@Melo
Thanks
Yes, that’s right. I guess I, like most humans, have a tendency to devalue what we have until it’s gone. I intend to live in good health as long as I can, so I really need to start prioritizing it now.
I think I’ve observed the tendency in me to always prioritize some other goal – watch-capability, the internships – over sport at the margin. By which I mean, the moment I have room to breathe, I’m jogging on deck. But my actual list of values (= how I actually spend my free time, as opposed to how I would like to spend it) , based on how I lived the last couple months, seems to be something like #1 reading, #2 requirements of the service, #3 health. I often simply didn’t get to #3. The choice often was simply “go to sport or go to sleep” and I chose sleeping. Not sure if that was the wisest thing to do, but it also wasn’t the worst
I really hope that will be changed for the next deployment, otherwise I’ll reconsider what to do.
Our network connection was between terrible and nonexistent the last couple of days, so whenever I tried to post, the forum wouldn't load. What follows is a continuation of the above, on a hopefully more upbeat note.
(Section IV is what I wrote just now.)
(And yes, this too was mostly written instead of sleeping. But I lucked out on the watch rotation this sea turn, so I’m still fairly well-rested on top of tagging along in additional watches on top of my own in other departments.)
In which I consider the options available to me, realize there are a few other subjects on my mind, and go off on a tangent before circling back to the original subject.
I’m writing this asynchronously, since we’re pretty much offline rn. I’m still amazed that the internet connection even allowed me to post the other journal entries and respond to DM’s (many thanks for that DM btw, it really made my day!).
I’ve heard it is good practice to name your feelings, so here it is: I’m exhausted and tired. That’s it.
I’m not actually “down”, most of the time, just feeling like I could sleep for a week.
There’s shades of grey to everything. I’ve finally found people who I really like and admire and with whom I can talk for hours, whose company I enjoy. The loneliness I felt for the first months at sea has disappeared.
We had another engine disturbance exercise today, the second where I was in a directing position. I’m finally getting the impression that I know what I’m doing, and my supervisor says I’m making great progress. “Just another couple exercises, so you’ll gain routine, and it’ll be really good.” I’m not actually bad at what I do, it’s just that I’m used to being outstanding in academic pursuits and now I’m merely good. I’m learning quickly by objective measures, just not as fast as I’m used to.
Our next deployment will be twice as long as this one, and I’m counting the days till the chop-out. I’m not homesick; I don’t usually get homesickness. I’m just really looking forward to spending a couple of days on my own, with absolutely no one around. I’m not sure what I’d do if our current mission were as long as the next one will be. It seems fairly obvious that my current position is too high-intensity for me. Maybe it’s not the position per se, just my position + the watch-capability training and now the various internships so I can figure out where to transfer to. Either of those is probably comparable to one of the major projects I want to undertake next year, and I’m not willing to just not do those. So I should probably transfer to something that’s lower intensity.
Like I said, I’ve been considering communications, operations and navigation. The only department where I’ve done an internship so far is operations, which I really liked. It was interesting and, to a considerable degree, played to my strengths. Of course, as an enlisted soldier, you’re essentially “a better-paid secretary”, meaning that after the initial excitement has worn off it gets boring. I know the hours are less crazy than in my current position, but I’m unsure how much. Comms and navi might be lower intensity still. I’ve arranged for an internship for one and still need to talk to people for the other. That said, it might get down to where there are open positions available. AFAIK, there are open positions everywhere, but who knows. I think I’d be fine with either option.
There’s yet another option: transferring out of the Navy and into the Cyber Force. My dad thinks that’s a good idea if only because there’s a chance it might lead to IT security career capital, whereas what I do now is dead-end for everything except the Reserves. I’m very interested in cyber security, but only for personal reasons: I think that it’s a very important field to be aware of in the coming decades if one’s aim is to live freely and self-governed. However, it’s doubtful if the German military is 1) up to date in that area, and 2) if, being untrained personnel, I’d be getting insights that are actually so valuable.
(We have IT security personnel aboard too, just not from the rank and file, so AFAIK I can’t transfer to that department. Something to investigate.)
My salary would take a hit too, -2k/month for every month that we’re at sea. It would not have the stresses of seafaring, but I doubt it would be relaxed or score high on “work-life balance” questionnaires. OTOH, I’ll get 3+ deployment medals in the Navy, which, I dunno, look good on my CV I guess. So, how seriously should I investigate transferring into the Cyber Force as a possibility?
I like the idea of being mostly done with employed work early in my twenties. I could save up 100k-200k, the groundwork for a FI stache. That’s considerably easier in the Navy. If the transfer to another specialization aboard the same ship can actually counter the adverse effects, then maybe it’s worth it. I’d phase out employment with a few months per year in the Reserves till I’m thirty or so, after which I’d be free to only accept interesting positions that would give me insight into how the world works, like in intelligence. There are capabilities that the German Military does not actually possess in huge numbers, so they rely on their Reservists if they need certain expertise, e.g. law experts (we have one aboard right now) or experts on the relations with certain countries, like Russia. I find this option really appealing, if I can find one or more areas of expertise that fits into my web of goals and that the German Military needs.
(On an aside note: It’s always good to have abilities that are in demand. For example, we might have to take aboard refugees. I really don’t want to have to search them for weapons, which I’d do per default due to my sex. I also speak fluent French. So I volunteered as translator and got accepted. Amazingly enough, the person in charge of this didn’t even want to see my French certs, she just wanted to know where I learned it and accepted “student exchange” as an answer. I guess the lesson is to prioritize actual abilities over fancy certifications. A house of cards built out of the latter will collapse the moment it is tested.)
Then there’s another can of worms that needs to be opened, the sooner the better presumably.
It’s the question of expatriation.
I really like my home country. I like the natural world and the culture, the language, the customs and the quirks. I do not like many aspects of our politics and what you might call the general direction where we’re headed. This isn’t just me: The number of older adults, who don’t know each other and come from wildly different walks of life, who have told me that if they were my age but had their current perspective they would seriously consider leaving, and advised me to at least think about it, is, frankly, astonishing.
There’s something that’s been on my mind for a while now: I’m wondering just how many people, over the course of the twentieth century, would have dearly liked to have a second citizenship. (Also see threads on this site for examples.) And I’m wondering why this century should be different.
I’m eligible for Spanish citizenship through ancestry. I haven’t yet researched the exact requirements that apply to me, but AFAIK it’s something simple like living in Spain one year and passing an easy exam. I’ve been considering to do it, just to have the option and also pass it on to the next generation of the family, should there be one.
Of course, the Mediterranean climate is too hot and dry for me, so there’s that
An obvious continuation in this line of thought is “if yes, then where to?”. My gut says Canada, the British Isles and Scandinavia are might be good to think about. They have less population density, though I’m not sure that automatically translates to having more freedom to do your thing. But for all that they’re similar in important ways, they probably also have similar problems.
This ties back to something that I’ve so far only been hinting at: Hedging My Moral Bets. I haven’t yet written much about it because there’s far too much where I’m still unclear myself. So, to make this as absolutely clear as I can: the following isn’t anything as certain as opinion or even observation, just gut feeling. It’s in the nature of gut feelings that they’re misleading and unreliable. It’s also in their nature to be very difficult to ignore. They’re like the voice inside your head that says “Don’t!” when your brain, through whatever means, has gotten convinced that it’s logical for you to jump off a cliff. (Ignore my shitty metaphor. I meant to explain how hard, even impossible it would be to ignore the gut feeling, but I’m not sure that’s the message it gets across. So, please ignore it.)
So, what does make my stomach clench?
Mostly it’s an apparent attitude of “the end justifies the means”, if the end is alleged to be some noble moral goal that’s held to be above questioning, that permeates society, most readily apparent but not limited to my own generation.
Examples of goals that were Sacred Cows since I’ve become politically aware: saving the Earth from global warming/climate change, stopping the rise of alleged neo-nazism, saving us all from covid. Obviously, none of those are inherently BS. But each of those has been used as justification for proposals that undermine the democratic process, inhibit open-ended public discussion and instead enhance tribal warfare, and ostracize those who are on the wrong side of whatever fence currently is the rallying point. I’ve been on the wrong side of one of those fences when I was 17, and I’ve utterly lost my trust in a good deal of our societal institutions as a result, like mass media and the decision-making processes of our society.
Of course I’m aware that it may not be a wise idea to let my personal experience color my opinion too much. Hence why I say that there’s too much I don’t know about how the world works for me to have an informed opinion on a number of subjects. I also don’t want this journal to become filled with political debates of whatever kind, and most definitely not about subjects that are against the forum rules.
Now I have the suspicion that people are going to tell me that whatever issues I might currently have with Germany I will not escape from by going to another country, and also that leaving isn’t always the best solution. Yes, I see that too. And I have no idea what I’m gonna do. Except maybe study abroad so I can gather more data, or something.
Related to the above subject, I’m also pretty much past simple activism. I used to have a number of hills I’d readily die on, but now my focus has shifted. It’s not that I’d now completely disagree with my past self’s reasoning, just that I now see most of my past self’s actions as an utter waste of time, a learning experience at best. My current perspective on ideologies is something like: 1) they’re usually built around some kind of model of reality that, like models do, explains some things really well and is wholly blind to others; 2)whichever ideology we belong to usually depends on what benefits us the most, either materially or signalling-wise or both.
Just think of well-off kids that feel good because they wail about social justice, or well-off adults supporting the free market or whatever else is responsible for their material comfort, and so on. Of course this is rarely simple: there’s costly signalling and counter-signalling, markers of ingroups and outgroups and so on.
Following it through these lenses makes most political/ideological debate utterly tiresome. That’s not to say that productive discussions cannot be had; in fact, I founded and used to lead the philosophical debate forum at my old school, and something I saw a number of times and occasionally got as feedback was that someone who was previously a (usually self-proclaimed) -ist stopped “seeing the world as black and white”.
One of the projects I’ve been collecting notes on is a blog of sorts where I’d be writing about ideologies and philosophies past and present and a collection of these-are-the-actual-arguments-not-just-the-strawmen for the memetic tribes (in Peter Limberg’s terms) in the current public debate. The aim would be something like facilitate debate that’s a honest exchange of ideas and goal-/solution-oriented. Something I think we sorely need. (And I, at some point in the future, might not be wholly bad at.)
The last thing that’s been on my mind recently has to do with studying the humanities at university. Sure, there’s the whole thing of “being smart enough to go to college and being smart enough to not do it”. Hence why the option of getting to semi-FI first is so appealing to me. I just really don’t want to become dumber in the years in between through lack of intellectual stimulation.
But it’s dubious if completing a degree remote is possible while in the Navy ( I think the probability that I could do it in the Cyber Force is higher, but these assumptions need to be investigated.) I’ve also said, quite often in conversation with other people, that “I don’t want to be too old when I go to university”. Like, I don’t want to be the 23-year-old sitting next to a bunch of 18-year-olds. Maybe this is an irrational fear. If I’m going to go for something with bad economic ROI like econ+history, then getting to (semi-)FI first is probably one of my better ideas. I just need to make sure that I use the years in between productively, which is mostly a function of “how much leftover energy and time do I have?” Right now, the answer is: not enough.
A (major?) risk of the current FI-first strategy is the dead-endedness of my current job. (Excluding the Reserves, but those are by definition excluded if I end up not staying in Germany). In my notes, the FI stache is only a backup to other incomes, like e.g. writing the above-mentioned blog on substack. But all of those ideas are wholly theoretical, there is none where I’ve completed a proof-of-concept, and I don’t want to plan with them unless I can reasonably estimate if they could generate income. What I mean is, the standard “What if FIRE doesn’t work out?” counter-argument of just going back to work isn’t easily possible here. It might be a good idea to have at least one standard-employment backup plan. I’m not sure if having a bunch of humanities degrees (and one in economics…) constitutes a feasible one.
To counter my own argument above: it seems much more appealing to me to
1) have to dedicate a number of hours each day to activities that meet my needs in frugal ways /go to unusual lengths to save money (but having the rest of the time available for my own pursuits),
rather than
2) having to work 9-to-5 to pay for the “convenient” solutions. With the former, I might not ever need a “normal” job. But I’d rather plan my life in such a manner that I don’t exclude the possibility of a normal career, in case 19-year-old me wasn’t actually that good at making decisions that are good for 29- or 49-year-old me. (
)
Anyway. The conclusion I’ve drawn from my own rambling is: I need to seriously consider the Cyber Force option.
Now I gotta stop because my watch will begin soon. Apparently there’s no internet connection right now, so here’s hoping it’ll load.
II.
A day later, but the internet hasn’t been back on yet.
It occurred to me that a number of my goals and projects, including but not limited to a remote degree, would be significantly easier to tend to if I weren’t away so frequently.
IOW, transferring to the cyber force makes sense web-of-goals-wise. The only detriments are less deployment experiences/medals and less cash inflow. The latter could be countered by working longer, till I’m 25 or so.
I’ll stop here, since the room where I normally write during my off hours is occupied and I’m pretty sure my typing is disturbing a comrade’s sleep.
III.
Still writing offline, but the internet connection has been on sporadically. Maybe it’ll post this time.
It’s funny verging on embarrassing how, despite naming my forum avatar after something that has an inherent connection to webs, I still utterly failed to incorporate my web-of-goals into my decision-making.
Yesterday’s thought was that I was failing badly at quite a lot of my goals (indeed you might say: basic functioning) and that it would be easier to achieve all I’ve set out to do with the stressors of seafaring removed. I made a potential plan that went something like this: finish this deployment and the next (probably without changing tracks as it would make the subsequent transfer harder), then add something like 4 years and transfer to the cyber forces, where I would hopefully get to see interesting things and accomplish a significant amount of non-work goals. (I have project lists and a Renaissance skills list, will see if I can get them into a shape to post them later.) Like, a healthy sports and eating routine, to start with.
I’d be 25 when I leave the army and have completed a Bachelor’s degree. I’d also be leanFI.
Then, during yesterday’s watch, I considered everything from a perspective farther removed still.
Let me start by capturing a few fleeting thoughts.
What I’ve stumbled upon a number of times in these forums is that, when people reminisce on their journeys, they find that from a cashflow perspective they could have skipped (most of the) accumulation phase.
The ERE Wheaton Level table even says of the higher levels “NW just a backup to other sources of income & in runaway mode”.
So far I haven’t really thought about the consequences of this because of the added security of FI, the level of redundancy, increased optionality and, last but not least, the credibility a high NW adds to one’s lifestyle design in the eyes of society. Which are all good points. But it may not be necessary to go about it “5 years of ft work → FI”.
The goal of “having the financial aspect of life mostly solved before 25” is certainly an ambitious one.
(The voice in my head that likes to pretend it’s my voice of reason whispers that it’s somewhere between “that’s crazy” and “that will make you crazy”)
And sure, it might be done by e.g. starting a business, if one’s willing to assume the associated risks, which I’m not. I’m also not sure that the entrepreneurial type is a 100% fit for me. So that leaves employed work.
And if one’s goal is FI before 25, then the above option sounds like the best plan I’ve come up with so far.
OTOH, prioritizing accumulation at my current life stage seems like it’ll probably have a bunch of other drawbacks. Starting, but not ending with, neglecting education. And spending one’s most physically and mentally capable years in pursuit of something that’s merely a means to an end. Sure, it lessens some material constrains in the years after, but is it worth it?
I spent yesterday’s watch mulling this over and coming up with something like a hybrid solution.
My current 23-month enlistment ends somewhere early 2023 just shy of my 21th birthday. I could turn this into a three-year enlistment in the Navy, with a track change to an operative department. How much money I’d actually manage to save during this period is unclear, but it’s realistic that it won’t be drastically less than 100k (barring the unforeseen like an injury that prevents me from going on deployment). Saving an average of 30k+/year sounds doable.
If I manage to beat inflation with my stache, aided by a modest savings rate the “money problem” will slowly solve itself.
(Did I mention that I love problems that solve themselves?)
I would go to university and focus on the things I want to do, might get good at with practice, that might be useful for others too. There’s no shortage of those.
At some point during or afterwards, I might want to speed up the accumulation, so I could engage in something more risky of the entrepreneurial sort, or serve several months per year in the Reserves, or go back to active duty, but with a completed degree and as an officer.
I guess the bottom line is: Due to the extremeness of ERE, time to compound doesn’t play as much of a role. It’s not strictly necessary to achieve FI now while in the rank and file, when I could just come back a bit later with a degree and as an officer, with a higher base salary and (much) more interesting tasks. I’d be “correctly sorted”, in Dad’s words. The higher base salary would probably even negate the lost time of not doing it now. I’m pretty sure that’s the better option all around.
A few words about loose ends.
Navy vs Cyber Force
I’m suspecting that I shouldn’t underestimate the amount of street cred I get through having been on overseas deployment multiple times. My “cyber security” problem can be worked on through other means.
My Dad insisted, ever since I came up with my Voluntary Military Service idea, that it would be great on my CV. I didn’t really see why. I saw polite society’s general disdain of all things military, and thought that in terms of employability it would be a net wash at best, but said “fuck that” to employability and, more generally, to conventions. Now I see what he means.
Having completed overseas deployment successfully shows, among other things, perseverance, the ability to withstand extreme adverse circumstances, and having seen (and functioned in) the “real world”. Sure, how good something looks on one’s CV should not be an overvalued criterion. What I’m concerned with is not closing off the “normal life path” option for myself. This isn’t really as dead-ended as I thought, by which I mean it’s possible to integrate it into normal-sounding life narratives. Why that might matter has to do with Endgame (tbc).
My actual, selfish reason for Voluntary Military Service was related to the bit about the “real world” above.
I grew up considerably less sheltered than many other kids at my middle class high school, and was often struck by the Ivory Tower naivete of most of my classmates, teachers, the students and TA’s and who I encountered at science fairs, orientation days and the like, and so on. By which I mean that they seemed ignorant of blue-collar and not-public-sector work and life realities. I decided that I didn’t want to get trapped in such a limited worldview, and made the decision for my next step after school accordingly. So far it’s been working out.
Technical departments vs operational departments
I’m not sure how evident this is to outsiders, but the workload between them differs considerably. The latter have their sets of tasks that needs to be done, which they mostly do on sea watch. The former have their gazillion things that need to be done and then sea watch on top of that. Like I said, I’d hopefully be transferring from a higher to a lower intensity role, but that’s not the only factor.
As a technician, my world ends with the confines of the ship. As an operator, it begins there. I’d absorb a lot more of geopolitics than if I wipe down the diesels all day. This is (very) relevant to me, and is the reason I’d give to someone who I don’t want to burden with the minutiae.
(I don’t regret having started as a technician. It’s given me an insight into the inner workings of the ship that was very fascinating, and will probably prove transferrable to something at some point. A ship is a floating city with all the challenges that implies. Also, if I ever end up as an officer aboard at some point, it will be invaluable.)
Earning my daily bread at uni
(running out of time to write now)
Will mostly figure this out on the go, but I have reason to be optimistic.
tbc
IV.
Endgame
I don’t have a definitive answer to the question of what I want to do with my life. (Yet.)
A few things seem like good ideas though.
80000hours.org is a great website for finding professional inspiration. One of their suggested career paths is economic historian, which seems like a good fit for me. (I wouldn't want to go into academia if I actually had to earn a living there. But while coasting to FI? Why not?) It seems like it might combine well with another of their career paths, the “public intellectual” route; since whatever ideas one comes up with eventually need to be shared with the world. The easiest way to increase your impact is, after all, to get others on board.
My Renaissance projects list, which is constantly growing and evolving, would be more than enough to keep me busy all my life. But what’s the point of that? Our species faces some fairly big problems, and I’ve never been one to ignore problems after they’ve entered my awareness. This isn’t different. But “solving the world’s problems” isn’t an actionable plan. You need some kind of angle of attack. And I’ve determined a while back, before discovering EA/ERE IIRC, that the biggest intersection of things which interest me, things I’m good at and things that might lead to earning money is somewhere at the boundary between history and economics. Possibly philosophy thrown into the mix (of the useful kind, not the Ivory Tower exercises of mental masturbation.) Plus: I’m an alright public speaker.
(There might be another intersection of the three things above for me: creative writing. As for spreading the word, it might be more effective still. But success in that route seems to depend too much on things outside of my circle of control to make it my sole plan. Of course, that objection is similarly valid for the other option. And both probably benefit from a Stoic approach where one does not get worked up over things outside of one’s circle of control.)
So that’s me sketching my endgame while I’m still at the earliest levels of the life game. Obviously it’s subject to revision. But it’s something to keep in mind, to work towards to.
(And yes, I intend to talk to the 80k hours career planners at some point.)