This was a tough week for me as I was recovering from being sick while working through my continuing existential crisis. I need to remind myself that it’s really a self discovery process. I’m figuring out what I am outside of the job I used to do, and outside of international travel. Later in the week I started doing some fun stuff rather than the continuous grind I’ve been putting myself through.

FIRE: Day 71 (9/7)

I’m starting to feel better after finally sleeping well last night. Just a bit of a cough is all that’s left.

I mostly hung out with the kids today, not really doing anything in particular. We played some frisbee and mini basketball, and read bits of weird books on the shelf.

We decided to have a bonus movie night tonight, and settled on the movie Galaxy Quest. None of us had any expectations of it, and it surprised all of us to the positive. I thought it was funny, engaging, and a great concept.

FIRE: Day 72 (9/8)

Today I got back to the gym, but I kept the workout pretty light. I also walked a few miles on my standing desk treadmill.

I worked on some SEO for yesalittle.com by adding some scenario static pages that can be searched and indexed. The first one was a page to describe restaurant situations, with a sampling of phrases and responses embedded in the page. I’m not going to do a lot of these. It’s really just planting a few seeds to see if they drive any traffic.

Went for a walk with JC. I have to start getting out of the house more.

FIRE: Day 73 (9/9)

Gym, Spanish, but no tech stuff. Instead I worked on a post for morning oats in the cost per calorie series. These activities alone used up my entire day.

FIRE: Day 74 (9/10)

I was pretty tired all day after not sleeping well last night. Despite that, I went to the gym and mowed the lawn. JC and I also went hiking up to the castle rock in the town of Castle Rock.

Last night at bed time I abruptly spiraled into another existential crisis. This one caught me off guard because it was so sudden, out of the blue, and it lasted overnight and through today. There wasn’t even a main theme. It was more of a rotating carousel of different thoughts.

As best as I can tell, there were two things that triggered this. One was that last night I was helping BC with his math homework, and I kept getting two different answers on the same fraction division. In one approach I was using common denominator, and in the other I was flipping the fraction and multiplying. For a few minutes I was stuck on this dumb shit only to realize I was making a stupid error over and over again. It made me wonder if I’m getting dumber, because I rarely struggle with kid math.

The second thing was realizing the extent of the vast landscape of language learning apps out there, and concluding that there must be one that does what yesalittle.com does. It makes me feel like putting any time into YAL beyond my own purposes is pointless. This was primarily a personal learning tool and a good tech project. So why would this be an existential trigger? I don’t think it was on its own. It was just the right negative thought to mix in to my already negative thoughts that it kicked off a reaction.

The thought cycle went between: 1) If I’m getting dumber, at what age will I be too dumb to resume my career? 2) What skillset do I realistically have if tech is unavailable? 3) What if I need to turn on an income and I have no skillset to do so?

For the record, I don’t want to resume my tech career. Just the thought of that grind is exhausting. A lot of this is probably a me issue rather than a FIRE issue. Our budget is very workable with room to spare, but my brain always tells me that no amount of money is safe. It would be easy to think that if we doubled our investments I wouldn’t have these thoughts. In reality I know it wouldn’t fix it – I would just imagine bigger emergencies.

These existential crisis are pissing me off. My mindset is starting to shift to not continuing with what I’ve been doing. That has been essentially working a shitty tech job for no pay. I’m used to being productive and I guess that along with keeping my skills sharp are the only reasons why I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing. After returning from our year of travel, I’ve been financially independent but haven’t been enjoying any of the benefits. I need to question everything I’ve been doing and try to have some fun for a change.

FIRE: Day 75 (9/11)

I slept decent last night. Continuing with my rebellion against productivity, I went to the gym and then went on a bike ride to Cherry Creek State Park. Those two things took up my entire day. I didn’t touch a computer except to type this.

Tonight we had a rare regularly scheduled FAC. It was JC’s movie pick and she picked a really good movie – Remarkably Bright Creatures.

FIRE: Day 76 (9/12)

I ran for the first time after being sick and it went well. I matched my pace from before I got sick. BC had a birthday party in the evening so JC and I didn’t drink. We went shopping at Costco while he was at the birthday party, since it was over in that area. I also watched some high school sports on NFHS.

FIRE: Day 77 (9/13)

JC and I went to my friend’s house a few doors down and we hung out with friends from the neighborhood while watching football. Many of us are in a fantasy league together and this is the opening weekend. It was a lot of fun, and I ended staying over there until the Sunday night game was almost over.