Contemptlating my mortality and reducing my standard of living

Work half the year

Save enough money to hike the other half

Pretty simple if you ask me

If your nest egg is such that you could retire if wanted, however meager, and cover insurance, etc…your in a good position.

It maks NO sense to work any more than have to in life. You dont win by dieing with most money or stuff.

Work half the year

Save enough money to hike the other half

Pretty simple if you ask me

If your nest egg is such that you could retire if wanted, however meager, and cover insurance, etc…your in a good position.

It maks NO sense to work any more than have to in life. You dont win by dieing with most money or stuff.

Then again, if cannot afford to do anything but sit on sofa, you dont win by that either. Recreation takes $$.

I wish I knew what I could do half the year. I’ve tried various things in my life but I’m not good at a lot of things and after having earned a middle-class salary it’s really hard to earn minimum wage again. I’m not young and pretty anymore, so that’s not in my favor, either. Freelance work is the worst work. I loathe it with every fiber of my being. When I finally quit working I am going to be good and done with it.

I’ll bet there are tons of things you’re good at Piper or you wouldn’t have done the outdoor adventures you’ve done, especially solo. Whether those translate into job/earnings opportunities is another story only you can tell. But don’t underestimate your skills.

Before I became a grown up, and after college, I spent 6 years working in the national parks, and I loved it. Yes, it’s mostly minimum wage, but not all minimum wage. Not sure what you do for lucrative work, but it might also exist in the parks system somewhere, or the public lands agencies. It puts you closer to the outdoors, even if the job itself isn’t terribly rewarding. During the time I earned peanuts and loved my poverty lifestyle, I used every weekend to hike, camp, explore. The park worker communities are fantastic, or were then. A lot of people who just wanted to be out there and all ages.

The work was, work. Nothing special, but I enjoyed that too (I managed a little grocery/convenience store). We scheduled employees so that Fridays ended early and Mondays started late, so you could stumble in with dirty hair, put a hat on, and get to work Monday afternoon. Or have enough time to unpack and shower after a weekend of tramping, if you were in a job that required a bit of decency. (It is the parks, after all). I didn’t have health insurance, unthinkable at our older ages now. I also didn’t have bills to pay. I didn’t go shopping, didn’t collect useless things, and borrowed all my books.You find ways to make it all work. There’s a lot of barter going on, outside the tax and spend system that serves only to make rich people richer. I got free haircuts, can’t remember what I traded for those. I got car repair too. We all helped each other out. But mostly we just didn’t spend money. Recreation doesn’t have to be all that spendy, especially once you have your base gear.

If your current employer allows, you could also request additional unpaid leave, in addition to your regular vacation, to maximize your play time. That might be risky, but it’s worth exploring. I’m somewhat in the same boat – close enough to retirement that I don’t want to mess things up by stopping too soon, but also watching my body deteriorate – arthritis, poorer fitness, yada yada. The bucket list grows while the body stagnates at the desk. I’ve asked my financial planner to help me figure out how to retire a little early, get sufficient work for a few years that i don’t spend into my retirement bucket, at a park or somewhere similar. We’ll see how all that goes. I also have two kids to put through college, so nothing exciting will happen until they graduate. That will be a celebration for more than the graduate!

The other thing I’ve decided to really focus on, while working the responsible adult job, is to maximize fitness opportunities. My building has 6 floors, so I’ve used my Fitbit to estimate the distances accumulated by walking the stairs and circumference of each floor, and making sure I’m getting my 2020 in 2020 (I have a spreadsheet to keep me honest). I don’t take a long lunch break or “smoker” breaks (what is that 15 minutes for these days?!) but instead get up every hour to 1.5 hours and get in a half mile. Focusing on those small goals helps me stay optimistic for the bigger goals in the future.

Great question. I think most of us are probably pondering it to some extent or another.

close enough to retirement that I don’t want to mess things up by stopping too soon, but also watching my body deteriorate – arthritis, poorer fitness, yada yada.

I think I saw the movie “Death Becomes Her” in my 20s, maybe even my early 20s. I thought the movie was great. The special effects blew my mind and the actresses were really funny. But the other day I suddenly realized that I totally “get” the movie now. Those women weren’t just vain, they were my age. That’s what my life feels like now.

I went for a hike yesterday that involved a pretty long climb and then some fairly obscure trail with a couple of tricky spots. My knee did well! I was a little afraid to climb up boulders or do anything too tricky, but a straightforward trail was no problem at all.

I still feel very mid-life crisis-y. I don’t want to sit in an office in front of a computer anymore. Life is too short. Mine is slipping away.

Life is slipping away for all of us.

If I may be so bold – Your question is “How can I manage the next four years without going nuts?”

Step way back and think big picture.

Can you find another role in your work environment?

How can you add substantial significance to the other 80 hours of your week?

How can you frame your 4 remaining years into tolerable chunks that you can check off towards the big day?

Deep breath. Deep breath. There is a way. You can find it.

“Life is too short. Mine is slipping away.”

How about at least a couple of overnighters/month?  You’re in a pretty good area for doing that, IIRC.  That could work wonders for body and soul.  And longer walks several times a week to stay in decent shape?  A couple of 8-10 milers should do the trick.

I really get where you’re coming from Piper.

I know that ‘retirement’ (they should retire that term and replace it with ‘freedom’ or ‘time to grow as a human’) is the goal. In the meantime:

One possible route is to find another thing to fall in love with IN ADDITION to hiking. Something a person can do immediately at home and look forward to at work. (Or even sneak in at work…). Journaling or poetry or drawing or playing an instrument,for example. Or photographing birds or other animals near home.

It’s odd in a way that we love an activity: backpacking. Or instead, we love being in nature, despite the hardships (and we’re in love so we don’t see these as hardships). But our hearts are large! What else might capture our interests and imagination?

In line with what Jeffrey is saying, we humans have a tendency to worry a bit too much about what might happen, which gets in the way of enjoying what is happening now. So, perhaps, stop worrying about your life slipping away and pay attention to today. Do something today that makes today special, or some time this week that makes this week special. Appreciate the now. That, of course, doesn’t mean don’t plan for the future, just don’t do so at the expense of enjoying the here and now.

>”have a tendency to worry a bit too much about what might happen”

Yeah, when in my life have I been able to predict what the next 5 years looked like?  So why waste mental energy over it?  Sure, keep moving in the direction you want, but making today and tomorrow the best they can be is the better bet.

“ How can you add substantial significance to the other 80 hours of your week?”

^^^This!

I already play old-time music, and a little bit of Irish, as a hobby. I play in a little band called “Dry and Dusty”. I play mandolin and fiddle (badly). I run the jam’s website, glendessaryjam.com and we jam every Wednesday night. We now have two camping trips locally each year, where we take over a section of Lake Cachuma and jam all day, jam all night, plus there’s a camping trip with a two-day jam at Pozo saloon. Plus there are other festivals to go to throughout the year if you don’t mind traveling a little. I miss all this when I go hiking for any length of time! Maybe if I didn’t have to work I could actually practice, maybe even take a lesson and learn how to play the fiddle for real.

“Maybe if I didn’t have to work I could actually practice, maybe even take a lesson and learn how to play the fiddle for real.”

Honestly there is plenty of time to do it while you work Piper. I work full time and sew on the weekends and I am back in school to finish my BA and do my wildlife stuff plus presentations and other stuff too. 8 hours a day at a job is a job but it’s not your whole life.

“Maybe if I didn’t have to work I could actually practice, maybe even take a lesson and learn how to play the fiddle for real.”

You CAN take a lesson; or better, schedule a bunch of lessons. And also, just play at home more. As you know, the more you play the better you become and the more betta it all becomes.

anyway it sounds to me that you play for real NOW. You play in a band and jam with others. That’s a lot! I wish I played fiddle!

tune those strings to beauty and watch them become magic!

I take lessons for classical guitar and constantly play. I love it. It’s hard too. all good things take patience.

I can’t play at home more. There is a retired man in my house who does not like it and he is always there. There are also parrots in my house who don’t like it and they yell and scream and then I cannot hear myself play. I can only practice the mandolin.

I’ll be playing at a Civil War reenactment next month. That should be interesting.

So how would you practice more if you were retired, if there is someone in the house all the time that doesn’t want to hear you practice?

I once lived with a boyfriend who forbade me to practice when he was home (it made him “feel bad”, because he played the same instrument and was not as successful in music as I was).  That caused irreparable damage to our relationship.  I hope you can work out a compromise that allows you to practice at home.  Can the parrot cages temporarily be moved to a room on the far side of the house from your practice room?

I managed somehow to play professionally for 32 years, rehearsing and performing most evenings, while working a day job.  Didn’t practice as much as I wanted, but got by.  It helped that my day job hours started at 7:30 or 8am. Didn’t sleep enough, definitely, or exercise enough during some of those years.  It’s nice to have the luxury of only being a  musician now.

partners should not be forbidding the other, good you dumped him :)

I was too young to know better, stand my ground, and talk it out. I stayed with him for another 10 years; nice guy otherwise, but he didn’t have much self esteem back then.

that is a common pattern.  Partners stay with someone that doesn’t deserve it.  Very difficult to move on.  “But I love him”.  Very frustrating for onlookers.

Good you managed to part ways

So how would you practice more if you were retired, if there is someone in the house all the time that doesn’t want to hear you practice?

That is the conundrum, isn’t it. It’s the looming argument on the horizon. It’s a tangled web of prior mistakes, health issues and other bargaining/extortion chips that I cannot figure out how to solve. At least right now.

You have my sympathy on that one.  It’s really really tough.  My only advice is to schedule a time (or times) to sit down and calmly discuss and work out the problem together…which of course I never did.  What would he do in your shoes?  Are there any compromises he is willing to make?  etc.  Not an easy thing to work out, but it sounds very necessary for you.

Might even be worth having a few family therapy sessions, if the two of you can’t come up with a plan together.

+1 to what Debbie says, but of course that doesn’t help with the parrots.

Do you have a separate room that you could add some soundproofing to and then practice there? That might be a part of a solution. Soundproofing panels aren’t necessarily cheap, but they might get you closer to where you’re trying to get.

An interesting Scientific American piece related to this thread.

How to Recognize and Avoid Common Thinking Traps

The Middle Way to fill in the transportation gap, at least just for getting around town, might be one of the more capable electric scooters.  Legal on sidewalks.  That one in the link has a 15 mile range and 15mph top speed, and a collapsing handle that lets you fold it and tow it around behind you like airline luggage so that you can easily take it on a subway or up to your office or work locker.  My daughter has one.