Mornings

I have never been a morning person. In fact, while working, I would stay up late hoping to squeeze a little more juice before letting go of each day. So I figured that when I didn't have to go to work, I would be sleeping in late every day.

The exact opposite has been happening. I am up at around 6am, which is very early for me. For around 3-4 hours (6am to 9am) I get to sip coffee and read uninterrupted. There is no pressure to get ready for work. So this has become my favorite time of the day, something I simply couldn't have predicted. In fact, I would have bet money against it. But for now, I am enjoying the mornings.

The Sufis have a saying for everything

Like many of us, I too am constantly looking for evidence that confirm the correctness of my decisions. Maybe that's why the following quote struck a chord.

“When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the soul rejoices for what it has found.”
-- Sufi expression

Why John Wood left Microsoft

You could call it serendipity. I first spotted the book last August in Richmond airport’s bookstore, while waiting to board a delayed flight. I jotted down the very catchy title, got it from our library and gave it to my wife for her to read. The book really resonated with her and it definitely inspired her to give her notice at work. After finishing each chapter she was urging me to read it too.

She quit her job in February of this year and went to live in India for a few months. While living alone in Chicago, sometime in early April, I checked out the book from the library again. I read it quickly, staying up well into the night wanting to read just one more chapter.

Though I have no illusions of changing the world, I can confidently say that the book played a role in my decision to move on from my job.

Check it out – it is almost a given that you will like the book.

Not the sharpest knife in the drawer

Just a few days ago I ran into an ex-colleague of mine (Ravi G.) at a dinner party. He was mentioning his addiction to sudoku and he said that he would stay up late at night until he was able to solve a ‘medium’ difficulty websudoku.com puzzle in under 5 minutes. Now, that’s mighty impressive to me because I have only managed under-five-minutes on Easy puzzles and on rare occasions.

That got me thinking. Now that I don’t go to work and my life is devoid of the problem-solving that my day job entailed, I am really worried about my brain atrophying. Surely mental acuity drops due to disuse.

My plan to combat this (plan only, no action yet) is to get back to solving tactical chess problems, to actually attempt some of the problems from the many brain-teaser books that I own, and to find and visit web sites that are targeted at exercises for the brain.

It's all about timing

Going purely by market performance, this has got to be one of the worst times that anyone could have picked to stop working. All my savings are in S&P500, and in the last month alone, it has dropped >10%. If this trend continues, my "experiment in retirement" would , I am afraid, have to be a very short-lived one.

A quote that resonated

Middle age went by while I was mourning for my youth.

- Mason Cooley – 1927-2002

If I hadn’t stopped working, I wouldn’t be typing this in Moldova

Just wanted to use that sentence as the title of a post. Am writing this in Chisinau. Moldova is a country that isn’t very well-known. It is a bit out of the way, and if I still had a job in Chicago to go back to, I simply wouldn’t have the vacation days to go visiting places like these.

Of course, your retort could well be, but why would anyone want to visit Moldova at all? I don’t have an adequate response to that question, or at least one that would satisfy those who ask.