Biggest Worry

Quesiton: Deep down, what is your biggest worry?

Response: That someday I could become unexpectedly physically incapable, and my savings won't be enough to cover my healthcare costs. I really believe that we can weather all other contingencies. For now, we have a high deductible health insurance. But healthcare costs are where we are rolling the dice.

Handling Uncertainty

Back when I worked for an airline, we'd go to the airport to fly "standby." If the plane had empty seats, we'd get on. If everyone showed up, we went home. By definition we couldn't book hotels, or have concrete travel plans. A few times we ended up in cities very different from the ones we intended to visit.

We never liked it, but we figured out ways to deal with the uncertainty. Most airline employees do. Not once did we end up with no hotel room to sleep in for the night. If you have a credit card, you can find a room, albeit at a high price.

Anyway, all that is back-story. I guess we learned from our "standby" mode of existence. I am no longer with an airline, but we are still doing 'stand-by.' When there is fluctuating demand and supply, there will be instances of over-capacity or over-demand.

The people I consult with call me for short projects when they have a need (higher demand). Other times I don't work. Home-owners or landlords sometimes look to sublet for a month or two (overcapacity). We rent from them. In the end, it always seems to work out.

So why do I do this? My shying away from long-term commitment stems from the belief that Flexibility equals Autonomy. And I want (the illusion of) autonomy over everything else.

If you can handle a level of uncertainty, you can make things work.

Conviction (Pirsig Quote)

You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it is going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.

Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Early Retirement: The Only Criterion that Matters

Question: Can I retire early?

Response phrased as another question: Do you have kids (or plan to)?
If yes, no you can't.
If no, yes you can.

What you really need to get by

For nearly three years now, my wife and I have tried to be 'location independent people.' No apartments with long term leases. We move from place to place, seeing if we can make this mode work.

Repeatedly settling in and winding down over and over seems to be instructive. It has forced us to be efficient, to examine and rethink each of our possessions. (As an aside, here's my suggestion for anyone looking to de-clutter – Move houses)

So after nearly three years of doing this, here's my whittled down list of what I really need to get by: One big suitcase of sensible clothes, a sturdy set of multi-purpose pots and pans, a reliable car, and the very best electronic gadgets that I can afford to buy.



Everything else is only 'nice to have.'

A Few Quick posts

I haven't been posting here much lately. Many reasons. Among them are the "rules" that I have created for myself. Rules on what to post, how to write it, how to not sound arrogant, what it should convey, and most important, my worries about who might misinterpret what I say.

All of that has stifled my output.

So I am attempting to break free. For the next few days, I will post a few short quick posts. I'll call them as I see them, not worry about my rules. If I offend, it is only a by-product, not the goal.

So take the next few posts with a grain of salt. All of them, for that matter.

Now is the time

Even in Kyoto, I long for Kyoto – Basho

On paper, I have all the free time I can handle. And yet I don’t have enough of it.

This summer, my wife and I rented a condo in downtown Chicago for three months. We wanted to enjoy the city. The idea was to take leisurely walks and explore whatever caught our fancy. A summer vacation in our own city.

As soon as we moved in, we started discovering more things to do. Music concerts, festivals, library talks, author lectures, performances, new places to eat. I took on some consulting work. Thanks to Twitter, we discovered that there was great music every Thursday night, a neighborhood tour on Tuesdays, a foreign film festival every Wed, and jazz at lunch and lots more things. Friends and family came over to visit and stay. Pretty soon, we had so many engagements that we had to pick and choose.

In no time, my calendar was so full that I was just as busy as when I had a full time job. But this post is not about the numerous things to do in Chicago.

My main point is that there is never going to be enough time in life to do the things we want to. Each day, all of us are offered such an assortment of pleasurable diversions to choose from that we'll never have the kind of time in future that we secretly hope we will. Lennon was spot on when he reminded us to pay attention 'when we are busy making other plans.' No matter how many times we hear the cliché, this journey is the destination. This is it.

I am now convinced that our thinking is flawed when we say "Some day I am going to …" or when we tell ourselves "After I am done with this, I am going to get to the things I really want to." That's not quite the way things will unfold.

The real trick for each of us is to figure out how to do the soul-enriching things that we love and enjoy even as we do the things that occupy us day to day. Because this is it.