It’s been a hard day’s rut, as Neil Innes and The Rutles used to sing.
That was what seemed to come up yesterday.
Don’t get me wrong, though. It was a great day overall, and very relaxing.
It was a day of hanging out at a coffee shop, having a drink at a very hip bar, hanging out poolside and listening to some good music, and having dinner at a great restaurant with some delicious food.
It also involved nearly 10,000 steps of walking.
and a lot of discussion about lifestyle and feeling stuck.
When you are stuck in your life and not sure what to do next, that can be very frustrating.
This is what’s going on for my sister currently.
She’s feeling trapped and not very free.
She works a lot in a very demanding role, has taken over responsibility for a lot of our mom’s care, and has two dogs, two cats, and a ton of home improvement projects to attend to in her life.
She even finds that getting out to have fun is hampered by all these responsibilities.
She’s hardy and has grit, but is in serious danger of burnout.
She wants to escape to California but feels she can’t right now.
I feel her pain.
I recognize that this was what my life looked like for 25 years or more, and I’m grateful to have achieved some of the freedom she wants for herself.
And, Here is an interesting thing I see in this discussion about being stuck in a rut.
Let’s suppose you can create a blank slate for your life by removing all commitments and obligations on your time, money, and attention.
You take some time to recover from burnout.
Then, when you are rested, you may begin to feel a bit restless.
What will you refill your time with once you’ve recovered?
I may be reaching this point:
the point of consciously deciding what the next few months and years will be filled with and what I will do, rather than staying stuck.
Finally.
Five-plus years after achieving FIRE.
The other day, I wrote an article called Five Things You’ve Thought About Trying in the Last Month.
In that article, I discussed five things that had crossed my mind in the past week. I just went back and looked at it.
What is interesting about that list of five items is that they represent different forks in the road related to lifestyle choices.
That is, underneath each one is an option I am considering against other options.
Options are great, but too many options can be confusing.
They can keep you stuck in a rut, too.
Here’s what I mean.
Let’s take Going Nomad for a Full Year, which was item one on my list of five things.
What kind of life am I building by doing this?
A very unsettled and inconsistent one, I think.
But also an adventurous and free one that I could probably never have experienced when I was working full time.
This is an important answer to the question of why I would do this.
And there are other good reasons for considering doing it at all, and now rather than later.
Basically, a strong case can be made for it.
Okay. Well, then what keeps me from doing it?
All my other options, commitments, and obligations.
One of those options is to pick a second city and test out a simple apartment lifestyle.
Why would I do this rather than go nomad for a full year?
This choice represents a fork in the road.
Do I want to be settled or unsettled?
Do I want to explore a vast area or soak in a locality?
What must I let go of in order to take one path over the other?
What is really clear to me is that I have at least four currently competing options for how I design the next phase of my post-FIRE experience.
Unlike my sister’s dilemma, I have gotten myself stuck in a rut because I cannot commit to one option over the others.
Some of this comes back to the seven identities I have discussed over the last couple of months.
As you may recall, I chose the student identity for the coming year, and perhaps longer.
It was a good option, but it also limits my ability to choose Going Nomad for a Full Year.
Or does it? Am I limiting myself by thinking this?
Yes, I am probably limiting myself to think it keeps me from going nomad.
Nevertheless, this is where I am in my journey out on a Highway to Yeah.
I am still trying to parse out the reasons I would take one path over another, one option over another, and one identity as central over the others.
As for my sister, she decided that the best thing she could do is plan a break at least once per year.
Or perhaps even twice per year: once in the winter and once in the summer.
It is within her power and set of options to go live in California for a month out of the year,
and that may give her the recharge and recovery she needs.
I might even be able to help her with that if she is seriously committed to doing so.
We’ll see.
But for sure, her options are more limited than mine.
Therefore, yesterday was a great reminder that I’d better get more serious about what comes next in my own life.
Now all I need is a break from my vacation break this past week to spend time parsing this all out.
Deciding is work. It is action.
Tomorrow’s road trip back to my Southeast city apartment gives me a chance to do so.
Even if not, I do feel a sense of optimism.
I feel like I am approaching a clearing, and the vista is opening up in front of me.
The ever-elusive state of clarity and the equally elusive state of equanimity might both be just on the horizon.