1 Week Post Final Day of Work

Drafted in August 2020, only being published now that I have a blog!

This past week has been an interesting one. I don’t feel like I quit my job and never have to go back in. Sadly I’m also writing this from Reno and there are some large forest fires going on that are causing a lot of smoke and poor air quality so going outside and getting more active kind of also is on hold due to the smoke outside or maybe I’m just using this as an excuse. Tried to go out paddle boarding (my retirement gift to myself, inflatable paddle board) and was turned away by law enforcement saying the lake was closed. But I do feel like I was very socially active this week which was nice and I’ve been doing a bunch of self-care items like taking some bubble baths and cooking healthy meals for myself. I’ve also been working to get rid of so much stuff since I have 2 months to move out of my apartment, but at least a month of that I’ll be traveling and on the road so this week really was helpful on that front.

If you’re anything like me, you can’t sleep when you are stressed out no matter how tired you are. So here I write this at nearly 4am. You’re think that being in the reset early phase would feel like retirement and seem easy, but in reality at least at this state for me it’s anything but which is probably what I knew as I was putting in my resignation and was feeling the frustration around that is what led me to cry more times than I’d like to actually admit during my resignation phase. I know in the long-term this is what is best for me and my mental health, but damn it is a lot of work to get from where I was to where I want to be. I am moving, I want to start living a nomadic life, I have tons of things to get rid of and another ton of things I want to move back to my parents. It’s the first time in my life I’m really going to be living on a budget combine that without having an income and even though I know I have a pretty good amount of money to live off of, I don’t know if it’s really enough. I don’t know how expensive really anything in my life is going to be add that to health insurance, no idea about housing costs, knowing I’m going to be staying with family at points, but also how does one decide when they’re staying with family for longer periods of time what is an appropriate amount of money to give them/bills to pay for them while you, yourself are on an unknowing budget of what you can really afford.

I’m also getting ready for trips, so many unknown trips. My parents are amazing, but also asking me to go on cool trips, which I want to do, but again the unknown of how expensive these trips are going to be. The lack of planning for road trips since I’m the planner for the recent large family trips we’ve had, but I just don’t have the mental capacity to take on more aspects of this trip to plan as I work on putting the fallen blocks back up into this new magical creation of what my reset life will look like. My to-do list looks infinitely long, I’ve discovered in this process though that I’m very good at staging items that I want to post for sale online in order to get some decent recouping of money (not so passive short-term side hustle).

Also one thing I question and it’s potentially just a personal thing, why do I do my best thinking at night? Why am I always so productive right now? I write down my to-do list for the next day before bed to try to make it a productive next day and allow me to turnoff my brain, but in some ways it just makes me want to execute on those things. I feel like my days are somehow productive and non-productive all at the same time. Cooking for myself feels wonderful, but also a chore as I try to use up the food in my house before I move away and likely need to throw anything extra out. Why am I silly enough to think I can move cross-country in just my SUV?

My mental brainpower is broken up into many categories, but here are the highlights:

Here & now- Getting rid of the things I don’t want, keeping the things I want, how to actually execute on either keeping or getting rid of, why did I think moving all my stuff cross-country was a good idea?

Financial- Can I actually afford the lifestyle I want in early retirement? How do I finally budget as a self-proclaimed unbudgeter/money optimizer? How can I optimize when there are so many unknown variables about everything?

Future- What will I actually do with my time? Where will I go? What is the purpose of my existence? Do I want to find a way to make some money to make the blow of losing my paycheck less severe? Am I really going to ever publish this in a blog? Am I going to have way more options and daily decisions to make (that sounds exhausting)?