Living Beyond My Means
21:18 Tuesday, 3 June 2014
Words: 803
I’ve officially been "retired" now for a year. A couple of weeks ago, I began what was kind of an "annual review." I gathered all my financial data and reviewed it. Clearly, more money was going out than was coming in. I knew that before, because my savings balance kept getting smaller. The review was necessary because I needed to know where it was going.
That was a useful exercise, and kind of fun. I got to play with some software I don’t normally use. I do like some of the features of the new version of Numbers. The only thing I found I missed a bit was the ability to roll up categories in a spreadsheet. Hopefully that will return soon in another revision.
So now I’m living on a budget. It’s not something I’m unfamiliar with, I’ve done it a few times before. Ideally, we should all be living on a budget, and I think it’s safe to say that I’ll be living on one from now on. That’s a good thing, so I’m not complaining by any means.
When I first stopped working, people often asked me, "What do you do?" as if I might get bored. I typically answered, "Whatever I want." If pressed, I explained that there was a stack of books in my loft that’s taller than I am that I intend to read, and that I was looking forward to "working" on taking care of myself, and doing some writing.
As part of my "annual review" I reflected on how well I was "spending" my time too.
My stack of books is just as tall as it’s ever been, and you can see here just how much writing I’ve done. Taking care of myself has been a bit of a bright spot, but it could use some improvement too.
Right after I retired, I had no specific goals in mind. I actually just planned to do whatever I wanted for the first ninety days or so and not even worry about it. Just relax and enjoy myself. I’m happy to report that I really "killed it" in that regard! One of the things I liked to do was play Call of Duty. I found I was playing it six to eight hours a day, nearly every day of the week! Not long after that, I disconnected the PS3 and it sits on a shelf in the spare bedroom.
In the latter part of the summer, I began to feel uncomfortable about the amount of time I was spending on "social media." In October, I basically deleted all of my accounts except for Twitter and created Nice Marmot as the place for my online activity. I was quite proud of myself, and surprised at the amount of time I seemed to reclaim.
Still, the stack of books wasn’t getting read. I’d started to try and learn Objective C (Glad I didn’t get too far in that!), but petered out. And I certainly wasn’t writing a great deal here. So where was my time going?
Well, to perhaps no one’s surprise, the internet is a huge timesuck itself. One link leads to another. One story of a baby goat defending a baby bear trapped in a dumpster in a raging forest fire and captured on video leads to another, and it was just the kind of thing I couldn’t seem to say "no" to.
Plus during the day, there was always a seemingly endless stream of text messages, iMessages, e-mails, Glassboard alerts, phone calls, and other little interruptions. And because I was "retired," some people just assumed I wasn’t "doing anything" and they were more likely to reach out to me than had I been "working." I wasn’t able to concentrate or focus on anything for any length of time.
Something had to change. "Something" being "me", as it so often is in cases like this.
As I’m writing this, my phone and other iOS devices are in manual "Do Not Disturb" mode. I considered putting them in Airplane Mode, but I do like access to the weather before I go walk Bodhi. Mail, Safari, Caffeinated, and Tweetbot are all shut down.
My new routine, conceptually at this point, is that I’m "working" for myself. From 0500 to 1300, I’m not taking calls, answering e-mails, checking tweets, responding to texts, reading the news, watching adorable videos, checking the sales at Amazon, or anything else involving electronic media. I may be checking the weather.
From five in the morning until after lunch, Monday through Friday, I’m "spending" my time taking care of myself. These have always been the most productive hours of my day. The best third of my day is going to belong to me.
I’ll keep you posted on the height of the book stack.
Zeitgeist
07:24 Monday, 3 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 69.55°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 229
It's in the air. Or at least it's on the web. This morning I read Are We Doomed? in The New Yorker.
It's an interesting read about a college course that examines the question, and the response of the students taking the course.
I'm encouraged by the response of the students. It's not denial, but it's not defeatism either. It's not cynical, but it's not rose-colored glasses either. So you can read it and not want to open a vein.
I know there are pathways where the human species can go extinct, but I think those are less likely than a general collapse of this global, advanced technological civilization, accompanied by the deaths of billions of people. One key will be avoiding a global nuclear exchange. I can't speak to the risk of bio-weapons as an extinction threat. Possibly, I guess.
I think the more likely path is the one we're on now, a "decline and fall" scenario.
But I also think the most responsible, the most meaningful thing to do in the face of this is to try to avoid it. There is always a tension in life, in existence, between attachment and letting go. To act with intention, but without attachment to the results.
The cathedral metaphor at the end of the piece is perhaps helpful.
Do your best. The rest isn't up to you.
✍️ Reply by emailShade
08:11 Monday, 3 June 2024
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Words: 33
Heather Cox Richardson seems to have some thoughts for Susan Collins.
I'm sure this made the rounds in "social media," but I'm a blogger, which may be thought of as "slow social media."
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09:47 Monday, 3 June 2024
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Words: 8
Another piece worth reading about the likely future.
✍️ Reply by emailThe Great Simplification
07:07 Tuesday, 3 June 2025
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Words: 420
This video kept surfacing in the menu of videos YouTube thinks I'd like to watch. It also came up in my Resilience feed, so I clicked through. There are chapter markers, so I skipped ahead to 5:20.
I'd say that this is a good summary of my present thinking. Framing is a useful tool in persuasion. When I write about "the collapse of this civilization," it's a catastrophic frame. It's also an accurate description of what is going to take place in the coming decades. The alarmist catastrophe framing is intended to stimulate thought and action toward preparation. (We're all preppers now. Most of us probably don't know it.)
"The great simplification," is a less alarmist framing. It masks the amount of death and suffering that will inevitably accompany the change, and suggests that what is coming may not necessarily be a "bad" thing. That is also accurate, though I don't know to what extent it will inspire thought and action to prepare.
But this pitch is helpful, I think.
I will say that I believe the most important, and powerful, effort we can make to prepare for what is coming, is to make an effort to cultivate a mindset of "loving kindness." The kind of mindset that was manifestly not on display from Senator Joni Ernst when she dismissed the concerns of her constituents that Republican policies will lead to the premature deaths of vulnerable citizens. A concern which is not "hysteria."
Now, I'm not going to offer myself as some kind of role model in that regard. It's more aspirational in my case, though it is sincere. Fear, anger and hate will accompany the collapse too, but they won't help anyone. Maybe in the short term, in a zero-sum sense. But they will only increase the net amount of suffering in the transition. Acting out of fear, which is the antecedent of anger and hate, leads to suffering, denial and regret.
When I write that "We're all in this together, and nobody gets out of here alive," the former is more important than the latter. But the latter is to suggest that mere survival isn't the goal. What good is it to "survive" in a state of denial and regret?
Anyway, something to think about.
✍️ Reply by emailCaitie Smiles
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She'd probably be mad at me for this, but I enjoy taking her picture. She really hates the closeups, which is my favorite way to frame her.
We spent a good part of the day together yesterday, though we didn't get to the movies. We went out for an early dinner at a local fast casual fish place, Timoti's Seafood Shak. I brought along the little Olympus XZ-1 compact. Since I've been to New York, I've got the itch to shoot again. I got a number of shots I liked, though she objected to them all.
When we finished eating, we went by Publix, I wanted to buy some lottery tickets. I spent $60 on some scratch-offs, and some chances on Powerball and MegaMillions. Caitie picked all the scratch-offs, while I did quick-picks on the lottery drawings.
When we got home, I let Caitie do the scratching. We won over $100! ($110, to be precise.) So I made $50 on my birthday! And Mitzi bought a slice of carrot cake without me knowing, and she stuck a candle in it and they both sang Happy Birthday to me. We all shared the slice.
Caitie cut my hair and then lingered for awhile before saying goodbye. She's genuinely upset that we're moving to New York. She's free Thursday, and she said she'll probably drop by for another visit, which is just fine by me.
After Caitie left, Mitzi and I watched Guardians of the Galaxy 3, which neither of us had seen before. Not my favorite of the series, but it got better toward the end.
It was a pretty nice day.
✍️ Reply by emailAbide
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Not having the plans for our house in hand has kind of taken the wind out of our sails. To work that metaphor a bit more, I find myself in the doldrums. The gorgeous weather offers some relief, but I still find myself spending time online and it's depressing.
Time was once when you could "surf the web," and find new and interesting things. Kottke still manages to pull that off, but a lot of his content is also the depressing kind.
I dug into some more content about building science and the debate around ventilated versus unventilated attics. One of the more well known PhD mechanical engineers has a huge presence on YouTube, and I was watching a number of his videos yesterday when I happened on one from just a few months ago.
For the most part, building science is fairly apolitical. "For the most part," may be doing some heavy lifting there, because some people go to great lengths to make everything political, which is very tedious if somewhat true.
In any event, I was watching an interview with this guy and his interlocutor asked, perhaps rhetorically, if we had a housing problem in the United States, she being in Australia.
Well of course we do, but our building science guy had to go on to say that we also had a homeless problem, an "illegal alien" problem, and then seemed to catch himself. In other videos where he's a speaker he refers to "greenies," supposedly people who care about the environment or the climate, but who don't understand physics.
I get it that we have a science illiteracy problem in this country, but calling people names doesn't help make your case and in fact distracts from whatever point you're trying to make.
I also wonder how much this is a characteristic of an engineer's mind? Because I have a friend, a former classmate, who is also a mechanical engineer, who is also extremely opinionated and way to the right. In engineering, you're focused on achieving a result using data and equations, and where there may be uncertainty, well, you add some "margin" for safety.
But there is always an answer. And while there may be more than one way to solve a problem, once they've settled on an answer, that's the "right way." He made an engineering joke that went something to the effect, "Don't hire an engineer who's never had a bridge fall down. He over-engineers everything. Never hire an engineer who's had two bridges fall down, because he never learns anything."
It's a small sample size, but I'd extend this to my experience back with "hard" science fiction fandom. I'm not into sf fandom anymore, though I may read a novel now and then. But my distinct recollection was that of a group of people who had firmly fixed opinions that they believed were "right," and had "the charts and graphs to prove it." (Science and engineering.)
I see the same phenomenon in the Micro four-thirds forum at DP Review, where I made the mistake of reading a thread. I seldom go there anymore, because it's always the same tedious debates; but I went there this morning and read stuff like this.
I read Nick Bilton's letter to Scott Pelley. I'm not a 60 Minutes viewer, but I think I'm still entitled to appreciate its value as an institution and reputation as a journalism outlet. I think Bilton's overworked block of text is an exercise in self-justification, and that the guy never should have taken the job if he didn't expect to take fire from the organization he was looking to lead.
Fuck Bilton. Fuck Weiss. Fuck CBS. Fuck the Ellisons.
And then I read stuff like this, where Trump is trying dismantle the very infrastructure we've created to try to understand what's happening with our climate and in our oceans.
I really need the distraction of studying our plans, sharing them with HVAC contractors, developing a timeline, figuring out the budget.
For now, I guess I'll just go take a walk.
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