Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

All the different ways of solving the shelter problem. To be static or mobile? Roots, legs, or wheels?
RoamingFrancis
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Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by RoamingFrancis »

I am not satisfied with where I'm currently at in life. Though my trip to Vancouver was exactly what I needed at the time, I have landed back at my parents' house, unloading trucks at UPS. I have a vision for what I want to do next - I need to spend a period of time close to nature, disconnected from screens, physically active, and, most importantly, able to spend the bulk of my energy on developing post-consumer skills. (Cooking, bicycle repair, ecological design, bushcraft, foraging)

Though I've internalized a lot of ERE theory and have done a good job at reducing my wants, my practical skills are lagging behind. This will both be a test of my ability to live on <1 JAFI (away from my parents), and should expand my practical income-earning skills.

The main question I am facing is where to go and what kind of housing to get. Rent a cabin in the woods somewhere? A van? Not really sure. It should be noted that I have been relatively unsuccessful with WWOOFing. I have visited two farms, and on both was mainly asked to do menial labor but was not given many opportunities to practice skills.

Western Red Cedar
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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by Western Red Cedar »

RoamingFrancis wrote:
Sun Nov 14, 2021 2:13 am
The main question I am facing is where to go and what kind of housing to get.
What about the plan to go to Oaxaca or Chiapas? It seems like you could save enough money after a few months working at UPS to move down there for a good chunk of time.

sky
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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by sky »

Here are some ideas based on what I would do in that situation that may help you in defining your own plan.

Dissatisfaction is nature's way of telling you that a change of some kind is needed. Or perhaps one's subconcsious is signalling that it is time for a change.
Or perhaps that one knows that there is something better out there, somewhere.

Because I know I want to move on soon, I would identify the things that need to be done to prepare for a move.

Save up an emergency fund of about $5,000, plus save up enough money for about 6 months of frugal living.
Reduce my collection of things down to a few bins and a backpack.
Have an idea of where I would want to go, or which type of opportunity I would like to pursue.
Consider what type of transportation I would use to arrive at a destination. Decide on an option and arrange for the vehicle.
Will I need gear when you arrive at a destination? If so, collect the gear.

Sometimes it is best to have a general plan but leave some things up to randomness or synchronicity.
One can identify a quest which is not necessarily a final destination, but rather a goal to follow.
Often one might find that all that one wants to experience is available in one's current location and situation, and it is more of a process of breaking free from one's own thought patterns and behavior routines.

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by AxelHeyst »

What is your current methodology for constructing plans? What is your past relationship with plans you've made? (e.g. did you follow through with them, did you feel good, bad, or indifferent about them, etc?) Can you articulate the difference between an idea or a notion and a plan?

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by jacob »

@RF - I haven't finished reading this yet and so caveat emptor ... but given that your [interior individual] maturity leads your ability to frame or put words on it (you mentioned this catching up rapidly elsewhere), I think this might work for you? Perhaps these are the droids you're seeking?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1577315510/

RoamingFrancis
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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by RoamingFrancis »

Thanks for the responses everyone.

@Western Red Cedar - Oaxaca and Chiapas are still on the radar. But not yet. I primarily need a period of leveling up my eco skills and physical health, which I think is best done in the US due to transport time and border crossings.

@sky - Thanks for the ideas. Sounds like I'll need about $10,000 to have enough cushion for my next move. Here are the elements I'm looking for:

1) Spend an extended period of time close to nature
2) Disconnect from digital technology during this time
3) Level up my eco skills
4) Level up my physical health

@AxelHeyst - My plan methodology is very intuitive. Mostly "this feels like the right thing to do at this time." In general, if I decide I'm going to do something, I am pretty good at grabbing life my the balls and following through. However, if I am doing something as a means to an end, I will drop those plans as soon as another possibility presents itself. Case in point: I can hitchhike across the country because I wanted to talk to Wade Davis, but after registering a domain name for my legal translations I have done literally nothing with it, because it's just a means to an end. I can't articulate the difference between ideas, notions, and plans.

@jacob - Thanks for the recommendation. I read the first three chapters a while back, but put it down and went on a Wilber binge. I'll take another look.

I am frustrated with the lower right quadrant [exterior collective.] There just doesn't seem to be a route to do what I feel called to do AND be able to feed myself.

Of course, it could also be the case that I am simply interacting with the lower right quadrant unskillfully. I have always felt an aversion to fields such as law and business, which may simply be the surfacing of shadow material. Yesterday I was meditating on the LR quadrant, when suddenly those fields opened up and I became fascinated by people who were successful in wielding political or economic power. Particularly people who are good at it AND operating at Green+ levels (Martin Luther King Jr, Yvon Chouinard, Bernie Sanders)

To high school anarcho-syndicalist RF, it always seemed that a high degree of success in those fields would necessarily require one to be operating at Amber. In fact, I think there is a sort of Darwinian selection at play, whereby if the Exxon CEO suddenly became interested in the health of the biosphere, he would likely be out of a job by lunch. It's just a side effect of a LR quadrant geared primarily towards profit extraction.

I had an opportunity to make a lot of money at the roofing company I worked at, but my center of gravity was Green while the org's center of gravity was Orange, with some Amber. So my coworkers were quite satisfied with offering a helpful service to the clients, and I could only think about the oil and embodied energy going into the shingles, the fossil fuels burned in driving around the suburbs, and how we had to basically reinvent roofs from scratch. So I bailed as soon as I got an opportunity to live on a permaculture farm.

I need more skillful means for interacting with LR social and economic systems. ERE is an excellent tool, but for where I'm at now, it's not enough. I need business/political savvy too. I need to do that without reverting to Amber ethics, and be careful what I wish for. I don't actually want to be a businessman or a politician; I just need to more effectively interface with those systems so that the LR Quadrant isn't holding me back from my actual goals (Integral Druidry, Anthropology, Martial Arts).

Edit: It seems there are three categories at play here: finding affordable housing (van or cabin?), building longer-term skills for income generation (PDC and ACE cert?), and making my current job suck less. There is the additional category of figuring out where to go once I've got my $10k.

Originally I was only thinking about housing, which is why I posted in this section of the forum.

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by AxelHeyst »

It seems to me that intuition is great at sensing what feels right or good as far as the next step, maybe two steps. And an idea/notion in this context might be describes as a one or two-step plan.

So, for example, you have a vision of being a contemplative ethnoecologist (V). Wade Davis is a hero of yours. So you had an idea to go meet him. The plan consisted of putting some things in a backpack and sticking your thumb out. That's like two steps strung together: "I want to go see Wade Davis because I want to be an ethnoecologist, and I'll get there by hitching." The adventure was, essentially, a notion. You had no idea what would come out of it, but knew it was a door you had to open and see what was on the other side.

But the totality of your vision for you life is quite the complex thing. It will take much more than one or two steps to get you there (leaving aside for now pithy quotes about journeys and destinations). Let's build a small model of the next ten years of your life, at the end of which your current vision is achieved. It'll take, oh, fifty steps. Some of those steps will feel really good, and they'll be the totally obvious next step to take, and you'll be stoked to take them.

But some of those steps aren't going to feel good, or they're not going to feel as good as some other step you could take instead except that other step won't get you closer to your vision. At the scale of your day to day or even week to week life, those steps seem like a mistake.

But! When you zoom out and look at the big picture, you can see how that step connects to another step, and then to another, and then it gets fuzzy for a while but it's still in the right direction, and then at the end you've got an attained Vision. This is where Plans can be useful. A Plan is a thing that you sat down and got your intuition, your dreams, and your brain to all talk to each other civilly for an hour or two, and sketch out the steps between "here" and "there". When you get in these situations where your intuition is going "this sucks", you can look at the plan and go "oh, right, we agreed with Brain that this was the best course of action for now in order to achieve my dreams. Okay."

People who are all intuition and no planning wander around forever. Which is fine if that's your thing.

People who are all planning and no intuition get where they're going, but chances are it's not a good place to be.

Someone like me is in constant danger of the latter. Someone like you is in constant danger of the former. I have to deliberately work on my intuition. I think you will be rewarded by deliberately working on planning. Learning what it is, how to construct one, how to adjust it mid-flight, what good plans look like and what bad plans look like, how to make a plan that you won't immediately rebel against.

I could be wrong about this, but if I am, it's because the methodology that is appropriate for you to employ is complete voodoo magic that I'm 100% blind to.

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by jacob »

RoamingFrancis wrote:
Sun Nov 14, 2021 3:06 pm
@jacob - Thanks for the recommendation. I read the first three chapters a while back, but put it down and went on a Wilber binge. I'll take another look.

I am frustrated with the lower right quadrant [exterior collective.] There just doesn't seem to be a route to do what I feel called to do AND be able to feed myself.

Of course, it could also be the case that I am simply interacting with the lower right quadrant unskillfully. I have always felt an aversion to fields such as law and business, which may simply be the surfacing of shadow material. Yesterday I was meditating on the LR quadrant, when suddenly those fields opened up and I became fascinated by people who were successful in wielding political or economic power. Particularly people who are good at it AND operating at Green+ levels (Martin Luther King Jr, Yvon Chouinard, Bernie Sanders)
I skyped with Vicki Robin a couple of years ago. She told me that Joe Dominguez's approach was the "render unto Caesar's [that which is Caesar's]". IOW you need to "put on your own oxygen mask first". Extreme FI is ridiculously easy. Get it done. Once you rendered unto Caesar for 5 years, you're done. Surrender some ideology to work within the system in order to move things forward. Unfortunately, people get stuck within their egotic ideology. Getting stuck in an ideological quadmire makes dealing with Caesar a lot harder than it has to be.

Maybe giving some to get some is the way to unlock optionality? IOW get to FI first, then proceed onto your life's work. Engaging with the LR requires developing and including more perspectives.

Ideologists often get stuck on not wanting to touch finances at all whatsoever. That's a severe handicap. However, if you're willing to spend <decade extracting yourself from Plato's Cave, opportunities to change the world open up.

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by Jin+Guice »

First off, agree with @jacob, although you know I favor the semi-ERE approach so you can work on your life's work while working. But I also see you in the idealists trap. It's not your fault the world is how it is. Having cash makes it a lot easier to do all the hippy bullshit. A lot of people get co-opted by seeking money or are really just faking their hippy bullshit bc they have secret money. Don't be those people.

If you wanna come Wwooff in New Orleans, you can come hang out where I live. The labor will be menial, but we'll let you ask questions. Also, I think my roommate and I are pretty good representatives for doing hippy bullshit with some money, but not letting money own us. We are both a lot less idealistic than you are, but we are also both a lot older.

RoamingFrancis
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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by RoamingFrancis »

Thanks for the advice everyone.

@AxelHeyst I can see the value in constructing a plan like you mention. Though 10 years sounds like planning a bit too far out. A five-year plan sounds manageable. And I would have to be able to change it in order to avoid feeling trapped. And even if I have a plan, I do get to use my voodoo magic too :D I'll report back soon with a Plan.

@jacob The idea of being FI at 26 is appealing. At least when I imagine it, it seems like there is a clean feeling of just being done, that one doesn't necessarily find in semi-ERE.

I don't think I'm hung up on ideology. When I was meditating on the topic yesterday, law and business suddenly opened up as areas of interest. However, there is a question of telicity to consider. In the past I have proven to myself that I will not follow through on a plan unless there is some element of intrinsic motivation. Any career I decide to engage with will have to be homeotelic - from where I stand right now, it seems that personal training is my best choice.

@J+G Thank you for the invitation. I will be staying where I'm at for the time being, but I would love to take you up on that at some point in the future.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I will sleep on it and report back with a Plan.

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by jacob »

Jin+Guice wrote:
Sun Nov 14, 2021 7:18 pm
First off, agree with @jacob, although you know I favor the semi-ERE approach so you can work on your life's work while working. But I also see you in the idealists trap. It's not your fault the world is how it is. Having cash makes it a lot easier to do all the hippy bullshit. A lot of people get co-opted by seeking money or are really just faking their hippy bullshit bc they have secret money. Don't be those people.
IIRC, the semi-ERE concept originally came about because people feared that they might go stale and watch TV all day (instead of doing hippy bullshit) once they no longer needed to earn any money(?). It was a way of stopping short of the goal line in order to keep running so to speak.

Otherwise, one can become FI doing one's underpaid life's work. It just takes a little longer. The key criterion for FI is having a high savings rate. At one JAFI this does require making, say, $24,000/year for 5-6 years, but one does not need to work for EvilCorp to make that kind of money.

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by AxelHeyst »

Some further thoughts on how to design a plan that might be palatable to you, RF:

It seems to me that you've been stuck in between a rock and a hard place: you've been doing what you want, until you run out of money, and then you do something you don't, in order to get some more money. This cycle has been really short - a few months of adventurous and carefree living, followed by a few months of scraping up some cash. The cycle resets when you can't stand not actively pursuing your destiny one more day, and figure you have several months to a year's worth of cash laying around. But you haven't had enough cash reserves to spend a significant amount of time experimenting with what you want, or to feel comfortable doing something like springing for tickets to Oaxaca. If money is rocket fuel, and I think it is, then you haven't had enough to break atmo and achieve orbit. You keep interrupting the fueling processes, shooting up, sputtering, and falling back into the ocean.

I'm running off of memory here but your WoG, as currently formulated, doesn't actually specifically address personal autonomy. It has many inspiring things you want to do, some of which are likely to throw off income, but it doesn't connect the dots from where you're at now to "money is a solved problem and I just don't have to think about it at all really." This is a big hole/fragility in your WoG. Autonomy is a foundational principle of ERE! You can't do high level WL shit if the System owns your ass, and until money is "solved" that's the situation you are in.

You've demonstrated by now that you're probably constitutionally unfit to grind out 5 years at EvilCorp to achieve FI, which is fine. The worrying thing is that you say you won't stick with anything that doesn't intrinsically motivate you at least a little. I'm not sure if you feel good about that, but, friend, that's a big liability, unless you are capable of scraping up some intrinsic motivation via intellectualizing a greater Purpose for grinding something out.

To unpack this a bit: let's just say that you decide to keep the UPS job for six months and continue living at your parents (or someplace else that's ~free, if you can swing it), spending something like 300/mo although you might be able to spend even less. You figure you'll be able to set aside 2.5 years of 1jafi living expenses if you do this, which is more cash buffer than you've ever had. Next year you'll be able to set out and *really* explore opportunities for how to pursue the rest of your life, for a significant chunk of time. It's highly likely that during those 2.5 years you'll find something to do that really resonates with you that throws off some income, and your "end date" starts to push. If things go well, and you keep pursuing your interests, that date keeps pushing and pushing until you realize that you haven't really thought about money in years, you have 20 years of expenses saved up even though you weren't thinking about it, and you only do things you want to do.

But arriving at that position was a result of the ability to grind for a whopping total of 6 months at a job that doesn't fill your soul with light and song, but that was your means to a life that fills your soul with light and song. I think that if you adopt a Plan like that, where you have a very specific goal that you know will serve your purpose (enough cash runway to "launch"), that ought to be enough Purpose to maintain enough Intrinsic Motivation to stick it out.

Everyone has to grind something out at some point in their lives if they want to achieve their dreams. (For example, I only ever was given skilled work to do on jobs after demonstrating cheerful reliability and readiness to grind out the menial tasks. You have to earn the privilege of doing the cool stuff... which is one reason I caution against a "bare minimum" approach to even menial work. You'll always be stuck there if people perceive you think you're too good to muck the stables.) That's an opinion, obviously, which you're free to disagree with, but recognize the gamble you're running if you do. The basic pitch of ERE is that you only have to grind for a little bit and then you're done, and free to show up in the world however you want. The further pitch of ERE is that it doesn't take any amount of luck (like winning the lottery) or superhuman attributes (the intelligence to win at the stock market or IPO a startup). Just: reduce expenses, grind at whatever for a short amount of time, done. It's beautiful.
Last edited by AxelHeyst on Tue Nov 16, 2021 8:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by AxelHeyst »

To put it in concise ERE terms: you are attempting to tightly couple "purpose/stoke/intrinsic motivation/etc" with "generate income". Consider the benefits (resilience and autonomy) of a system that has those loosely coupled (or not at all).
Last edited by AxelHeyst on Tue Nov 16, 2021 8:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

chenda
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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by chenda »

I think you are in your early 20s @RoamingFrancis ? My advice to be self at that age would simply go into the highest paid tolerable job you can find and save a minimum of a 50% savings rate. Invest the surplus whilst you figure out what to do after FI. You could fully ERE in a decade (66% saving rate) which seems a long time looking forward but isnt long looking backwards.

MMM has a good list of 50 jobs you can do without a degree which pay $50 000+.

I didn't work this out till I was 30 and it put FI back a decade.

Edit: OT but i'd be interested in discussing druidry and non dualism with you if you are minded to start a thread on it.

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by unemployable »

The tl;dr for Axel's post: If you do what you've done, you'll get what you've got.

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by RoamingFrancis »

Thanks again for the responses, everyone.

@AxelHeyst You hit the nail on the head. Very precisely.

I think I should grind through this job for a time, even if it kinda sucks.

It's a union job, so money is good even though it's menial. From what I've heard, it's also near impossible to get fired and it comes with good health insurance and other benefits. I'm earning $500 / wk, working 4:30-9 most days. You can get time and a half for working a double shift, so there's potential to earn $1250 / wk. Additionally, they hire a ton of extra labor during the busy holiday season so if I somehow fail to achieve orbit, even after a longer fueling phase, it will be pretty easy to get hired again.

Given my historical familiarity with the labor movement, I'd like to give thanks to the folks who shed literal blood to create such auspicious circumstances.

I will be spending a lot of time doing repetitive movements in a factory. If I decide to grind through this, I will need to put all my remaining energy into my physical health and connecting with nature. There is some risk of a golden handcuffs scenario with the union benefits, but I honestly think I'm temperamentally immune to that sort of thing. When I have heard destiny calling, I have taken crazier risks with less cushion. I think that grabbing life by the balls is actually a strength of mine - what I need to learn is to patiently grind through the shit. Shovel the manure and fucking enjoy it.

With this income, I do have a potential opportunity to live at a local Buddhist center for a couple months. That would give me backyard access to a giant permaculture project, the forest, yoga classes, and an extensive library specializing in rare books in my field of interest. And would just give me more experience living on my own (i.e. not traveling). It would be more expensive - my friend who lives there says he spends $1k a month - but might be worth it. It would additionally be a hell of a lot easier to eat healthy because I won't be held back by my family's eating habits.

@chenda I would love to chat dharma. :) Though I think that conversation may be better suited for PM than for a thread.

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Good thread with solid advice. Just chiming in to echo what Chenda said regarding hindsight.......my current self is eternally grateful for nutting up and making hay while the sun was shining in my 20's

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by Ontarian »

RoamingFrancis wrote:
Tue Nov 16, 2021 4:01 am

@chenda I would love to chat dharma. :) Though I think that conversation may be better suited for PM than for a thread.
I for one would be happy to read people's musings-practice of the dharma. Cheers

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by RoamingFrancis »

Okay, I'm willing to grind through six months. Even though it'll suck. Should I have a detailed plan for what I'll do after, or should I leave it to voodoo magic?

WRT a dharma thread: I'd be happy to discuss it. My aversion comes from a) not wanting to paint myself as a spiritual teacher and b) recognition that intellectualizing non-duality usually doesn't go anywhere. FWIW, I was thinking a thread on anarcho-syndicalism could be interesting too, though I've been wary that it might be too political and devolve into culture wars.

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Re: Dissatisfaction. Vision. Plan???

Post by AxelHeyst »

Why six months? What is your target stash at the end of six months? What is your target burn rate after your grind? These last two answers will tell you how much freedom/rocket fuel you’re buying yourself.

Play with some numbers and different scenarios. Ask what you could do with 10k. Or 20k. Or 40k. Is the difference between what you could do with ten and forty worth a longer grind?

If you don’t know what your doing after you grind, I suspect you won’t have a clear enough Why to sustain the grind. I’m not sure what a ‘detailed’ plan means to you, so it’s difficult to answer that question. You should have enough of a plan to maintain enough of a Why for the grind, as well as enough of a plan to inform your decisions about how long to grind, what to save up for, etc. The voodoo magic will take care of itself, but in my experience magic does best when partnered with a flexible plan.

Remember, a plan that you make is very different from the dumb shit your high school teachers said you ‘had’ to do. It’s your very own treasure map to the adventure of your life. And you get to adjust and adapt it as you go. It’s *yours*, and plans are their own kind of very powerful magic. Just because defense contractors and CFOs also use plans doesn’t mean plans are boring or Tools of The Man. Take the success of defense contractors as an indication of the raw magical power of plans, just employed for aims contrary to yours.

You mentioned spending some time at a hippy place for $1k/mo. That’s half your income. Are you okay with that? Isn’t nature, yoga, books, people, etc what you’re attempting to earn access to via a quick grind? You might be able to get access to a similar situation in Oaxaca for $100/mo, or for free because you’ll be doing workaway there. Delayed gratification is also kind of magic.

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