bostonimproper's journal

[Biscuits and Gravy]

The one phrase that helped me out, and continues to help, is ‘this too shall pass.’

I love that this is the mantra of every mom. We’re supposed to adore and cherish our children and soak up every. single. moment with them, but every mom I’ve spoken to has admitted that “this, too, shall pass” is their mantra. Really, we can’t wait for the kids to finally fall asleep or, ultimately, leave the house and go live their own lives. I’m convinced Seneca was only able to write “The present alone can make no man wretched” because he never cared for two toddlers over the course of a weekend.

[bostonimproper]

Proofing the baby

We’re gonna take y’all’s advice and just throw the mattress on the floor. Probably this weekend while we do a bunch of other baby proofing.

Unfortunately I think we’ll need to convert our baby’s crib to toddler bed mode sooner than later. Not quite yet, but probably soon. They are cruising and climbing and it’s feeling dicey. I keep imagining them falling out headfirst. Once they are confidently climbing up and down steps— we’ve tried stairs practice but they are not quite ready for that yet— then we’ll make the move. At this rate I give it a month, maybe less.

In other news, they have a fixation on turning doorknobs and opening doors now. Oh boy.

Dreams

My dreams lately have been weird. Or I guess more specifically they’ve been incredibly banal. Usually my dreams are cinematic and emotionally charged. They are often action-packed and clearly represent a lot of fears and anxieties bubbling up.

Nowadays they are like I go have a meeting with our mason and ask him to fix the poor work he did on basement waterproofing, a thing I actually have to do and am not looking forward to. Or: I spot a former colleague at a coffee shop and awkwardly try to avoid making eye contact so we don’t have to talk.

I think part of it is that pre-baby or even pre-back to work, I had more mental cycles to process the happenings in my life during the day, time to pepper my brain with fanciful images through books or television or things I see on a walk or things I just think about for fun. Whereas nowadays, I’m just like wake, take care of baby, eat, work, take care of baby, eat, shower, sleep while also taking care of baby, rinse and repeat. I don’t feel bored, but my internal life seems to me very boring. Is this where imagination goes to die?

Loneliness

I think something people don’t talk a lot about having young kids is the profound loneliness and isolation the experience can bring. Not always, I imagine, but the way we often raise them in the Western world— with two parents and no village— is just bonkers. I’m thoroughly convinced at this point that humanity’s most important trait for survival was and is building community.

When I couldn’t get baby to breastfeed and my supply was low, I thought about how having another mom feed them might have been the only way to keep them alive back in time. When my husband and I are both fried I think about how we could be communicating better and feeling closer if one of us wasn’t always on duty. I think about the complete immolation of my hobbies and time spent with friends because, frankly, it’s hard to time hangouts that work with all our kids’ nap schedules/spouse’s availability/making sure dinner gets on the table.

I think it could feel different if either of us had parents we trusted with our baby. Or if we lived in like a big commune with our other parent friends and shared childcare duties and had each other to lean on at 5 AM when we’ve just snapped after a night of hourly wake-ups— I keep trying to sell my husband on this idea, but no dice.

At some point I figure it’ll get better on their own. Our babysitter will stop having HFM disease so we can actually go on a date. At some point we’ll send our kid to preschool for the socialization and then to public school for, um, I guess still mostly the socialization? And as baby becomes verbal we can interact with them more as another person too. And of course I think we’ll both be more willing to do solo parenting more often when we’re both getting full rest at night, carving out time for hobbies and the like.

I know it’s just a phase, which is how we’re getting through it. But I feel like it could be so much better if we just did things a little different.

One and done

After a hard few weeks, my husband and I were finally able to have a long talk between baby’s REM cycles, and we’ve agreed that we’re one and done. My husband is interested in maybe fostering one day when baby is much older— which I’d be open to as well— but we’re both on the same page that parenting is very tiring and the one child we do have is pretty amazing and our family feels like enough.

This feels like a huge weight off my shoulders. Just not having to go through the mental exercise of “should I keep X thing baby has outgrown or not?” is in itself a relief. I feel like I can more take things day by day and enjoy the baby I do have versus worry about how our lives will fit in the additional baby we won’t have.

[bostonimproper]

Learn like a baby

Human learning is both way more and way less random than I ever could have guessed pre-baby.

On the one hand, it’s like my child had the instructions for climbing wired into their brain from birth. On the other hand, they’re figuring out tool use by literally banging every two random objects in our house together to see what happens. Block-table? Noise. Block-carpet? Muted noise. Block-hardwood floor? Bounce bounce. Block-mama? “Ow!” And so on and so forth.

A couple weeks ago my baby figured out that they could hook one of their teething rings to the drawer knob on our coffee table, and use it like a carabiner to support their weight while they pull to standing. It happened completely by accident. It was just the 18th in a series of objects that baby decided to try. But I could see the lightbulb go off when it happened. “Eureka!” And so come out the wooden rings, the bowls, and all other circular objects that are empty in the center.

It made me realize that I don’t really have those sort of serendipitous moments any more. I think a lot of how I’ve approached things in my life is to research the prior art and assess where I think I’ll get the highest ROI for my time and minimize risk. The downside is, of course, the best you can hope for with this approach is to minimize disappointment. Never to be surprised, astonished, perplexed, in wonderment of what random act of genius/idiocy you managed to achieve. All of which is to say: maybe I should practice *not* overanalyzing everything I do and embrace more learning like a baby.

Work and vanity?

Boss and grandboss have both said unprompted that they want to find a high-visibility project for me so I can go up for promotion. I expect that’ll happen sometime next year which, if all goes well with the markets, may be my last in tech. It’d be a nice feather in my cap to make it to Staff. It’s more or less a terminal level so unless I was itching to go into management (I’m not) I wasn’t likely to get another promotion — possibly ever again? So, yeah, good to go on a high note I guess.

I think one thing I will miss about corporate life, at least a little bit, is the external validation. I’ve been “good” at work in the same way I was “good” at school, which is to say I figured out what people thought was the right answer and gave it to them, whether or not I agreed.

It’s hard to get that sort of constant “you’re doing a good job!” in life. For instance: Objectively, I think I’m a good parent, but I feel like I’m constantly being negged by family, “society”, marketing departments at baby gear product companies, etc, that basically the only way I could be a worse mother is if I bottle-fed my baby a handle of vodka. There’s a lot of money and social cachet to be gained by making others feel insecure, I think.

Anyway, I’ve recognized that I have this need in myself for someone to tell me I’m doing well. I think having that impulse can be helpful at times but I’m trying to think through now how I might “feed the beast” of vanity in my post-FIRE life? For what it’s worth I feel that I have intrinsic motivations— there is certainly stuff I know I want to do— but it can be scary feeling like you’re at sea and don’t know if you’re going the right direction. I guess this is the trade off with my desire for exploration and serendipity above.

[Scott 2]

I think one thing I will miss about corporate life, at least a little bit, is the external validation.

I think this warrants ongoing consideration. Reaching Staff level is an accomplishment, especially given your demographics. It's also an opportunity. Between the financial rewards and peer group, you wield far more influence than the typical early retiree. My question would be - how does this extend into your freedom to? I'm guessing Mom and wife isn't your full story.

Approaching 3 years removed from my own (lesser) tech job, the closed doors are notable. There are ideas I cannot afford. Impacts I lack the connections to make. I had far more influence while employed, though I lacked the perspective to use it constructively. In hindsight, I kinda wasted it.

[bostonimproper]

My question would be - how does this extend into your freedom to? I'm guessing Mom and wife isn't your full story.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I honestly feel like the social capital I build through work is next to useless for what I want to do post-FI. It would be different, I think, if I ever wanted to do a capital raise (I don’t) or start something in the ML space (again, not interested). But when I think about the next phase, I imagine myself running an eight figure self-bootstrapped e-commerce business— either in the digital goods or “recycling economy” space. And then using that money to either angel invest in local climate tech (there’s an incubator nearby that I’m on the mailing list for) or get into blue farming.

For my own business, the reality is I don’t ever expect or really want to achieve the volume that would make my skill set or connections relevant. That said, I also have a handful of good friends with development and DevOps experience on the FIRE path. I’m sure if I can sell a compelling vision for what I’m doing, I can get them on board to help and we can step into this next phase of life together. That’d be fun.

I guess I could pivot into e-commerce companies that are more similar to what I want to do and try and learn the business. But the companies I can think of that are most similar don’t really need product people, and certainly not folks with my expertise. I find that since I’m so specialized it’s hard to break into new domains.

[Scott 2]

So more work then

In my area, there's a tech executive who quietly sits on the boards of all the local food banks. He helps make connections for fund raising and donates a significant amount himself. He's a member of the Sikh religion, so also through his actions, influences how leaders in our local community think of people like him.

Some other tech executives have rejuvenated a neglected nature area, turning it into a community gathering space. Hosting outdoor concerts, art festivals, endurance events, laser tag, etc. I believe it's a self sustaining business. They're able to fund trail development on the surrounding land.

I have no idea what their specific tech work is / was. Their value to me, is independent of that expertise.

Other leaders sit on boards for the animal shelter, the library, community festivals, magnet schools for the underprivileged, etc. Their network gives them access to shape the local community. I know you've done some charity along the way, so maybe this is already part of your life.

At a broader level, does Staff tier give access to become a player in national or global scale efforts? Think Gates foundation on the extreme end. I've only cursory exposure to some of these ideas - the Aspen institute, B Lab, heck maybe even the world economic forum. You are young, well positioned and extremely capable. There's a long runway with many open paths available to you.

Not that running your own thing rules any of this out. Success could give you even more leverage. But when I second guess not working, these are some of the ideas that give me pause. Maybe building myself up in big tech would be worth the other impacts. You've already done the (very difficult) first part.

At my prior firm, I also observed a pivot of some leaders into our corporate giving. It had become a consideration in RFP responses, so there was substantial effort directed towards social good. My mind wasn't open to the path at retirement time, but it's another idea I could have considered.


All I wanted when I stopped was freedom from. I was blinded by the need to escape. It took at least a year before some of this other perspective took shape. So I totally get doing nothing too. But "I'm not working" definitely does not carry the same status in meeting others.

[jacob]

This comes to mind: https://www.getrichslowly.org/fifteen-y ... etirement/ I suggest reading the whole thing.

What is concerning, though, are questions of identity and accomplishment. When you leave life in the fast lane a decade or two before your peers, some of the folks you know will go on to become Big Dogs at a time when you're feeling more like a Chihuahua!

I’ve always had the respect of my still-working friends. They like having a window into my aesthetic, alternative lifestyle. They admire the chutzpah it took to walk out on the System and chart my own course. Still, the fact is that on conventional metrics they have gone further and achieved more in their extra years, allowing them now, as they approach traditional retirement age, to play the next few decades at a level I hadn't really foreseen. That world is now closed off to me.

For example, I have friends who are entering their sixties with large career accomplishments are becoming directors of significant public companies, an ideal semi-retirement role. Others who have done well financially are in a position to engage in philanthropy at a level I simply can't.

In addition to the genuine good they're doing through their gifts, they're invited into advisory roles where they can help steer the vision and activities of their chose charities. This work is deeply meaningful for them. These roles also bring accolades that keep the older semi-retiree feeling appreciated, respected, and useful in a significant way, while remaining connected to other high-achievers.

Because I left the fast lane early, I don't have as many post-work opportunities.

I’m certainly appreciated and respected in the circles I move in. But those circles sometimes feel rather quiet and small. When I chose semi-retirement fifteen years ago, I understood intellectually that this would happen. I made an intention choice to pursue a quieter, more introspective bath. Yet there's a sense of loss — of missing out — that comes when you realize certain paths are closed off forever.

Interestingly, but perhaps not all that relevant given our different career paths, I actually quit physics just a few weeks after applying for a staff position at my final [physics] employer. I'm pretty sure I would have gotten it too, but in my case as a foreign national, staff essentially meant hitting the glass ceiling and becoming a [finally] well-paid lifer curating and maintaining a database of nuclear physics data. I quit because the ERE world seemed larger than the maybe 100-200 people in the world who would be interested in that database. One thing, though, is that whereas that staff position would have made me a part of an existing structure, ERE required building my own structure. This is entirely different. Everything I want with ERE, I have to build it myself (I'd like not to have to do that all the time, hence my interest in ERE2), whereas the corporate game is different in that the game you play already exists. I think the difference very much comes down to whether you'd prefer to play in a big game that you can only tweak or you want complete control over the design even if it means playing a smaller game. The whole "big fish in a small pond vs small fish in a big pond"-question.

[7Wannabe5]

But when I think about the next phase, I imagine myself running an eight figure self-bootstrapped e-commerce business— either in the digital goods or “recycling economy” space.

As somebody who ran a six-figure boot-strapped e-commerce "recycling economy" business, I can definitely visualize how somebody more ambitious/competent/hard-working/focused/etc. than me could go to 7-figures, but my mind is blown-out at 8-figures, because that would literally constitute a "shit-ton" of garbage. It seems like you would have to interrupt a flow at the industrial/legislative, as opposed to post-consumer, level.

[bostonimproper]

@Scott 2 - Staff is still a peon level. Unless you hit Director/VP/C-suite, I don’t know that there’s much cultural cachet you can expect. I’m definitely not on exec path, nor do I want to be. I also feel like what you’re describing is being able to put my name on things for the feel good fuzzies, but having actually quite limited input and decision making. (That’s how I see a lot of boards anyway, though it certainly varies.) Maybe you’re seeing a world I’m not seeing, though.

I think @jacob put it well. I like the small, beautiful, well-designed and well-curated. And I want to be in charge.

As somebody who ran a six-figure boot-strapped e-commerce "recycling economy" business, I can definitely visualize how somebody more ambitious/competent/hard-working/focused/etc. than me could go to 7-figures, but my mind is blown-out at 8-figures, because that would literally constitute a "shit-ton" of garbage. It seems like you would have to interrupt a flow at the industrial/legislative, as opposed to post-consumer, level.

For what it’s worth, the corresponding retail market is ~$100B. I know of three companies that are roughly in this domain, one of which just raised $15MM in a Series B. From what I can tell, they probably have a gross profit of $3-5MM with triple digit annual growth.

So the cap I imagine would be something like a $10-20MM company, but I feel like it’s definitely doable with a 10 year time horizon. I could totally be wrong though! I’m hopeful with $10K and 3-6 months, I can either validate or invalidate it as an idea and get a sense of total addressable market and if it doesn’t seem fruitful, move on and call it a day.

[Scott 2]

@Scott 2 - Staff is still a peon level.... Maybe you’re seeing a world I’m not seeing, though.

More likely the opposite. I'm playing at a low scale now. When one kitten we fostered gets adopted, that is cause to celebrate. When I work at the food pantry, the full team of volunteers might help 150-200 families on a Saturday. As an individual - my job can be as simple as checking 30 people in for services. Helping at this level is small. My qualifications are I show up on time and can use a computer.

If I simply worked and donated 20%, I could have several orders of magnitude more impact today. I could also get mentoring from leaders in whatever charity I picked. The amplification over time would be substantial. It's all about trajectory.

So what you can do at Staff level, from where I'm currently sitting, looks impactful. Relative to the scale of the corporations you are working with, it clearly feels much less so. But you're also sitting on bottled potential. Judged not just on today's achievements, but where people think you could land.

I found while immersed in my corporate life, I couldn't appreciate the exclusivity. 9 out of 10 Americans would be elated for financial opportunities I fled. Globally, maybe more like 99 out of 100. I grew up into them though, and so took the positives for granted. All I wanted was escape. Leaving was the first time I fully considered closing paths. Not that I had much wealth or power relative to the elite, but it was more than most.

One of the biggest changes from my retirement, has been learning to see that global 99%. To recognize them as people rather than NPCs. While working, I'd only compare myself to corporate peers. I failed to see most of the population. This caused me to incorrectly discount my accomplishments, as well as my opportunities and advantages. I knew people earning a million dollars a month. It was hard not to adjust expectations accordingly.

Now - my food pantry work regularly presents families with 6 kids earning under $50k. Or even people who've escaped their home country with absolutely nothing and aspire to ERE level spend, via the underground cash economy. The shift in perspective is sobering. Even $10k in charity feels like a lot.

[Western Red Cedar]

I'm really enjoying the discussion here. In particular, @Scott2's perspective after a few years on the other side. I've probably read that article @Jacob posted a dozen times over the last 5 years, and think about this concept periodically as I'm getting closer to leaving my job. The perspective in the article intrigued me because the author still seemed at least a little conflicted about early retirement despite the fact that he transitioned into what I would consider a fairly successful career as an artist.

I realize that I'm unlikely to have the reach and or influence I can have while working. What has helped me is removing a sense of permanency of the decision, and giving myself permission to go back to work or pivot to something else that looks like work at some point in the future. I'm guessing this is probably more challenging in the tech sector.

I think one thing I will miss about corporate life, at least a little bit, is the external validation. I’ve been “good” at work in the same way I was “good” at school, which is to say I figured out what people thought was the right answer and gave it to them, whether or not I agreed.

It’s hard to get that sort of constant “you’re doing a good job!” in life.......

Anyway, I’ve recognized that I have this need in myself for someone to tell me I’m doing well. I think having that impulse can be helpful at times but I’m trying to think through now how I might “feed the beast” of vanity in my post-FIRE life? For what it’s worth I feel that I have intrinsic motivations— there is certainly stuff I know I want to do— but it can be scary feeling like you’re at sea and don’t know if you’re going the right direction. I guess this is the trade off with my desire for exploration and serendipity above.

Feeding the beast for me is about adventure and crafting an exciting life. If I'm honest, there is probably a small element of vanity in that, but it is primarily about doing what I want and living what I consider a life well-lived. I've come to terms with the opportunity cost that large-scale adventures demand. But, I've also recognized that they may just represent a phase, and that new doors may open.

I also recognize that it is easy to look at a certain position or accomplishment, and discount the sacrifice to relationships or health that it requires. Those who stay in the rat race may have some extra trophies on their mantle, but I'm not sure it is necessarily worth it.

[ertyu]

I've found engaging in deliberate internal self-approval helps weaken the ties to external approval. Corny as it sounds, deliberately tell yourself you're doing a good job. For maximum effect, divorce the things you congratulate yourself about from what "society" deems praiseworthy. Washing the dishes or making your bed or getting a baby through another day might not seem like things "significant enough" for aggressive self-approval because they might be seen as par for the course, but I think that's precisely what makes them a good target. The tie to external validation is weakened not just bc it's substituted by internal validation ( a new habit) but also bc the scope and scale of what one's in the habit of congratulating oneself about gets decoupled from what society thinks is significant enough to approve of.

[7Wannabe5]

OTOH, one sign that you've gone feral is when structural external validation feels more like a distraction, a drug, or a trap.

[bostonimproper]

Forking paths

When I started my first job out of college, I lived with two roommates. Let’s call them Alice and Bob. We all worked at the same company at the time, doing more or less the same job, making more or less the same money. We had equally bright prospects and were all happy to live together to save on rent. We were also close friends.

Back then, paying more than $20 for a meal was a special occasion and board games were a common Saturday night activity. Life was simple: we had no one to take care of but ourselves and even then only in the barest way that an early twenty-something usually does.

A little more than a decade later, our lives still look very similar in some ways. We each have a kid now. All of us are still working in tech and are hovering around the same “experienced peon” level across our individual domains. And we’re all still friends.

In other ways, we see the effects of our life choices start to compound.

After we split up into our own living situations, Bob moved out west. He’s fallen in and out of alcohol addiction over the years. After two years together and a surprise baby, he is in a contentious parental custody battle with his ex-partner and hasn’t been able to see his one year old in months. He tells me he is gunning hard for a promotion at work— paying for child care and/or child support is not cheap, and he’s probably on the hook for both. And in large part due to his addiction and the cost and time it’s taken to tackle it, he’s come into his thirties with little in the way of savings. He seems stressed, but more than that, he’s stuck in a state far away from all his friends and family, and very alone.

Alice is on the other end of the spectrum. She and her husband have become the proverbial Joneses. They invite us to dinner at a nice Italian place for a double date. They know the pastry chef personally, she’s married to the sommelier at one of their favorite frequent haunts.

Do we have any travel planned? they ask. They talk about their recent and upcoming trips— to New Zealand, to Japan, to Hawaii— and how eager they are to get a few more in before they have more kids (they want three and a minivan to match). How about any house projects? They’ve been planning their kitchen renovation for what seems like years now. They bought the condo unit next to theirs and they’re going to tear out one of the bedrooms to make their kitchen triple in size. Alice is also excited to send their toddler to the expensive language immersion preschool nearby once their nanny’s contract expires.

Between Alice and her husband’s two FAANG salaries and an inheritance, they can afford all this easily. They could both retire now, if they wanted, but it’d require them to pare back to a more modest lifestyle compared to the one they’ve become accustomed. Alice’s husband mentions he’s thinking about becoming a househusband, since his leadership team at work was so frustrating to work with after a re-org. I say that my husband seems to be enjoying the stay at home parent thing, but was quickly corrected. No, they’d still want a nanny of course, but he’d at home to take care of all the other stuff. I didn’t ask for clarification of what that entailed.

I wonder what our lives will look like another ten years from now. How much more different we’ll be. Even though for a time, at least on paper, everything about our lives seemed so similar.

[bostonimproper]

Unexpected Benefits Of Having A Baby

#1 Baby forces us to be healthy.

The food guidance that my husband and I have been following has suggested no salt (not even a small amount of table salt) and no refined sugars for baby. We try to make sure their meals have plenty of protein, fat, and a variety of fruits and vegetables. Since we mostly try to feed baby a version of what we eat, that has kind of forced us to eat cleaner.

Before baby came along, we never really kept fruit around the house because we’d forget about it and it’d spoil, but now that we have fruit around again, I remember how great it is! Yay, fruit!

On the exercise front, taking care of baby is quite the workout. It’s like doing all my usual stuff, but while also lifting a (wriggling) twenty pound weight with one arm. Cooking… with a twenty pound weight. Doing laundry… with a twenty pound weight. Baby signals up, I deadlift them. Oh actually they want down, set them down. Just kidding, they want up again. And so on and so forth.

Since we live halfway up a fairly steep and tall hill, pushing baby’s stroller is always a good legs/cardio burn too.

#2 No time for navel gazing or depressive spirals.

I think I had too much free time before I had a baby. It was nice from the perspective of being able to take long walks and laze about and engage in long introspective sessions. But also, after too much time alone in my own thoughts, I’d spiral either into some sort of anxious or depressive state. Nowadays, I just don’t have time for ennui, and I think my mental health is better off because of it.

#3 Fairly easy to make parent friends.

Honestly, it hasn’t been this easy to make friends since I graduated college. (I say friends loosely here, more like acquaintances but still way easier now.)

[Salathor]

The food guidance that my husband and I have been following has suggested no salt (not even a small amount of table salt) and no refined sugars for baby. We try to make sure their meals have plenty of protein, fat, and a variety of fruits and vegetables. Since we mostly try to feed baby a version of what we eat, that has kind of forced us to eat cleaner.

No sugars is definitely a great rule, and we don't use table salt either, but you have to have some sodium in your diet. Are you just not ADDING salt extra to your food?

Feeding your kids what you eat is a great plan. That's what we did and our kids (4 and 8) are amazing eaters, devouring veggies, whole grains, foreign dishes, etc. Really the only thing they don't like, oddly, is fried rice.

[bostonimproper]

No sugars is definitely a great rule, and we don't use table salt either, but you have to have some sodium in your diet. Are you just not ADDING salt extra to your food?

Yeah, sorry, to clarify: zero added salt and avoiding high sodium foods. That’s mostly meant cutting certain cheeses, swapping soy sauce for low sodium coconut aminos, sprouted grain bread instead of the usual whole wheat, homemade broths instead of premade, and not seasoning our food with salt. Also no processed food and less takeout since we have to scrounge up something for baby anyway.

[bostonimproper]

Apparently my employer wants me to oversee a team… in India. I don’t like the trajectory this role would put me on and in general trying to be the bridge between continents sounds hellish. I really don’t want to look for a new job right now, I’m too fucking tired. I have some FAANG calls the next couple weeks, but if those don’t go well I think I’m just going to quit anyway. Life is too short.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

+1 for quitting. What would the five years after look like?

[Ego]

Would there be a downside to telling them that you would rather leave than oversee the India group?