Category — Dealing With Life

I have always secretly dreamed that one day an individual would cross my path (or I theirs) and find my talents so unique and valuable that they offer to be my patron.

I know, I know, a terrific fantasy, and one not at all filled with much humility or indeed reality. But hey, as far as dreams go I used to think it was a pretty good one.

Yes, I longed to be the Leonardo da Vinci who finds his Lorenzo de Medici, and at the same time I know I’ve idealised the whole scenario. We know that Leonardo was a unique genius whose many interests led him in a variety of directions and without successful focus on any one area. We also know that many of his commissions for various patrons were left unfinished. In fact, instead of living a comfortable life, unworried about finances, he was often left with a month or two of savings. Much of his famous art, rather than being something that he was proud of and enjoyed producing, is more likely to be a commission he reluctantly accepted to allow him enough funds to pursue his other projects and to allow for food and lodging.

What I suppose I’m trying to impress upon you is that it seems very likely that even someone as amazing as Leonardo da Vinci had a job too. He had to find ways to employ his skills to earn his keep, even if he would have preferred having years of time stretched ahead of him to work on flight, optics and the mysteries of the human body. While his patrons certainly allowed him many freedoms in this regard, they weren’t entirely without their price. They wanted their share of his genius too and even his life was a balance between allowing his creativity and intelligence to follow their natural inclinations and submitting to the whims of his employers.

So I guess you could say I’ve started to rethink my desire for a patron and turn instead to designing my life in such a way that I am my own patron.

Even as such I will need to work and exchange my skills in part for some financial gains. Yet I seek a solution that allows for this on my own terms, as far as is feasible, and with a system of balance suitable to me.

You would all know by now that I’m not content with snatched moments for myself here and there. I am not content to live a life where the thoughts of the day revolve around work to the extent that my own unique thoughts have barely any energy left to communicate with me. I am not willing to give the best of myself to others in a way that asks me to compromise on what I have left for me.

As my own patron I understand the important balance between establishing finances that are sustainable and also freeing. The work that I do for myself must hold some intellectual stimulus but also be in the background of my greater goals and ambitions. I cannot let a situation arise where I spend more time trying to establish businesses or income streams than I do on the personal pursuits that are important to me. If I were to let this happen, then it would be the equivalent of working a full time job for someone else. I would have become a slave to the patron (even if the patron is me) rather than the patron being in the background supporting my pursuits.

I think many of us imagine that working for ourselves will be a wondrous endeavour filled with freedom. I think it all depends ultimately on why it is you want to work for yourself. If you imagine that it means having more freedom of time and choice then I think you may be deluded. If you think you will have more opportunity to pursue your greatest interests then I think you need to examine the reality more closely.

If what you seek is a lifestyle that will allow you to read, learn, experiment, grow, philosophise, experience, savour, inquire and detach, then you need to ensure that the necessities of life are automatically created in the background of your life, rather than in the foreground. Work as you need to and then set it aside as you pursue your real interests. Organise working so that it occupies less than 50% of your time – a 3 day working week with 4 days for personal pursuits would be a great place to start.

When it’s time to work do so with focus and ungrudgingly knowing that this work too is for you. When it is your time, turn with full focus, putting finances aside, and create and learn knowing confidently that your patron is in full support of your lifestyle.

Give yourself permission to be your own version of Leonardo da Vinci but without the insecurity or sense that you need to compromise yourself.

I have a little confession to make; I was wrong to start up at another teaching job this year. Although it is all part of my plan to accumulate savings rapidly in order to retire early, it is still a mistake.

It’s not the school, and it’s certainly not the students, who are a really delightful group of young women. It’s me. It’s who I’ve become. I’ve changed and unfortunately I’ve pushed this realisation aside while throwing myself once more into a situation where I don’t want to be. Realistically I’m stuck here until the end of the year. Sure, I could resign, but I feel I’ve made a commitment to these students and so will do my best to see the year out.

So how am I going to get through a year of feeling stuck between worlds? How can you get through another year if you’re feeling the same way?

Have an end in sight

Feeling stuck indefinitely is far too overwhelming to cope with long term and will almost certainly break you down. You need to have the ability to remind yourself of the impermanence of your situation, even as a means to temporarily cheer yourself up. The end of whatever has you stuck should be in the relatively near future, with three years as an absolute maximum. If what you’re stuck in is a terrible relationship, this should be three months not years.

Work knowing that this is the last time you’ll be doing this job

Going back to teaching maths in a high school setting has confirmed for me that this is the last time I’ll be doing this job. It no longer stimulates me like it once did, and it no longer holds fulfilling challenges. Yet knowing this is my last year brings a new freshness to the situation and allows me to shift my perspective when at work.

Each lesson sees me making the most of my students, enjoying the time I get to spend with them and getting to know them.  Teaching offers the unique opportunity to forge many relationships and to perfect your communication skills with a range of different people and I’m going to make the most of it while it lasts.

Research, plan and research some more

Spend time in the evenings and weekends planning your next move. How long will you be able to last on what you will save during this time? How much can you save? Where can you reduce your expenditure?

At first you’ll need to really figure out who you are and what you value. Cal Newport has two great posts he wrote recently explaining that to make a career choice you first need to define what sort of lifestyle you are seeking and which elements you need to include in your life to feel you are living a remarkable life.

The first place to start might be with identifying what it is about your current situation that is making you feel so stuck. Essential elements that you need in your life are missing from your job and clearly defining these will help you determine what you need to look for.

Make time for yourself at work

Whether in your lunch break or a few stolen moments here and there at work, it is important that you create little islands of time for yourself. Maybe it’s to read a novel, or to read an interesting article or do a little more research on an idea you had this morning. Depending on how busy your day is this won’t always be possible, but try to take time to devote to you.

In doing so you will experience a moment of freedom in your day and you will take back a moment of control. This will contrast significantly with your usual feeling of being stifled and stuck and will act as an energiser.

Treat this period as a valuable Meantime

Transitioning from one period of your life to another doesn’t usually happen overnight. In fact, when life does change dramatically overnight this is usually to due to a tragedy, and so you should welcome and embrace a period of less rapid and more conscious shifting.

Yes you will wake up each day wishing that the new phase of your life had already started, but it won’t start without the necessary groundwork anyway. Think of it as a challenge. If you can set up the framework for your new life in the middle of a life that leaves you very little time for your own pursuits, then you must really want it. In a way, you will prove to yourself during this time that you mean business and that your goals are important to you.

In fact, on some days you’ll be glad to see that the deadline for the end of this life and the beginning of the new one is still so far off when you realise there is still so much to do. In a way I think it can be likened to the nine months of being pregnant. As a mother you are given nine precious months (in the best case scenario) to prepare for your new life. There are many times when pregnant women can’t wait for the baby just to be born already, sometimes because of the great discomfort or for feeling unwell, and other times due to the great excitement. Regardless, all women have to wait. I’m sure there are an equal number of times where mothers are glad for the time to adjust to the idea of this new role and to have the time to prepare mentally, emotionally, physically and practically.

Consider that you are currently in the gestational period of the new life that you are creating for yourself. You need this time to prepare yourself, both mentally and practically. Waking up overnight into your new life would more than likely fail miserably. A gradual change of which you have control over is far more likely to be successful.

Feeling stuck is simply a sign that you’re ready to move on and that you are overdue for a change. There’s no point sitting around wishing and waiting for your lotto numbers to come up. Instead you need to use this time to plan your escape. Don’t put all your focus on the ending though, the focus needs to be on the beginning of what happens next.

This is where I went wrong last time. I put my focus on what I didn’t want rather than on what I wanted and needed. This in turn ensured I had no firm plan for my next move. Without the correct clarity I’ve fallen back into what I know. So I’m setting myself the challenge of using this year to exit a life I don’t want and to enter a life that I do want and that I have successfully planned for.

I can’t trace back to an exact date when I started taking the red pill, but I know that I’ve been taking it in small doses all my life, and for the past sixteen years regularly. In case you’re not sure what I’m referring to, it is a reference taken from The Matrix trilogy, now used popularly to refer to waking up to reality and truth.

Once you begin truly thinking for yourself, examining the whys and the hows, and being slightly suspicious of the truth behind everything you hear and think you know, there is no going back to the innocence and ignorance that you may have enjoyed before. No matter how much you might wish to go back to a life where you accepted the status quo, you can’t go back.

After some time, you will find that you are on the outskirts of the status quo, watching everyone participating around you, while you wonder what might be left for you. You can’t participate with those who are seemingly content with the way things are because you don’t understand how they continue to fail to awaken and they don’t understand what’s wrong with you and why you just can’t be happy. This is where I find myself now.

So what are your options? What are mine? All of us who find ourselves here on the fringe, on the edge, have to find some way to live outside of the status quo as much as possible, while we find a way to build a life and a world of our own imagining.

Eventually, more and more people will leave the status quo and will come to join the rest of us. This is how the world will change. It won’t happen in the space of a few months, or even a few years. It won’t be a sudden change in the world. Rather, individuals have been changing their lives. Now these individuals have started to gather with people similar to them and small groups are forming. Small, yet growing, movements are leading by example, sharing their ideas and knowledge, often in blog form, and more individuals feel drawn to experiment for themselves, and find a way to live true to their essence on the outskirts of the status quo.

So I’ve kept you in suspense long enough haven’t I? How am I going to live outside the system that I can no longer tolerate?

I am going to retire early and simplify my life. By early I mean at the end of 2015, at 35 years of age.

What were you expecting? Something more dramatic? Something more magical? Or perhaps you’re wondering how?

I will probably write further posts to explain some of this in more detail, especially if there’s any interest. But here are the bare bones of what I intend and what I am doing so far:

For the first 9 years of my working life I have saved hard (and then my husband joined me) and we have a house that is paid for. Thus our largest expense, the mortgage, is no longer an obstacle.

I no longer see our house as a “starter home”. I refuse to buy into the notion that I need something bigger and newer in a nicer location. The energy (time spent at work plus denying myself mental and intellectual freedom) that would be required to “upgrade” our house and lifestyle, is not something that is worthwhile nor feasible for me.

I could technically stop going to work now and rely on my husband’s income. There is no way I’m going to do that though. My financial independence is essential to me. I could not be the feminist that I am and simultaneously rely on my husband for resources. This might not sit well with some of you, and it may offend others of you, and yet this is what I am. And so, I will spend the next four years, saving and simplifying, so that I may achieve my financial freedom.

I have been reading the book and blog by Jacob, over at Early Retirement Extreme, and so much of what he says resonates deeply with me. As a numbers person myself, I enjoy his analysis and the way he has crunched the numbers for himself. To that end I have begun creating a few spreadsheets which calculate daily expenditure, average expenditure and projected savings progress. I aim to save at least 80% of my income over the next four years.

As I save I will learn more about how to simplify my life and how to become more self-subsistent. Although I wouldn’t consider myself to be a big consumer, most people know I don’t even enjoy going shopping, there is more I can do to combat my consumerism. I am reading about how to eat more simply and am making progress with this. Grocery expenses are our largest expenditure. I intend to learn how to sew and to expand our vegetable garden.

I won’t be able to be completely self-subsistent and will thus be living somewhat inside the economic system of our world. I will focus on buying only those things that are a need, with the intention of buying quality items that last almost a lifetime, rather than succumbing to the need to upgrade constantly.

Once I have a high level of savings, I intend to live off the interest earned. I don’t intent to “play the stockmarket” or to become a financial wiz. Unfortunately none of that really interests me. At this stage I intend to earn interest from my savings (either from a term deposit or a high savings account) and live off that interest. At this stage my aim is to live comfortably and happily off around $12k – $15k a year. I realise that this wouldn’t be possible without living within the economic structure we have in place and until I come up with a better strategy, this doesn’t bother me too much.

What I have presented above is put in basic terms, but it really isn’t much more difficult than that. I have always said that if only there was a job where you could get paid to be an eternal student, learning whatever you want whenever you want, then that would be my dream job. Unfortunately there is no such occupation, and unless I find a patron soon, I will have to fund my own dream.

The only thing I’ve ever truly wanted is to be free. I’ve tried to convince myself from inside our world system that I am, but since taking the red pill I know I’m not. I can’t just get on with it and be happy with the way things are now that I know better. Having had this brief hiatus from “the real world” I now know how sweet it is and that this is the life for me.

To reach my potential and to find deep fulfilment I need time, space and flexibility. To achieve this I need to exit the world of work and to do this I need to exit the world of consumerism.

I’m not the first to do this, and I know I won’t be the last. I’m joining one of the small movements.

And what will I be doing from 2016 onwards? I don’t know yet. I envision that it entails more sustained writing and a deeper contribution to moving this world in a new direction. But it is too soon to start talking about that.

I may find that I don’t meet my target or that my calculations were optimistic. I may find a need to continue with part time work for either financial reasons or otherwise. This is all ok with me. I know that either way, 2016 will be the year of my true freedom.

What will you do now that you’ve taken the red pill?

I’d love to hear what you think about this or address any questions you might have.

One of the most significant reasons why our lives don’t look like we think they should is because we are paralysed by choice.

In our lives we enjoy an abundance of choice unlike all the generations before us. The variety of groceries, cuts of meat, vegetables and cuisines are many and varied.

There are seemingly infinitely many places where you can buy clothes and shoes, starting with the physical stores in your own town and extending to the far reaches of online shopping.

The large variety of topics to be explored and books to be read is so vast that you couldn’t cover all of them, or even most of those that interest you, in a normal lifetime.

The variety and amount of entertainment at our disposal, games to play, shows to watch, music to listen to, is also richly diverse.

And just think of all the places you can travel to; you might be able to skim the surface of many countries, cities and towns, but will you ever have the opportunity to know a place deeply?

This is exactly what humans have worked so hard to enable and what, for too many people living on this planet, is just a cruel, taunting dream. And yet the more there is to choose from, the less some of us seem able to choose anything at all.

Here I am, presently enjoying my extended hiatus from normal life, and yet I am often disgusted with myself at the end of a day because I feel I wasted an opportunity to use my time and explore something new.

I know right? What a problem to have!

And yet for me, and perhaps for many of you, the problem is real and it’s painful. There’s the sense that life is stagnating and passing me by.

I woke up this morning thinking about what I’d like to do with my day. Should I write more of my novel, should I read more of the three books I currently have going, should I learn a new song on the piano, should I watch more of The Wire, should I research more into the articles about ET contacts with ancient civilisations (that’s a story for another time)?

I feel a pull towards each of these, yet none stand out as where I want to put my focus for the day. And so there’s the possibility that I could spend the day avoiding doing anything at all. Instead, because I can’t choose, I might tend to surf the web aimlessly, watch pointless daytime TV, potter around the house or just sit daydreaming. The next thing I’ll know it will be time to start preparing dinner and moving on into the evening.

The same phenomenon occurs when eating out. I’ve come to love tapas style dining because I don’t have to choose one dish, but rather can taste and sample from a variety of smaller dishes. Growing up my favourite lunches were when my mum would prepare an antipasto style lunch of deli meats, cheeses, bread, assorted marinated vegetables, fresh cucumber and fruit. I can still taste it now!

You may not experience this to the same extent that I have been lately, but perhaps you can relate. Maybe during the evening you wonder what you could do with your time. Perhaps you have a pile of books waiting to be read. Maybe you’ve been meaning to do some more work on a creative project. Is it that you’ve been dreaming of finding out more information about a new interest or project?

Whatever thoughts and ideas spring to mind, they each likely pique your interest, but you can’t really decide on what to do and so you do what you always do. You choose nothing. You remain exactly where you are, in front of the TV, letting inertia win you over, and letting yourself feel disappointed and annoyed that you wasted another evening.

The same thing probably happens on the weekend. On Thursday and Friday you start fantasising about all the things you want to do this weekend. You want to try that new restaurant, visit that new art exhibition, try that exercise class, see a movie, catch up with friends, organise that cupboard, clean that room, finish reading that book and so on and so forth.

The thought of the possibilities excites you and energises you. But what is the reality?

Friday evening arrives and you decide you’re really too tired to make a start on anything tonight. Instead you’ll relax with a bottle of wine and a TV movie. The enthusiastic energy you felt has well and truly dissipated and your actions encourage the lethargy to settle in.

When Saturday arrives you likely sleep in and spend the morning pottering around, lazing with the papers, indulging in a long breakfast and doing a few chores and before you know it the evening has arrived once again.

The sheer number of choices you have given yourself for the weekend prove to be too many and instead of choosing just one, you choose none and allow the usual inertia to take hold.

So what’s the key here? What can you do to ensure you don’t spend your life disappointed and annoyed with yourself with a constant question of “What if?” flashing in your mind?

The solution is simple, but not necessarily easy.

You choose just one thing to focus on each day. For the weekend maybe choose two or three activities to involve yourself with.

Yes, but how do you make this choice you might be wondering? There’s probably a few ways to answer this, but here I’ll give you two.

Firstly, when considering your choices, see if you can tune into your instinct for which activity might hold the most interest for you today. Or rationally analyse which one would help you feel the best.

If you can’t rely on instinct or rationality then choose at random. Generate a random number, play eeny-meeny or pull an option out of a hat.

The most important thing is to choose something so that you end the inertia. Even if you start an activity and change your mind after 15 minutes and move onto something else, you will have ended your inability to choose.

Chances are that once you start making choices you will begin to naturally tune in to what you really want to be doing. Slowly you will realise just how many books you have read, paintings you have completed, new topics you have learnt, people you have met and activities you have enjoyed over a year.

As time passes by you will grow proud of what you have accomplished and the fabric of your life will seem amazingly rich. You will no longer go to bed disappointed and annoyed with yourself, but feel a sense of peace because you are being true to you.

So you might be wondering what I ended up doing so far today? Well I chose to write this post and once I’m done I will make another choice.

In Ayn Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead, the character Roark talks to Wynand about what he calls the “second-handers”.

A second-hander is someone who has no real sense of self, but instead borrows their perception of self from those around them. Rather than being who they truly are, they instead adopt a persona according to what they think society and those around them would find pleasing and acceptable.

Sometimes these people are seen as altruistic, giving of themselves. In reality they don’t give anything as they don’t have anything of a self to give. Rather, they like to be seen to be selfless because they think they will find approval that way.

As Roark explains it:

“The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he’s great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. The man whose sole aim is to make money… Personal luxury is a limited endeavour. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others. They’re second-handers.”

When you look around you how many second-handers can you see? How many young people can you see are in danger of being second-handers all their lives? How often do you think you might exhibit the tendencies of a second-hander?

Pretending to be someone you’re not so that you might gain respect or seem more likeable to your peers is amongst some of the most unhealthy behaviour that you could ever exhibit.

Adopting the lifestyles and habits of those that seem successful to you, without reflecting on whether any of it suits you, is probably setting you up for failure and disappointment.

Believing in philosophies and teachings without critical reflection may lead you too far astray and more lost and bewildered than you were to begin with.

Being you, being real, being authentic, is all that you are here for. If you forgo your sense of self in favour of blending in with the status quo, you cheat yourself out of your own greatness. Since there will never be another you, you’ve given away the one chance the world had to experience something uniquely you.

It’s easier to be like others. It’s easier to copy the lifestyles of those around you. It’s easier to adopt the thoughts, opinions, beliefs and attitudes of others than to get deeply in touch with your own.

Everyday, in almost every moment you have two choices. Be a second-hander or be you. What’s it going to be?