Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Twenty-one years ago today was the last day Mrs. Ego and I worked full-time jobs. Since then we have had many adventures but have only just begun.

Seemed like an appropriate time to start a journal.

Hell yeah! Looking forward!

Cool

Tell us more about how you got your current gig as apartment manager in desirable HCOL area.

Stoked to learn more from you Ego. Your experiences, advice, and contributions here have been very valuable!

Its going to take a novel to get us up to speed to the present

What a pleasant surprise to start the month! You've always been an inspiration, looking forward to reading more.

Nice. Thanks for taking this time.

nice!

Thanks folks!

Priority #1 is building and maintaining my relationship with Mrs. Ego as it is prerequisite to everything else and cannot be purchased at any price. Today I bought a white suit jacket at the swap meet for $3. I have been tasked with procuring a full Miami Vice costume by next weekend for 80s party. Don't ask. Reminder: this is priority #1. Repeat as necessary.

Priority #2 is health & fitness since it is prerequisite for everything else we want to accomplish / maintain and it cannot be purchased at any price.

My ideal week looks like this right now. I have yet to accomplish a fully unblemished ideal week. Close but no cigar. I generally fail with fasting.

Monday, AM weights (1h30m), kettle bells (10m), swim 1500 free in under 29 minutes
Tuesday, AM TRX (1h15m), spin class (perform ftp test sufficient to ensure failure during class)
Wednesday, Run 1 hour, 38 min of which is in the deep sand at the upper edge of the beach (no tire tracks!)
Thursday, AM weights (1h30m), kettle bells, spin class (perform ftp test sufficient to ensure failure during class)
Friday, AM TRX (1h15m), swim 1500 free in under 28 minutes
Saturday, AM weights (1h30m), Run same as Wednesday but sub 1 hour to base entrance and back.
Sunday, rest.

Daily intermittent fasting eating window 10am-3pm (past 4pm is fail) (>6hrs is fail)
Eat more mushrooms
Get up and out to the gym before Jocko every morning
Figure out a way to do one bay swim per week (short post-run sprint?)

Common points of failure.
5pm popcorn when craving salt. Solution: more miso!
Skipping Saturday AM run because late arrival at beach and hangry. Remember, this is priority #2.
Skipping kettle bells for no good reason.

Mrs. Ego is a machine. She has a schedule similar to mine but later in the day with running, weights, crossfit/yoga hybrid, pilates and teaching two (this week four) yoga classes per week. She is more ruthless about not letting other crap disrupt her workout. I need to follow her example.

Up before 4:30 eh? What time do you go to bed?

white belt wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 01, 2021 5:45 pm

Tell us more about how you got your current gig as apartment manager in desirable HCOL area.

Dumb luck
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1869

That said, my business degree majors were real estate and law with a minor in finance, so that helped. Also, I bought an off-campus apartment building (43rd and Walnut in Philly) while in college and learned a LOT.

theanimal wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 01, 2021 7:45 pm

Up before 4:30 eh? What time do you go to bed?

In the basement gym ready to work at 4:00 am. Even earlier on Saturday as I want to be at the swap meet by 5am, though sometimes I have to go down later in the day and finish up. I am asleep most days by 8pm and wake without an alarm. I have always been wired this way. In college I used to run the Schuylkill river loop in the early morning and get back to the art museum for sunrise. https://youtu.be/G0LfYYXkS-g

Congratulations on 21 years of Slackerdom in alignment with your own strong purposes! I think I am around year 18 give or take for a couple of very briefly held full-time gigs. I am interested in your story for a number of reasons, one being that I find it kind of fascinating that there are around a dozen of us on this forum who are very similar in age, but in many other ways quite different people.

Priority #2 is health & fitness since it is prerequisite for everything else we want to accomplish / maintain and it cannot be purchased at any price.

I've lately been reading some stuff written by young, very fit people who suffer from the same intestinal malady with which I have been recently cursed. One of the stars of a popular British extreme dancing show was hospitalized between filming two seasons. Another young marathon runner, decided that she was okay with just shamelessly shitting as necessary in the bushes at the park where she trains. I also just finished reading "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, in which "Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life" by Winifred Gallagher was recommended (just started reading.) Gallagher was diagnosed with cancer, but trained/taught herself to focus on other things in order to keep having the best life possible in the present.

Anyways, I guess my question would be don't you think that there is a level on which mental health/attitude, physiological health, and personal purpose(s) are inextricably braided together towards resilience?

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 02, 2021 8:34 am

Anyways, I guess my question would be don't you think that there is a level on which mental health/attitude, physiological health, and personal purpose(s) are inextricably braided together towards resilience?

Absolutely. I look at it like this...

The quality of my life is directly influenced by the quality of my decisions
which depend on the how well I perceive and interpret reality
which depend on my mental, physical and spiritual health
which, as you say, are braided together.

I consider myself incredibly fortunate that I was somehow wired to love to do the things that strengthen all three strands of the braid. Like everyone, I find it challenging to resist the temptation to do some things that weaken them, but I try to avoid discussing those challenges because of Hebb's rule. Neurons that fire together wire together. Repeated firing creates stronger connections.

This morning while digging through a box of a dead person's junk at the swap meet I found these final editions of the Whole Earth Catalog for $1 each.



The back cover of the Epilog...



The same one that Steve Jobs referred to in his Stanford commencement speech back in 2005 just after his cancer diagnosis.
https://youtu.be/_vdT7191l3E?t=457

Since then it has become fashionable to criticize the central message of Jobs' speech, "Do what you love...". I understand the criticism but the older I get the more I see in my peers the consequences of doing work that one hates and wonder if maybe the critics are wrong.

Regardless, I sure am happy that I love digging through boxes of dead people's junk looking for stuff to resell.

Hungry and foolish.

I know Kevin Kelly lurks here. Maybe he would consider making an appearance to explain how that quote found its way to the back cover and what the thinking was behind it.

I feel like I’m this forums designated Cal Newport fanboy, but a nitpick: Cal doesn’t criticize doing what you love, and he doesn’t recommend whiteknuckling a job you hate. He criticizes advise that assumes the *order* is 1) Know what you love 2) Go do it. He thinks many people simply don’t know what they love when they’re 18yo, and/or don’t know how to make it pay the bills. He thinks that finding what you love to do is a *process* that involves experimentation, introspection, discipline, skill acquisition, etc. Same destination as the YOLO’ers, different method for arriving there.

Ps super stoked for your journal.

@Alex, Thanks!

I agree that Newport's criticism was mild and quite reasonable compared to others. Jobs' heuristic went something like... if I wake up too many days in a row and dread the thing I am going to be doing that day then it is time to make a change. I have not gotten all the way through @jacob's second Stoa presentation yet but the part about how the adult human consumer model disconnects and compartmentalizes work and life may apply here.



Maybe the proper heuristic would be, If I wake up too many days in a row and find that I am doing things that are disconnected from the core then it is time to make a change before I wire the neurons firmly together.

I'm excited for your journal Ego.

Ego wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 03, 2021 4:40 pm

I know Kevin Kelly lurks here. Maybe he would consider making an appearance to explain how that quote found its way to the back cover and what the thinking was behind it.

This is pretty cool. Do you know him personally or has he ever posted? That man is a legend.

I liked Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” better than I thought I would. It made me realize that I am actually pretty ruthless about not letting what Newport refers to as “shallow work” interfere with my preference to be engaged in “deep play.”