AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Where are you and where are you going?
7Wannabe5
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Your relative identity within a given social environment is also often quite important. Are you the leader or in possession of the most/best FITB relative or are you in a peer situation or are you relatively less or other than FITB? It has been my midlife experience that having an overall lifestyle that provides you with a variety of social environments in which you can bring out different aspects of your own identity is most interesting. As in, here's where I go when I want to be the big fish in a small pond, here's where I go when I want to be small fish in big pond, here's where I go for comfort and acceptance, here's where I go for challenge and potential growth, etc. etc. etc.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

grundomatic wrote:
Tue Jan 17, 2023 10:04 pm
I am struggling with the fact the "You are a product of your environment" and "Wherever you go, there you are" are both true.
It's more like you're the product of the sum of your environments with your early childhood experiences weighting much heavier than recent adult experiences. This is why a bad early childhood can be a much harder thing to work through as an adult ("wherever you go, there you are").
grundomatic wrote:
Tue Jan 17, 2023 10:04 pm
Can you better define what you are looking for? If you just need more smart people to talk to or a bigger dating pool or just someone within a 5 mile radius that wants to talk philosophy, that could probably be accomplished with a move. Finding lots of folks that to relate to a wide variety of (your) interests with some actual depth? Could be harder.
I've thought about it a lot, and I've identified a few things that are impacting me now.

For one, I've identified that I feel like I've lost most of my life up to this point because of depression and "growing up too fast." Because many of my early environments were hostile toward me (I cannot stress enough what an unhealthy environment Mormonism is), I still struggle with feeling like I can trust other people or that building relationships is worth the energy. Also because we moved every 2-3 years when I was a child, I had to constantly make new friends. The result of this was that I developed a way too serious attitude about life way too quickly. I mean, at 16, I was taking on as many hours at my new job as possible to the point I did nothing but work/school/Mormon hell activities. This trend continued into college where I did literally nothing but work and school. I now regret that I was so serious about life so young, and as a result, missed out on much of the playful socialization that's a part of normal adolescent development.

And then in my early career, I decided that work was an inherently capitalist evil activity where your employer tries to suck more out of you than they pay you, which while even if this arguably true, caused me to take my career into a slacker/loser direction. Assuming other people are hostile and work is evil is a recipe for depression, which I developed in my early 20s and still have to this day. And once you've had depression for 10+ years, it becomes increasingly hard to unravel it from your personality because it turns into who you are and not something you have.

I've been trying to undo this now but it's been difficult because I've lived with these things for so long and socializing in your 30s is a lot harder than in your teens/20s. I have to drive to hang out with people and everyone else is as tired from work as I am. I also feel like social media has ruined socialization compared to even 10 years ago. Also people who are trying to make friends in their 30s lack established social networks, which means they are usually trying to make new friends for a reason. This is usually because they have moved into the area recently (these people are fine) or they have major issues that tend to push people away from them (aka they traumadump their divorce onto you after knowing them for 10 seconds).

It's also difficult with dating because while I have gone to lesbian events, they are usually split 50/50 between actual lesbians and confused straight people who refuse to accept your boundaries. I've also found a lot of people at queer events are deeply traumatized and it's not always the best environment to be in. This is actually one area where I'm torn between trying to find a way to put myself out there better vs taking a break because it's taking a huge toll on my mental health.

I think a lot of these things could be solved by a better environment, which is one reason I've sometimes considered getting an in-office job again in another city to see if the social climate there is easier to navigate.
7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Jan 18, 2023 10:32 am
Your relative identity within a given social environment is also often quite important. Are you the leader or in possession of the most/best FITB relative or are you in a peer situation or are you relatively less or other than FITB? It has been my midlife experience that having an overall lifestyle that provides you with a variety of social environments in which you can bring out different aspects of your own identity is most interesting. As in, here's where I go when I want to be the big fish in a small pond, here's where I go when I want to be small fish in big pond, here's where I go for comfort and acceptance, here's where I go for challenge and potential growth, etc. etc. etc.
What does FITB mean? In terms of social environments, I do often lack direct peers. I am either the leader or an unwitting mentor to people a lot younger than me in positive situations OR completely on the outside/marginalized/talked over in negative situations. I do struggle with being on the "status high end" of most social interactions due being FI already/highly educated/owning a house/outwardly appearing very put together/appearing very assertive/etc. I do feel like I would benefit from more variety in the role I'm playing socially. Getting constantly pigeonholed is not fun.

ETA: Anyway, with all of this in mind, I think my strategy is shifting a bit to being super intentional with the types of environments I put myself in and what my personal boundaries are. My energy levels are still not that high and I often risk overexerting myself, so I need to be careful with where I spent them. That being said, I am also trying to approach socialization from a place of service to others instead of "fun" in hopes that also fosters connection too.

ETA2: Upon further reflection, I've come to realize my problem is my hobbies keep leading me to the same type of person, the sci-fi/fantasy geek, and what I really need to do is go find social groups that are radically different that this one.

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grundomatic
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by grundomatic »

Knowing how hard unlearning "regular" stuff can be, I can't imagine the difficulty of unlearning childhood trauma stuff. DW talks about how she went to work as much as possible to avoid being at home, though she quotes her working career as starting at 10 with babysitting.

As far as building relationships and trusting people go, all I can say is that while many may disappoint you, it's worth it when you finally get a couple close friends that you can rely on. DW's besties came from a "new to town" meetup. All since moved again, but...

I thought your law enforcement activities provided the variety in the types of people you spend time with? If you need more "bro" time I've heard secondhand that co-ed sports teams always, always need women, and that talent level is usually irrelevant. In any case, I hope you have at least one F type in your circle that will give you a hug. Wait, don't you have a dog? Hug the dog right now.

Hey, that reminds me...I once considered becoming a dog handler--that could be something law enforcement adjacent to do if you want to help some people but not shoot/fight others. You could pick cadaver, search and rescue, or therapy depending on what condition you want the humans you interact with to be in. Wait, I've said this before. Goldfish. Sorry. I'll leave this in so you can laugh at me being an old man, saying the same things over and over while also forgetting what you've said.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AxelHeyst »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Wed Jan 11, 2023 1:57 pm
@7Wannabe5 - One thing I've been considering doing for about half a year now is putting my condo up for rent then traveling around to a list of locations to see how much I like them. I was considering doing a slow travel thing where I rent somewhere for 1-3 months and try to see what living there is like. I might re-prioritize this goal higher on my goal list because I'm starting to feel like where I live is the limiting factor for a lot of my current issues.
I sort of did this, before and then interspersed with living in Serenity. I went remote and left the bay in 2016, spent four months in Europe (1 month per place), then NM for a year, then another two months in Europe, then it was Serenity, and then there were a couple 3mo rentals in different places in there.

I was in a relationship for most of that, though, so, different. Still, it seems to me that with choosing your locations well (which might be a learning curve, but no big deal, you can move on in another month if it sucks), you can find yourself in very different social environments that you don't have to drive to. Like, rent a place walking distance from downtown, or where the cool people hang out, or whatever.

The danger, of course, is that as the perma-new person, it's easy to be lonely. But... it sounds like that potential downside isn't much worse than how your current social landscape is? Plus, even some of the places I've been that weren't that great and I wouldn't go back to, I still really like that I tried it, and now I know.

Anyways, point is, I think it's a good idea, I encourage it.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by zbigi »

I don't think people who work full time can have energy for a vibrant social life (god forbid if they have children, too), unless they're some kind of exception (either in terms on unusual amount of energy, work being really non-taxing etc.). In Rousseau's "Confessions" (XVIII century France), rich social life was mostly a thing of the idle class. So, in XXI century, this leaves socializing to people who are either: rich, old or hardcore-bohemian (ERE is an intersection of rich and hardcore bohemian). Everybody else is just desperately flapping their arms, trying to keep their heads above the water. For reference, see table CO2.2 in [1]. According to that study, across OECD countries, on average 85% of people "come home from work exhausted".

[1] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver ... 092C7525B1

EDIT: fourth category might be non-hardcore bohemian, i.e. someone who either works only part-time or who alternates period of full-time employment with no work at all (that's basically me for the past 20 years). The latter will unfortunately probably back out of the social life for the periods when they're employed.

7Wannabe5
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

What does FITB mean?
Fill in the blank. I should note that my advice is somewhat based on observing that my nerdy DD31 (IOW, not unlike you ) has a very vibrant social life residing in the low rent outskirts of a major University center (most educated city in the U.S.) In fact, I recently heard her tell her more extroverted husband "No more friends!", because she is feeling over-loaded with social obligations such as performing with LGBTQ support choir or hostessing mytery game night cocktail party, etc. OTOH, I think her cicle would average towards somebody who teaches art to under-privileged kids and thinks capitalists are evil (IOW, about as Green/Yellow as you're going to average anywhere in the U.S., but still more Green than Yellow) so ...?

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@grundomatic - The law enforcement (and civics) classes did attract a much wider range of people than what I usually get in the "nerd" hobbies, which was good. I think exposure to other people who are different than you is important for personal growth. One thing I learned from that is you need to be involved in something that meets regularly and where you talk to the same people at that event regularly as well. I have considered volunteering at the PD in hopes of regular interaction with the same people, but the two things that are stopping me atm are the drive and the fact I have a lot of other goals that I'm currently not making as much progress on as I'd like. Still, I don't think it's a bad idea at all. I know they do need people to work on computer crimes, which I am qualified to do, so that's something I think about sometimes. That or I could do dispatch, which while not high paying, would be exposure to new stuff.

@AxelHeyst - How did you find staying in Europe? Was the language/culture barrier difficult? I was actually thinking of starting with NM because it's so close to Colorado that going there would not be hard at all, and I've enjoyed the culture there every time I visited. With traveling around like that a lot, you are stuck in the "new person" role, but it may not always be a bad thing if you manage to roll with it. That is, if you make some casual friends at a group for a month then move on. I've found "casual friends" are a lot easier to make than virtue friends, so it might not be a bad idea.

@zbigi - This is definitely something I'm running into with my age group. It's probably one reason why I've had more success making friends with SAHMs than working professionals. Most people in their 30s are so bogged down by work and children they don't have time for anything else, which is why it was so much easier to make friends in my 20s. Back when I was working in the office, even I was worried about this problem less because I was so tired from work that I didn't care if I was doing anything else other than play video games.

I also think this is partly why making friends now is a bit difficult because I am trying to socialize in a contextless way. It's easier to interact with people at work, in family, ect because you all know your role. Outside of that, you have to invent new parameters for a relationships, so it requires more imagination.

@7Wannabe5 - That makes sense. I have lived in college towns before, and the fact the town is usually so highly educated does change the vibe a lot. Maybe I'll make a list of some to try out.

-------------------

I've been thinking about this more and I've come to a few conclusions:

1. I have put myself in a niche box that I need to work out of in order to better connect to other people. What I mean by this is all my hobbies are things I do by myself (drawing, writing, programming), many of my interests are weird things no one else cares about (philosophy), and I tend to fill empty space by doing things like watching YouTube, which means I am watching things no one else in my physical social world is watching. Thus when I interact with people, we have artificially less in common.

So I'm going to solve this problem by trying to develop a few more "normie" interests and just radically cut the entire internet, including podcasts etc, out of my life. I don't think podcasts are bad per say if you have other normie characteristics, but I am so deep in this niche box that I need to be very strategic about what isolated hobbies I feed.

2. Writing has been both good and bad for meeting people. It's been good because I have genuinely met some cool people in my in-person writing group, and the ERE writing MMG has been great, but it's negative because I have to live in the story in my head way more, which makes connecting with reality that much harder. I think I need to find a way to turn this off somehow so I don't end up living mentally in the 1950s for hours while I'm supposed to be talking to people.

3. The burnout is being caused by the fact I am trying to change too much at once. I am trying to cram meetups into my schedule, write a novel, improve athletically, fix my diet, and now try to move, all of this on top of a regular FT job. I suppose I could try to pace these out but it's difficult because these are all things I WANT very much to do.

4. I'm entirely cutting out anything sci-fi/fantasy/geek-related from meetups. These are BY FAR the worst meetups in terms of running into negative experiences, so I'm just done there.

5. My new approach to socializing is going to be:
1. Try to have a playful attitude/as much fun as possible so it's not as draining
2. Have very, very clear boundaries so I'm not getting sucked into unhealthy things
3. Really stop caring what anyone else thinks or feels about anything. People's opinions say more about them than they do me and I don't have the energy to be deeply embedded into any rando's internal life
4. Seek out HEALTHY environments with WELL-ADJUSTED people
5. Approach the interaction from the perspective of service. That is, try to serve the other person rather than worry about if it's fun for me while sticking to my boundaries so I don't get burned

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AxelHeyst »

AE wrote:@AxelHeyst - How did you find staying in Europe? Was the language/culture barrier difficult?
(western) Europe is so easy. Any language issues you run into are going to be fun little frustrations that just turn into stories. Some places of course are a little more challenging than others, but the worst I encountered was 'frustrating but still pleasant'. (YMMV with Paris, from hearsay...) In Greece, no one is going to be annoyed that you don't know Greek because only Greeks speak Greek. In Spain, you might get some rolled eyes if you can't manage tourist Spanish at the cashier of a grocery store.

Generally speaking, the cultural differences are going to be positive. I mean, most of the cultural differences I experienced as a traveler were nice - oh hey these people are more laid back, they're more inclusive, they're capable of having intelligent and informed conversations about politics and world events without screaming at each other...

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by jacob »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:43 pm
In Greece, no one is going to be annoyed that you don't know Greek because only Greeks speak Greek. In Spain, you might get some rolled eyes if you can't manage tourist Spanish at the cashier of a grocery store.
It basically comes down to the size of the country. Humans in smaller countries all learn English from age 9 or 11 already. Humans in larger countries still insist on propagating/preserving their domestic language. For example, I lived for 4 years in the German speaking region of Switzerland. Never a biggie to switch to English or Hochdeutsch (standard German). Whereas in Germany, right across the border, the official stance was to best learn German. As a result, I learned how to listen/understand German but never got much practice speaking it.

Add: Unless deliberate efforts are made, this is also the destiny of immigrants to Denmark ... or by extension, probably any small country. A corollary of that is that insofar one needs to be forced [by the environment] to learn a foreign language, it's best to move to be big country rather than a small country. In small countries, you'll likely end up speaking English while listening local.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by avalok »

jacob wrote:
Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:58 pm
It basically comes down to the size of the country. Humans in smaller countries all learn English from age 9 or 11 already.
However, in Italy I believe the regional differences are still stubbornly held, despite the attempts to normalise the language.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by theanimal »

If you end up checking out NM, I think Los Alamos is worth a look. Mrs. Animal and I spent a few days in the area last month and very much enjoyed it. There are a ton of outstanding nature options nearby with Santa Fe NF, Bandelier NM and Valles Caldera just outside of town. Then of course all the science labs. The town had a very vibrant feel. Though I'm not sure how much of that is people just passing through versus locals. We were there in the offseason and none of the trails/nearby areas were too crowded so I can't imagine it had too much of a factor.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. All of that is good to know. I think I'll start with some US cities first since those will be very easy then give Europe a shot afterward.

Also @theanimal, thanks for that feedback. I've only ever been to Santa Fe, but I loved it there. The natural desert was stunning. I'll look into those other towns too because a road trip to NM would be a great place to start.

Right now, I'm trying to figure out the logistical details of how to do this because I've lived in my current condo for the past 7 years. However, I just see no future for me in the rich suburbs so I'm committed at this point to getting out of here. Boy do I wish past-me had been more committed to minimalism! I have so much crap I'm getting rid of and mostly just giving it away for free because I don't want to spent hours selling plates for $30 on ebay.

Current logistical issues to figure out:
1. My animals. I have a dog and a cat. The dog weighs 15 pounds so I feel like I could bring her on trips pretty easily, especially road trips. The cat is another issue. I might be able to work out a petsitting option for him by giving my brother my old computer in exchange for him watching the cat for a few months. If I do a more slow travel option of renting places for a few months to a year + road trip, he might be able to come with me then. I'm not sure.

2. What to do with my condo? There are a few options. I can leave it empty, rent it on a yearly basis, AirBnB it, or sell it. Right now I am leaning toward renting it so I can undo this choice easily if I decide I want to move back and then I can sell it once housing prices recover. Note that my condo is the cheapest thing in a rich neighborhood, so I won't have any issues selling it.

3. How to find places to live? I know some EREers have done the house sitting or AirBnB thing, but I think I am just going to rent units with kitchens on a weekly or monthly basis for awhile to simplify the logistics. I am still working FT through all of this so reliability, consistency, and control over dates is more important than price.

4. What to do with all my stuff? If I rent the condo, I can put a few key things into a storage unit. However, I have no idea what to do with all my furniture. Should I rent the condo furnished? Is this going to become a problem when the TV breaks and the tenants want me to buy a new TV? Should I just sell all the furniture on craigslist? The only remotely nice piece of furniture I have is my couch. Everything else is basically IKEA thrift store tier.

5. How to eat healthy/exercise while traveling? These two are very important to me right now because I am trying to make my health a huge priority.

6. My plan roughly is to go to NM for a month while leaving my condo empty as a trial run. If I like it, I might then rent the condo and try moving to NYC for a few months just for the sake of the experience. Ideally I'd like to use Feb to get everything ready then go to NM in March and then possibly NYC in May, but this target may be too aggressive with FT work/writing the novel/focusing on health goals.

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grundomatic
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by grundomatic »

You could have someone housesit for you--your condo and pets taken care of, giving you a little more flexibility in where you stay (no dog). There are currently 54 sits listed in North America with a duration of a month or longer on the site I use, so it's something people do. We watched someone's place last summer that was gone for a month--they had split it into two sits, so we were there for just two weeks.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by mountainFrugal »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 11:25 am

5. How to eat healthy/exercise while traveling? These two are very important to me right now because I am trying to make my health a huge priority.

6. My plan roughly is to go to NM for a month while leaving my condo empty as a trial run. If I like it, I might then rent the condo and try moving to NYC for a few months just for the sake of the experience. Ideally I'd like to use Feb to get everything ready then go to NM in March and then possibly NYC in May, but this target may be too aggressive with FT work/writing the novel/focusing on health goals.
We did quite a bit of vanlife checking out different Western towns and cities before we found our current location. We did not have any pets though (I think this is a harder constraint if you want to rent short-term, but not a deal breaker). If we liked the place, we would find a short term rental and we used our imaginations to pretend we lived there (most places we looked at did not have house sitting available). After a few places where we knew people and a few other places where we knew no one doing longer term rentals, we decided on our current town. The prototyping really helped us decide despite some "loss of money". We then ratcheted up to a 1 year lease and tried hard to meet people. I think with your groups and meet-up adventures it will be easy to take a similar attitude towards a new town. We kept detailed journals about the places. How we felt, what we did, etc. Then used all of this to decide that our current town had all the things that we deemed important. Interestingly, some of the things I thought were the top of my list ended up being less important after living in a place that did not have them (mainly a coffee shop or similar place to hangout outside the home). We hardly ever do that and usually only when traveling now as an example.

Doing slower, less stressful travel will help you sleep better, cook more healthy food, and find time to exercise. (rather than doing a few days in a number of places). Longer term rentals with a kitchen are also necessary. An alternative could be an instant pot and a fridge/freezer.

NM was on our list of places. Beautiful state with not a lot of people. Santa Fe has a really cool art scene. Taos is small and very crystal healing centric (I don't think this is your thing). Also like @theanimal said, Los Alamos has a lot of very smart people that live there because the main employer is the national lab. I look forward to hearing about your travels in NM for this cool experiment (also NYC). I think the contrast between the two is also going to be really interesting!

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@grundomatic - That's a good idea, I'll look into that. What site did you use, if you don't mind me asking? I'm going to run the numbers and see what the most cost effective way (while minimizing the amount of pain I have to deal with) to handle this might be. I may be able to get a friend or relative to watch the pets for a week or so, but if I am planning significant traveling, I don't want to wear out my welcome with that. I currently pay ~$800 with utilities for the condo, so getting people to house sit means I am paying about that much to for pet sitting. Given that it usually costs about 30% more to get hotels that allow dogs, it might actually be cheaper.

@mountainFrugal - I like that method because it's letting you rapidly prototype if you like somewhere, essentially. So you could go from weekend trip -> 1 month rental -> 1 year lease while trying to act as if you live there while you are there instead of just treating it like a vacation. This might put my time horizon a bit longer while trying to find somewhere, but that's not a problem given the WFH job. The WFH job is really amazing for the flexibility and having some extra money so you can buy flexibility with travel.

Another option given the pets might be to get a 6 month lease or something in a centrally-located apartment then do weekend trips to cities around that area so the pets have somewhere to stay.

I suppose I might be able to do some van-travel type thing too, but I do worry a bit more about safety with that given I am traveling alone.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AxelHeyst »

Van traveling is amazing and I heartily recommend it... But (since journals are open season on unsolicited advice unless noted otherwise :D ) I don't see it being a hometelic action for you right now. Vanlife is a whooooole logistical thing just by itself. Now add pets. Now add WFH. Now add trying to integrate / check out life in different communities. You gotta be so psyched on vanlife that it honestly makes you kind of stupid to the logistical considerations, OR it has to be a really good fit for your WoG, for it to be worth it, imo. If you have a car, or swap for a car, that you can sleep/camp in fairly comfortably for a few days in between locations, that could be a solid move.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@AH - Your thoughts here are pretty close to what I was thinking myself. :lol: The van thing does sound great and I'd like to try it out someday, but I don't think it's a good fit for the pets/WFH/writing due to the logistical difficulty. However, I'd love to try it someday. Visiting all the national parks is one of my bucket list items. Maybe once I quit my job for real. :lol:

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

Monthly Review

For 2023, I am following a stricter planning system than I have before. These are the things I am tracking:
1. Daily mood
2. Daily habit resolutions (10 habits)
3. Time tracking (how I use hours each day)
4. Daily todo list
5. Daily summary
6. Weekly goals/reviews
7. Monthly goals/reviews
8. Books/movies I've seen
9. Screen time
10. Diet
11. Monthly calendar of appointments and social engagements
12. Spending

The increased tracking has been very useful in bringing greater visibility into my own behavior and life. Being able to look back on what I actually did and how I actually feel is helping keep me grounded in improving my life in realistic ways.

RESULTS

Successes
1. My social life is improving. I've made a few friends and even went on a few dates. I feel like I'm getting the hang of finding interesting people while filtering out people with red flags. Losing my social life is one major downside to potentially moving, so that haunts the back of my mind.

2. Made significant progress on organizing my novel thanks to the MMG writing group and my in-person groups.

3. Doing much better setting and tracking goals.

Observations
1. Tracking my mood and thoughts has made me realize how random these things are and how much they change every single day. I'm going to try and get less attached to any given whim because my mood/thoughts seem to be highly random and what upsets me one day is something I promptly forget or feel differently about the next day.

2. I feel much better when I drastically cut out basically the entire internet. I am already doing way better about this than I used to, but I'm noticing how deeply even five minutes on reddit or 1 YouTube video derail my mood. The internet feels like it's engineered to hijack observation #1 and then derail my more thoughtful goals.

3. Burnout and fatigue are by far my biggest limiting factors right now. My energy still feels very limited and it's incredibly frustrating. There were a few days where I pushed myself too hard then paid the price in diminished ability to function the next day or week.

Needs improvement
1. Diet and exercise - I slipped on these goals. Exercise has been difficult with the weather. Everyday is 3F and snowing; I'm not exaggerating. Digging my car out of a snowdrift then warming it up to drive 1 mile to the gym in subzero weather is a disincentive.

I am also struggling with my diet. I want to lose weight but not eating tanks my blood sugar and makes my depression/lack of energy way worse.

FEBRUARY GOALS
1. Enhanced routines - Optimizing my routine is going to help with my limited energy levels and ensuring I meet all of my goals. This is, of course, difficult when you work from home and live alone because it's easy to slip into slug mode. On the other hand, this gives me more control over my schedule that I can leverage into success if I am strategic.

So I'm going to attempt to optimize my routine to meet my diet/exercise/writing/social/energy goals.

2. Minimalism - Still need to declutter/clean for the road trips and for my general benefit.

3. No surf/deep work - Going to go nuclear and cut all social media/basically the entire internet out of my life per Cal Newport's digital minimalism strategy. As I actually try to live my life, I find 99% of the internet is a terrible ROI and I can do better with my attention.

zbigi
Posts: 978
Joined: Fri Oct 30, 2020 2:04 pm

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by zbigi »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:27 pm
3. Burnout and fatigue are by far my biggest limiting factors right now. My energy still feels very limited and it's incredibly frustrating. There were a few days where I pushed myself too hard then paid the price in diminished ability to function the next day or week.
This is the story of my life. In my case, I think these are just my inherent limits and can't be "fixed". I just need to have good amounts of slack in my daily and weekly routines - if I don't, I'll crash and will spend as much time or more recovering anyway. This meant having very little energy left for living when working full time, which was my biggest motivation behind retiring early. Now, when I no longer work, I still need to be cognizant of my limits, but at least 100% of my available energy go into things I actually want to do.

AnalyticalEngine
Posts: 949
Joined: Sun Sep 02, 2018 11:57 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@zbigi - I know exactly how you feel. It's like doing too much stuff just ruins my ability to function or enjoy anything about my life. This was definitely a contributing factor to my general misery when working in the office. And even working from home at the perfect ERE job of 20hr/week for $150k a year, this job still drains about half my energy. When my energy is so limited, losing half of it is a genuine hit. I've thought about quitting, but the market keeps tanking and I'm just barely at my minimum FI number of $650k. It's pretty hard to walk away from such a ridiculously lucrative job for the effort required.

What I'm trying to do now is set up my schedule such that I respect my limits while doing everything else I need to do. This is where prioritization becomes so important, as is cutting anything useless out of my life.

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