who's honestly a pain to work with sometimes but he definitely cares a lot about playing good jazz, and he's sad to lose me as I've told him to anticipate not having me around for the foreseeable future.

So that's pretty cool. However, the upcoming month is looking pretty crazy. I have rehearsals or gigs/performances happening 22 out of the 30 days in April (likely to be updated to 23, got asked to play for a wedding and we haven't scheduled when to rehearse for that yet). I do get paid reasonably for each gig and for >half of the rehearsals, and this is from me putting in zero effort to market myself, just connections from me growing up in the area, auditioning for the local symphony orchestra and the college jazz band. I will definitely be busier than I'd prefer to be but this does really make it seem to me like I'll be able to make decent working-man money from music should I choose to move further down that route.

Thoughts for the future:
Should I get a carbon fiber violin and bring it along while I'm travelling around this summer-fall? I could try busking in some different places, it would just be good to practice at least some while I travel (I do not want to bring my good wooden violin around in poor conditions, especially if I don't fix my car's AC by the time I leave). If I get one with an electric pickup it could have cool usage even if I'm not traveling, although I should compare it to if I got an electric pickup for the violin I already have.
I should make sure to get video of myself playing for some of these events, if I want to advertise myself/apply to different things it would be very good to have.

[delay]

Thanks for your journal update!

Moreover, the band leader who organizes these sorts of gigs was very impressed, saying I was "the best in town... ..NO one plays like that in town!!!" in texts afterward. While I don't think he's quite the best critical source, he certainly has a significant amount of jazz experience.

Congratulations! Why not be happy? The best living piano player today will compare himself with the best piano player ever. The guy who masters two instruments compares himself with the guy who masters three. It never stops.

Should I get a carbon fiber violin and bring it along while I'm travelling around this summer-fall?

On an ERE board, one has to quip, how can you solve that without spending money?