Building A Life You Can Celebrate

This post-FIRE stuff is tricky if you are someone like me, who is prone to overthinking and has a desire to strategically navigate life so as to gain the most tokens for the grand prize.

What is the grand prize?

A well-lived life.

I think it is less tricky for some people. It has to be.

But me?

I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.

It’s funny because I’ve heard the song my whole life, but it is post-FIRE that has revealed a deeper meaning.

Claiming that I get no satisfaction is a hyperbolic stretch because I count myself as one of the luckiest people alive.

I have much in my life that brings me satisfaction.

However …

What I am confronting is the drive to optimize, perhaps installed in us as part of our cultural conditioning. I can’t escape the need for that elusive form of satisfaction.

Equanimity, anyone?

Sure, I’ll take some if you’ve got it.

Here’s what I am learning, though.

I think one of the greatest gifts of living a post-FIRE lifestyle is that it allows you to stop and enjoy the party.

And it gives you the opportunity to have a grand vision. You don’t need to play small.

One big enemy of these outcomes is likely fragmentation.

I have been fragmenting my life while thinking I wasn’t.

Like, I was working toward implementing 12 One Hit Wonders this year. Luckily, I realized I was starting to stretch myself too thin.

This is where sequencing comes into play.

It might help me resolve some of the tension if I can figure out the best path to get me there.

(see, thate desire to strategically Navigate is hard to overcome)

It will require me to “give up” on trying to keep spinning as many plates as I wanted to, like 12 One Hit Wonders.

Maybe this is why so many people who achieve FIRE want to build a business or something similar.

Doing so might make it easier to maintain a boundary around how you use your time.

But in my mind, I would just be replacing working for a paycheck with working for a vision.

It’s not “wrong” to do this,

but is that what I was really wanting?

Robert Kiyosaki is a bit of a hot potato to bring up these days, but I did learn a lot from his earlier books.

In one of them, he described how a lot of people leave a job to become independent business owners.

The tragic flaw in this approach, in his opinion, is that they can end up working more hours, with more stress and anxiety, and sometimes disliking their new life more than their old job once the honeymoon is over.

I bet this happens to 80% or more of people who take the entrepreneurial path, whether pre- or post-FIRE.

As someone who does want to create and express, contribute and connect, but who is still primarily looking to increase my freedom (psychological freedom at this point), I want a different solution.

I want to focus on other things and avoid fragmentation.

There are three really good options for someone like me to spend my time on:

• Immersive experiences

• Radical lifestyle design

• High Autonomy Just Because Adventures

I am doing some of the immersive experiences.

One of these is becoming a student again.

I am back on campus, learning about dreams, working with dreams, and exploring how they might fit with my research into personal myths.

I’m happy about this decision, and so far, so good.

I am also making a radical environment shift by spending my summers and parts of the shoulder season in the PNW at my artist retreat, and the remainder of the “school year” in a vibrant city in the Southeast.

That is an immersive experience, too.

and this school year I will decide whether I want to change it up or continue. I have until March 2027 to consider this.

There are other immersive opportunities I have considered but haven’t pursued, and they seem more like adventures than purely immersive experiences.

For example, I’ve considered going on a month-long cruise.

I’ve considered working as a bartender again at a music venue or something similar.

Primarily for the experiences, and for the adventure.

But I haven’t done either.

That said, I have done some “just because” adventures.

This daily blog posting for one full year is one such adventure.

I heard it was a good thing to do, so here I am doing it, just because I heard it was life-changing.

Heck, I think The Leavers is an example of a just-because adventure.

Both of these are unmonetized obsessions in a way.

I have little to no expectations for impact, and even less expectation of monetary rewards.

They’re just things to do that interest me.

They’re also things I feel a good bit of passion about doing, or I wouldn’t do them.

It goes back to the other types of immersive experiences I am putting off, which seem to be key.

My focus on radical lifestyle design is the real driver of what I am and have been doing, particularly since the pandemic was over.

I’ve been living, or trying to live, a kind of Snow Bird lifestyle mixed with a bit of a Back On Campus lifestyle.

And that’s fascinating.

Because I love the idea of both and am glad I have been testing them.

Yet, they seem to be keeping me from doing the other types of immersive adventures.

But they are also immersive adventures themselves.

Paradox? Ironic?

I think this is the struggle I have with giving up plate spinning.

and it demonstrates the weird relationship with sequencing that I am also struggling with.

So what will I do?

I think I want to adopt the 3 Things, Choose Wisely goals approach.

I also want to see if I can relinquish my 10 Frames “Bowling Game” approach, which I have tied so closely to Zeroscape.

How and when I will do this, I am less sure about.

but I think this is probably an important thing to give up.

The game, tracking, and scoring are not the same thing as Zeroscaping one’s life.

Let it go, dude.

I also want to get better at defining seasonal experiments.

Something like this might be what I do:

“For the next three months, my only major goal is X. I am legally forbidden from starting another major project until the season ends.”

I attempted that approach this summer with open mics.

This past summer, I basically played about 25 shows.

However, I only visited one of the seven cities I wanted to visit, or two if you count my visit to Ashland, Oregon (but I didn’t play at an open mic there, so what is that, half a point earned?).

A seasonal-focus objective clearly needs to be one of the 3 Things, Choose Wisely goals.

Unfortunately, I think I may already have too many irons in the fire. I am not sure.

Nevertheless, this is where I am at today.

Let’s see what comes up around the bend on the Highway to Yeah ahead of me.

It could get very picturesque going forward.