Within the last month or two, I had a dream about John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
They were getting ready to go out on tour and were assessing their songs from the early 1970s to determine which ones to play in concert.
That was kind of fascinating in and of itself,
but even stranger was that they seemed to be in the stomach area of a big white bird.
And Jerry Rubin was there, too.
Huh?
I had to look up Jerry Rubin to find out what he was all about.
I knew he was a partner with Abbie Hoffman and was part of a group that called themselves the Yippies, but I had no idea what any of that was about.
Three things about Rubin resonated with me.
First, he was friends with John Lennon. That’s pretty cool in and of itself, too.
Second, in the mid-70s, he shifted from radical political activism to self-development as a way to change society for the better.
I think that was a wise move.
It’s out of vogue to embrace individualism, but I see too much collective idiocy to reject the idea that one person can change the world for the better.
Third, his first book was titled DO IT: Scenarios of the Revolution.
I wonder if Nike paid him enough for stealing his revolutionary idea and turning it into their Just Do It campaign?
And, yes, that is where I am this month of November.
DO IT!
I vacillate.
Last month, October, I was all about taking it easy, going with the flow, etc.
Now I want to focus on getting stuff done.
Last month I used my values to assess how September went.
This month, I want to go back to an actual review of my key goals and the metrics that really matter.
Not that values don’t matter, but I found it to be a very squishy way to report on what was going on.
Adventure/Play, Beauty, Deep Meaningful Connections, and Total Freedom are still my focus values going forward.
However, I think it is more important to show how I operationalize them versus how I feel about whether I lived them or not.
With that prelude, how did things go in October?
Let’s start with One Hit Wonders.
I’ve been talking about having five of these, but that feels kind of flat.
There are essentially three that stand out for me.
One of the five that I will stop reporting on is Escape the Algorithm.
I have done this.
I no longer watch YouTube, play video games on my phone, or stream movies and TV shows for fun and distraction.
I will not go back to those kinds of time-wasting activities again.
Yes, I did go on vacation and binge-watch the show Below with my sister, but that was an “event,” not me sitting alone staring at a screen.
Another of the five is my Zeroscaping tracking.
All I will say about this going forward is my result for the previous month.
In October, I bowled a game of 160.
That was my daily average score for the month.
It was down 17 points from my September result of 177.
I kind of let up on things in October, and it shows in the other One Hit Wonders.
However, not as much in my writing goal. Daily blogs posted was at 100%.
I ran out of pre-batched articles in October, so I am now back to a daily writing and editing mode.
I would like to get back to having one article in draft and one article being edited each day (i.e., two articles going at a time), so that if I have a day when I need to skip, I can still stay on track.
But guess what?
I can get up early and stay up late if I have to, as I did the day I drove back from my visit with family in October.
Barring a serious illness or incapacity, I see no reason to miss a day of posting.
However, I did miss my 15,000 steps per day average for October.
I came in at 13,919 steps per day on average.
Because of my surplus from the summer, I am still on track to hit my yearly goal.
But that did bring the surplus down from seven free days to about five free days.
Perhaps I can rebuild the surplus in November. TBD.
I also ended the month at two pounds over the very top of my target weight range, and just slightly under it for the monthly average.
Yikes.
What caused this?
I did not do strength training the week of my vacation, and I was pretty loose about it throughout the month.
I also added back in drinking adult beverages, averaging about three drinks per day.
That equals about 550–600 extra calories each day.
Ouch.
I also continued my trend of eating dessert 18 days out of 31.
However, the calorie count for desserts went way down, as I did cut out donuts and cakes, so that is good.
And that shows in my protein grams being at target for the month.
I had fewer “empty” calories, except for the adult beverages.
Plus, fewer calories were burned because I didn’t maintain 15,000 steps.
It’s pretty simple, right?
That said, I am not going to implement stark austerity measures.
I will get my step count back up and increase the amount of strength training I do each week, but otherwise, I am fine with this.
It was probably just a blip that my weight was up on the last day of the month.
What about other FIRE metrics?
Well, financial metrics were a bit flat.
Net worth was literally flat from September.
It increased 0%. It also decreased 0%, so I will take that.
Cash flow was still at 50% of target, and again, I will not know the final result until after December.
Nevertheless, I expect my cash flow to roughly equal what I spend this year.
Withdrawal rate was at 4.6%, which was better than a year ago this month.
October tends to have some “lumpy” payments due.
I am still on track to perhaps come in at 4% overall, but am fine with 4.5% for the year.
I budgeted 5%, so that gives me some cushion, too.
Stuff? Decluttering?
Another successful month of decluttering all my old photos and videos.
Plus, I continue to spend some time every day cleaning and maintaining my apartment.
Dorm-simple living is way easier than having a house to maintain.
That is what I keep learning from this apartment test experiment.
I think I may even be beginning to prefer it to living in a house.
However, it is a terrible time to try to sell my home in the PNW, so I don’t expect to change that this year.
But we’ll see.
Music?
I didn’t rehearse as much either, but did okay, at about 80% of plan.
I did figure out the 60+ songs that I consider future album contenders and sent those to Lee.
We began talking about a future recording approach, but there’s no rush on this.
I have yet to attend an open mic in my Southeast city.
I would like to start attending one per week, but…
Well, I seem to have lost my mojo on this from the summer.
What I am committed to doing in November is amping up my rehearsals each week.
Plus, it is a good time to commit to a new “streak” goal for daily guitar practice (i.e., skill and technique practice).
I will start that new streak today.
I’m still trying to figure out what I am doing with this encore career, and where to take it from here.
And that is a concern, but I am not going to push it for now.
Adventures?
My year-long dreamwork certification course is underway.
That is my big adventure for the next few months, and I am enjoying it.
That said, I definitely want to consider doing mostly In Real Life (IRL) events in the future.
Zoom is a fine tool, but it doesn’t replace IRL.
Period.
Oktoberfest in Tulsa was a huge bit of fun, too!
As was going to see You Can See Everything. That was a fantastic movie.
I also plan to implement a daily adventure starting today.
Why?
Partly because I learned that I am a problem solver when it comes to achieving goals.
And I like to streak.
Oh, behave!
Not that kind of streaking.
I like to set small habit goals and maintain them each day for a period of time.
Well, There you have it. October was a well-lived month.
Some important things are coming into focus, and my energy seems to be back.
Peak fall colors are happening this next week.
November will hopefully be stunning!