Slevin's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
recal
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by recal »

Kithaus looks cool. I had a couple other companies like that bookmarked (trying to find the $60k modular tiny home website...), I think that's more along the lines of what I originally meant. It's still much smaller than the average home, though. Some of those smaller ones are the same size as my studio apartment -- it'd take a long time to pay that off if it's a $400k-500k total project (land, the price of the home, and the permits, etc..).

I'll throw out an alternative... There's a lot of reasons I particularly want to stay in Calfornia (lots of laws in our favor), and if I was able to drive, there are a lot of rural or semi-rural areas where I would live. I particularly remember that after the housing crash in 2008, my uncle bought a house in Lake Arrowhead for $60-80k. Even if that doubled or even tripled in price, that'd still be a very affordable home that's "only" 2-3 hours away from LA.

For nature, California, and affordability -- with a car and without any care for living near a city -- these vacation areas are an option. It's not an option for me (I can't drive), but I'd also consider that.

Just did a Zillow search on that city: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Crestline,-CA_rb/

Obviously, this isn't NorCal, but I'm sure there are NorCal equivalents.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Slevin's jo urnal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Slevin wrote:
Fri Apr 01, 2022 12:14 pm
Not a monetary update but a stranger one.
Updates on how this has held up, made longer changes in your thoughts/daily experience?

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Slevin
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Re: Slevin's jo urnal

Post by Slevin »

mountainFrugal wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 1:15 pm
Updates on how this has held up, made longer changes in your thoughts/daily experience?
Hard to tell, because I've had a lot of external pressures (trying to move -- which fell through when interest rates exploded) and an mTBI in the past couple of months, which have drastically effected my brain functioning. Longer post about that in the monthly when I finish it up.

Did a meditation check in, and I can still find a place of deep peace what feels like several layers down into my consciousness. Maybe not as intense as before, and maybe I'm just getting used to it. So everything still seems okay and useful and accessible, and it brings me to a place of calm and serenity which will then be echoed for hours into the day. It could be that if I did two 15 minute sessions a day, I could probably carry it into all my waking existence, but that sounds boring to me. Calm and peace do not make for a good resistance training mindset when you need to be fighting the whole time. But maybe the meditation and peace is inching into my mindset. I'm a lot more content these days. My dreams now are of a house overlooking a big garden in a beautiful part of the West Coast, drinking tea and reading good fiction and cooking good food. Maybe working on some ridiculous low tech / appropriate tech projects and living a relatively simple life. I don't crave success or being the best as much anymore. I don't feel like I have to find the answers to complex philosophical quandaries. In some ways, I can just be and be happy.

I guess overall it has just made me more comfortable and content in my own skin?

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

It is good that you still have access to that and that it is heling you keep a calm outlook despite your external pressures and recent health issues.

ertyu
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by ertyu »

Slevin wrote:
Mon Apr 18, 2022 11:32 am

For a breakup with an SO or a breakup with working (retiring a career, so to say), those are usually big self definition modules, and a lot of people lose themselves / go to a darker place when they lose something like that. The system resilience from enough self definitions argument is that if you have enough self definitions you will not lose yourself in losing one of these self identities, because while you may lose one piece, you have the other pieces to fall back on which can help blunt the blow. "Oh, I am not a boyfriend / girlfriend / NB-friend anymore, but I am still a father and a friend and a philosopher and a disc golfer, and that is enough."
I was back-reading your journal, insightful thought, thanks

ertyu
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Re: Slevin's jo urnal

Post by ertyu »

Slevin wrote:
Fri Apr 01, 2022 12:14 pm
Not a monetary update but a stranger one.
Thank you for sharing this. Dovetails with something I've been thinking about lately.

Cat pictures?

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Slevin
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by Slevin »

Food for thought:
How many Marcus Aurelius’s, Seneca’s, and Epictetus’s were there, with wise and peaceful lives, whose thoughts should have lived on and influenced and helped others for millenia, but were discarded because they were of normal social and economic standing? Or were lost because the authors themselves were content with life, and thus content to simply live?

A brain breaks:
I think it just felt fuzzy honestly, getting hit in the head. More like “whoa, what happened”, then a lot of “oh yeah I’m okay. Check your aim next time!”. “Okay”, I think, “I got nailed in the temple by a tennis ball from two feet away, not a big deal, whatever”. So I continued on with my Father’s day, and won a surprising amount of lawn games. It wasn’t until we got in the car to head home from my parent’s house that I realized driving was making me nauseous. Like really really nauseous. My only comparison would be to when I first dropped acid in an offshoot of Zion. My friends and I stared at the canyons for 8 hours and watched the vermillion hues swirl into each other like a living painting. Then we we got up to leave, we got into the car, and the second we started moving at 5 mph, the landscape around us was melting in a way that made us all nauseous. We camped in a cold car that night, with only a couple hammocks for blankets.

I pull over. “Hey,” I tell my partner, “I don’t think I’m gonna be able to drive home, something is wrong with my head. I think maybe I have a concussion”. So we switch and head home. The next few weeks are filled with surprises…

I don’t think I’ve ever understood what its like to have a brain injury. I can best describe it as a clear betrayal of the mind towards everything you try to accomplish. Bright lights? No. Loud noises? No. Screens? Definitely not. Music? The absolute worst. Walking is, okay-ish.The balancing function doesn’t seem to work quite right, so instead of the grace of a cat I’m somewhere between very tipsy and drunk. It still works, but its not good, by any stretch of the imagination. I have to keep telling the cats not to meow because it hurts my head. I can pick up a fork, but again, it isn’t great. Handling a knife? No chance. Reading fiction, however, I can do without hurting my head much. So I do it.

For the next two weeks I’m reading a book or more a day, its some lighter stuff but I made it through about 10000 pages. I start being able to handle things a bit better, and a bit better. Somehow my utterly dysfunctional walking unlocks some issues I have been carrying in my lower back for probably a decade, so I learn to walk differently with better patterning. Walking a block or two is utterly exhausting, but I struggle through. Never let a good crisis go to waste, right? Not allowed to drink caffeine? Alright, guess I’ll kick my caffeine addiction. Not allowed to drink alcohol? Alright I guess I’ll kick my one drink a day after training habit. Not allowed to watch television or listen to music? Alright, guess I’ll kick my video watching addiction. In a weird way, its probably one of the nicest methods to detox all your bad habits.

In a strange way, I dissolve and I come back. Dissolution. I lose all the binding threads that were pulling me, and I get to choose what to pick back up. Resistance training comes back. The reading stays back. I return to watching a little bit of TV, but its mostly series I’ve cared about for a long time (i.e. Stranger Things), and not just a time filler. I notice all the little things that were long burned in Dopamine-seeking habits at the cost of me, and I’m choosing not to engage with them. Every once in a while I do, and its easy to see pull of the addiction for the following day or two. The dopamine rip current of the internet feels like methamphetamines to me, imploring me to watch an irrelevant twenty minute video on something that doesn’t affect me, or argue about something incorrect and unimportant someone has posted on a random forum. Its wild that this incredible addictive technology is given out to children and adults in whatever doses they want, and just allowed to run rampant. I’ve read the white papers and books and watched the documentaries on the attention addiction from social media, but I’ve never been more convinced about it than now, watching my wants after the long detox.

To quote myself from a bit above, it feels like losing almost all of my self definition modules, and getting to pick them back up slowly after the fuzziness wears away. I’m reminded of the Stoics and the Enchiridion:
With regard to whatever objects give you delight, are useful, or are deeply loved, remember to tell yourself of what general nature they are, beginning from the most insignificant things. If, for example, you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.
My self-definitions are, in fact, just transient objects to me, and now that they have briefly left me, I can respect them as such and treat them as such. Some of them don’t scream at me as they used to try to solidify their importance. I don’t feel like I need to juggle them as much. And most importantly I feel like I found some intrinsic self definition underneath all the other self definitions, something invariant even to the partial scale collapse of my brain. And that thing, I have decided I will call “Slevin”. And I think he and I are going to have a marvelous adventure together.

guitarplayer
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Slevin wrote:
Tue Jul 12, 2022 9:46 pm
Food for thought:
How many Marcus Aurelius’s, Seneca’s, and Epictetus’s were there, with wise and peaceful lives, whose thoughts should have lived on and influenced and helped others for millenia, but were discarded because they were of normal social and economic standing? Or were lost because the authors themselves were content with life, and thus content to simply live?
...and probably are all around us. I am also thinking along the CCCCCC model where one initially takes in these ideas and goes through the learning process, ultimately becoming a philosopher themselves. Also wonder to what extent it was awkward or difficult for the authors to verbalize their ideas in writing, to what extent they were unhappy with their works thinking that the works do not reflect the thought content very well.
Slevin wrote:
Tue Jul 12, 2022 9:46 pm
A brain breaks:
[...]
Wow powerful, but this is not a recent event is it?

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Slevin
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by Slevin »

guitarplayer wrote:
Wed Jul 27, 2022 8:19 am
Wow powerful, but this is not a recent event is it?
Erm, recent-ish as of June 18th to whenever I made that post. I'm much improved now, just "different" to some degree.

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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Quite an experience. In some ways it was an opportunity, and I feel like you took it as such which is great.

To mind come positive disintegration theory, or how Lev Vygotsky was studying children with learning disabilities to come up with general laws of psycho-social development for healthy population. Also, the ego death experience you covertly refer to.

ertyu
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Re: Slevin's jo urnal

Post by ertyu »

Slevin wrote:
Fri Apr 01, 2022 12:14 pm

Too soon my timer goes off, and I have to slip back into this place and my body. I am sitting on a cushion in front of my windows looking at my garden. It takes twenty minutes to decompress and try and put myself back into my normal self again. But it doesn't quite work, I am something different, somehow changed.
How has this experience integrated for you now that it's been a couple of months since? How has it interacted with the injury?

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Slevin
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by Slevin »

ertyu wrote:
Wed Aug 10, 2022 5:13 pm
How has this experience integrated for you now that it's been a couple of months since? How has it interacted with the injury?
I’ve wrote up a few posts trying to respond to this, but they often end up wandering. So here’s my “least wanders” attempt.

I’m a moderately consistent meditator here, let’s say 5x / week these days. I think of different techniques as healthy habits meant to slowly rewire my brain. Spiritually, I’m still pretty agnostic. But I’m starting to come around to the idea that a lot of the eastern meditation techniques are more and more getting fleshed out into science or creating long term mental health benefits as well as physiological benefits.

Recently I’ve been focusing a lot on my mental health, and trying to re-wire my brain to remove some of the internal issues relating to perfectionism, anxiety issues, and issues with starting / completing tasks (even ones that I want to do). Wild, wild success. I can still reach something similar, feelings wise to the rhythm of the meditation above, and it’s nice to know I can go there. But I guess I don’t think it’s inherently helpful all that often. It’s a good tool on days I need some bliss or calm, but I’m finding myself needing that escape less and less often. I think I’m getting better at processing my emotions.

So overall, good integration? Or bad maybe, if you want it to be some utterly life changing moment for me. It’s a beautiful experience, and it makes me very content to visit. But at the same time If I’m on the path to enlightenment or some crazy other thing, I want to interact with the journey from where I am now, not where I may have visited in the past or where I think I ought to be right now.

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Slevin
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by Slevin »

Catching up with the Money log:

July:
After tax Income: ~8000
Spending: ~3800
SR: 53/64%

Aug:
After tax Income: ~9750
Spending: ~ 3560
SR: 63/74%

Sept:
After tax Income: ~8000
Spending: ~4000
SR: 50/62% (ewwwwww)

Breakdown:
Mortgage: 2200
Electricity + internet: 165
Food: 499
Rest: 1135

SR’s also get a little weird with mortgages when you intend to sell it and make a profit thus some of that “cost” is lowering debt on an asset (here about 900 month), which bumps all those savings rates up. These are reflected in the two percentages.

Also Ouch. I spent a literally insane amount of money this month. Bought an Ebike conversion kit, a chest freezer, 130lbs of vegetables from the farmers market to freeze for the winter, and some furniture for my house that we had been missing, and it hurt the budget a lot. The flip side of it, was that now we have 130lbs of vegetables in the freezer, and buying in bulk from the farmers market often cuts you a 30% - 50% off deal.

NW: Mine: ~250-295k (down from peak back in July I think). HH: ~500-540k

Overall notes:
I’d honestly like to move somewhere less expensive, but there’s an annoying disconnect between places where I would like to live (in terms of environment) and places that are cheap to live. Maybe just a problem of affluence. Basically I like huge trees and sun and a lack of winter. When the trees lose all their leaves it makes me sad for that whole time of the year. But here in the US that basically leaves California, some parts of Oregon (though some sacrifices on the sun) and some of the south.

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Slevin
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by Slevin »


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grundomatic
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by grundomatic »

Counting the principal portion of a mortgage payment in the savings rate is well within reason, even if you aren't planning on selling at a profit. That's certainly how I counted it. I knew mine would be paid off before "retirement", so I wasn't concerned about the cash flow aspect of the mortgage.

There is a reason that expensive places are expensive--people want to live there. We've considered snowbirding--plenty of cheap places to live that are nice part of the year. There's a reason it is in the traditional retiree playbook, though it isn't without drawbacks.

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Slevin
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by Slevin »

@grundomatic thanks, I agree with that savings perspective too. I'm also somewhat considering snowbirding, but it has some complexities that I don't love (mostly social complexities and issues renting a place with 3 cats, but also just general maintenance if you own in either place).

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Slevin
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by Slevin »

My favorite intro to Solarpunk and why we should spend more time looking towards a future we actually want:

https://www.thejaymo.net/long-form/sola ... ed-chrome/

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Slevin
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by Slevin »

In case anyone who cares about Metamodernism missed this one:
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2022/06/02/s ... modernism/

To quote a comment: “Mediocre Metamodernism as a praxis for doerism philosophy”.

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grundomatic
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by grundomatic »

I understood maybe half of that and it still seems very relevant to my relationship with ERE. Thanks for sharing!

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Slevin
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Re: Slevin's journal

Post by Slevin »

I'll have a longform journal entry (actually probably a new journal -- doing something I'm considering a "phase change") coming out in about a month once all the insanity settles, but I'm moving. Moving usually involves letting go of accumlated nonsense you don't need anymore. I have accumulated some of that stuff, but due to the ERE perspective on focusing on Total Cost of Ownership of goods that I've purchased secondhand, I'm currently +250 dollars on selling roughly 1.5k of goods, meaning that over the 4-5 years of owning these goods, they have either not depreciated, or they have appreciated in value about 15% (some of that was definitely sweat equity in refinishing some things). I'll probably write up a larger writeup about individual stuff, but everyone here knows the basics of it. Existing in the secondary lifespan of consumer goods can pretty easily be very close to value neutral or value positive over a longer chunk of time. This is going to be somewhat based on aesthetic choice for things that tend towards a more timeless aesthetic or cater to niches that are long lived / lindy.

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