As you think about what you want your post-FIRE lifestyle to include, you might find the concept of thick desires helpful.
I was listening to a new podcast this morning called The Double Win.
It’s the Full Focus planner guy’s podcast with his daughter, who runs his company.
They were interviewing a guy named Luke Burgis.
Burgis has a theory and a practice around discerning what you want.
His practice is to take time to consider something he thinks he wants to do before taking action on it.
He will write down in his journal that he wants to do something every day.
If, by the fifth or sixth day, he stops wanting to write it down, then he realizes it was a thin desire.
If it persists for two weeks or even a month, that is a thick desire.
He gave the example of a trip to Italy he had wanted to take, and eventually did.
This is relevant to me as I think about the four viable options I listed in yesterday’s article:
Be a nomadic traveling troubadour minstrel for a full year.
Be a perpetual “student,” gravitating toward attending IRL (in real life) courses.
Become a “professor” on a Highway to Yeah.
Work seasonally in a cool “third place” with a musical venue, perhaps eventually creating or buying a place like this.
These are four examples of what I think are thick desires for me.
However, I probably want to adopt his practice of writing one of them down for 15 to 30 days in a row and see what happens.
My guess is that this will clarify some things for me in terms of how and when I would want to pursue them.
Then there is the idea of place.
What is enduring for me is the idea of moving with the seasons. The migrating snowbird.
What is also enduring is the idea of having two, and perhaps even three, home bases that I move between.
What is also enduring for me is the idea of releasing these options and going down to one simple home base.
How can you have a thick desire for all three options, you might ask?
It’s a good question,
and one I plan on exploring over the next few days or month.
There is also the enduring idea of finding “different” places than where I currently make my home bases.
I think this is the more pressing thick desire.
And the simplest way to address it is to go experience living in the places I have considered.
Last week, I developed a list of 12 top-contender cities.
I was able to rationalize taking that list down to six places.
Five of these six are locations that put me close to an ocean beach.
The sixth one puts me in a more vibrant and walkable city than my current home in the PNW.
What to do next?
I think I could start using Burgis’s practice, and that may be helpful.
Every day, for a period of time, say to myself and write in my journal: “I want to visit X place and determine if I want to rent a second test apartment there.”
Something like this.
What are the desires you can’t seem to shake?
Spend some time contemplating these.
They likely hold clues for how you will want to structure and live your post-FIRE lifestyle.