Frugal in the Fruitlands

I’ve Paid For This Twice Already tagged me for the “six-word memoir” meme, which is exactly what it says it is: six words that describe your life.

My instinctive reaction to this prompt might seem nonsensical at first:

I’ve Come Through the Storm And

My memoir is apparently a sentence fragment! In truth, this conveys the sense that my life is a work in progress. This can be good and bad - it’s good when it means I strive to make myself a better person. It’s bad when it means I spend too much time “waiting to live” while I imagine that some single event or thing is going to make me happy.

Unfortunately this is most often the upshot of this kind of thinking. When I was in high school, the Big Moment was supposed to be when I Went To College. After a fabulous first year at college, and a less-than-stellar summer job, the Big Moment was supposed to be the return to school. When that Big Moment failed to reappear, I sunk into a depression that went untreated for several years. Around about when I supposed to graduate - another Big Moment - I was wracked with morbid thoughts, unable to enjoy this rite of passage because I was too focused on the thought of my own death.

The next Big Moment was my first job, which I expected to be my dream job, but which was a disappointment in so many ways. Then marriage - which was surprisingly free of painful realizations - and buying a house, which was eye-opening in financially painful ways. Here I learned that the wisdom I’d been taught about home ownership was turning into a myth, and I am still learning to cope with the responsibility of this house and property.

Someone asked me recently, “What’s next for me?” and I didn’t know how to answer. I’m approaching the point in my life where I’m running out of landmark “life script” moments, and I’ve already rejected some of them (like having kids). There we run straight against that dangling “and,” asking me how I’m going to pass the days of my life when I haven’t got another goal to rush toward.

I see now, too, how my “early retirement” planning has really been another rushing-toward a landmark action. It struck me one day that with all this planning ahead, what if I never reach retirement? It will really stink, then, to have pinned all my hopes on that Big Retirement Date in the distant future. I need to make my life the way I want it now.

But while I’m doing that, I still have to live with what I’ve got.

In conclusion, I tag…

• Retirement: A Full-Time Job (hahaha, got you back for the Four Things meme!)
• Give Me Back My Five Bucks
• Taking Control of Our Money
• Just Make It Better
• Millionaire Mommy Next Door

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This afternoon I’ll be heading off to New Mexico for vacation. The event I’m ostensibly attending is FolkMADness at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, but I’ll also be visiting a few other places, including Santa Fe. I have an article I plan to post before I leave, and I may or may not set up some to auto-post while I’m gone, but if you don’t hear from me for a week, don’t be surprised (like I haven’t gone a week without posting before!)

To update you on my monthly challenge (to walk 30 minutes daily, followed by a 5 minute stretch; plus a strength workout 3 times per week)… well, I’ve done even more poorly than last month. I’ve only walked/stretched 10 days this month, a 50% success rate. I’ve done three strength workouts total, which is far below my goal. I know I need to be working out more vigorously than this, but it seems like such an imposition on my time.

As much as I’m down on gyms, I wonder if I couldn’t use some sort of mechanism to motivate me and keep me on track. I notice that in the office park I work in, a One2One Bodyscapes is opening, a personal training facility. I think if I were to go in the direction of paying some entity to help me with my fitness goals, this is the way I would go, especially as there’s no contract or monthly fees, and you just purchase as many sessions as you want. Anyone know anything about this place and can recommend/not recommend?

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This lovely New England March has come in like a lion and out like… well, a feral kitty with sharp claws. It will still be several more weeks before the garden goes in, but I spent a good portion of my weekend at Home Depot, preparing seeds, pots, and all those goodies. I’ve also been working on a costume for the Festival of the LARPs this weekend, a weekend-long (free!) live-action roleplay convention at Brandeis University. I will be running my first LARP here, too, though it’s not one I’ve written. I’m prepared for adventure!

Here are some the best posts from March, in my not-so-humble opinion:

• No Kids, No Debt, No Problem
• The Mystery Cash Box and the Sunk Cost Fallacy
• The $20,000 Manicure Question

And here’s a little bit of link love for you, not all related to personal finance or frugality:

• An oldie (April 2007) but a goodie: Unclutterer’s Tough Questions for Your Things. My favorite one is not on this list: will I have to dust this?
• Write to Done’s Research Sources for Writers: A Guide to Backing Up Your Words. The availability of peer-reviewed journal articles to unaffiliated individuals is a major issue in making research relevant to the masses. This article helps you to seek out those resources that are free to everyone.
• H&R Block’s Tax Calculators. I like these better that the governments’ (and the last time I checked, the IRS’ withholding calculator was down!)
• Fancast: a free, legal repository of TV and movies, past and present - so you can, yanno, relive your childhood with Doogie Howser episodes.

Hoping to catch up on some of my health and fitness related goals, my April goal is to exercise every day for thirty minutes. I tried this last year at around this time and was only able to accomplish four days at a stretch before losing the habit. I’m just a Morlock by nature, alas. I also have absurdly high cholesterol by nature, too, so that’s nothing to be proud of.

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I am a little PUNCHY tonight.

• Lo, for I am Sir Now Appearing in the 89th Festival of Frugality, with my article The Economics and Philosophy of a Spending Trigger. This week’s festival had a strong focus on thriftiness vs. moral decrepitude. On that note, my favorite article was Golbguru’s Is This Frugal… Or Just Not Quite Right? The worst example I’ve seen of thriftiness at the expense of generosity is a Dollar Stretcher tip I once saw that recommended stuffing hair from barbers’ floors into used pantyhose to make gifts for your gardening friends (apparently human hair keeps deer away). Nothing says love like a flesh-colored bag of human hair!
• Coming up next on XORsted: Dirty Facts About My Finances, Part Deux: Electric Boogaloo Housing.
• Next week classes start up again. I’m taking Systems Programming, in which I Will Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Pointers; and Database Design, which might actually teach me something immediately saleable. This means I will either be somewhat sluggish to post or I will take the opportunity to procrastinate and write madly. Whatever I do write, it will be well-commented and there will be no null pointer exceptions.

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A couple of points of note about my life right now:

• I’m on day 8 of my no caffeine challenge and still going strong.
• I’m once again participating in the ZenHabits monthly challenge (see the ZenHabits forums for more information). My challenge this month is to do something everyday to move my career forward.
• One opportunity that I’m exploring is the possibility of doing a community blog for my local newspaper - they still need one for Lunenburg, and I think I know enough about blogging, and the area, to make it successful. It’s an unpaid opportunity, but I believe it would be a smart move toward building my own profile.
• I’ve put together a list of 101 goals in 1,001 days, a la Triplux and many many others. Its purpose is more inspiration than a step-by-step plan - I still intend to make progress in these habits largely via monthly challenges.

And here are some of my better posts from this month, if you haven’t read them already:

• The daily miracle of time
• Five cheap ways to feel rich
• Pants don’t need a mission statement

If you haven’t subscribed to XORsted yet, I invite you to do so.

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