Vader Reply

Brevity is not my strong point.

To quote the great metacognitive philosopher Britney spears-”whoops, I did it again”.

A reader named Vader posted a few comments with some questions. Some of what he said has been floating around in the back of my brain, and I felt like they deserved a well thought out answer. I set off to answer his comments, and before I knew it I had written nearly 1000 words and realized my reply had accidentally become a post. Which is what you are reading right now. 

If you’re one of the 11 other regular readers besides Vader, here’s Vader’s comments so you know what I’m referring to:

From How to Do Nothing: “Hey just finished reading from the 1st post to the current post. Again thanks. Great story and it really adds to understanding the mental part of retirement.

I have not seen anywhere that you explain the name “escaping Avalon”. Googled it for context but would be interested in why or how you chose that for a name for your blog.

Also curious if I am your official 10th reader or if people have stayed around after finding you on Dave’s site”

From The Best (and Worst) thing about Early Retirement:

“Knowing that a bad day in retirement is your own fault is a great way to put it. And quite frankly scares me. I flip flop if a boring day at work is better then a sunk in the funk day at home (love sunk in the funk expression by the way)

I am in my “One More Year” and my biggest fear is what to do on those days where there is no plan, no structure, and no human being to waste time with. The wife will be at work and the kids in school. Finding local early retirees is not easy.

I write in that ever lengthening word file that one day may become a blog. I relate with your struggle and it’s been good to see both sides of before and after retirement. What was the kick in the ass that took you from the word file to the blog?”

Wow, thank you Vader. It’s extremely humbling that you read all of my meandering posts and report you found some value in there. You’re the second person I know of (who’s not my wife) that’s done so, and I’m still in disbelief that my writing is actually helping a real person understand the mental portion of early retirement. Really, I can’t say thanks enough. Makes this writing thing feel worthwhile.

I’ll try to answer your questions from your comments, and give you my thoughts on what you wrote.

1. Etymology of Escaping Avalon: Wish I had an epic story for this one involving Arthurian legend and idyllic islands, but unfortunately the truth is disappointing. Years ago my wife was watching the TV series “Merlin”. I was not fond of it, but would watch it in the background as I did stuff around the house when she had it on. In the depths of one of her “Merlin” Netflix binges, I had a weird dream that I was trying to get away from an amusing monstrous incarnate version of the TV show and someone yelled at me “We’ve got to Escape Avalon!!”. I woke up and thought that Escaping Avalon was a cool sounding name, and promised myself that if I ever started a band or blog I’d name it that. My musical abilities don’t go beyond scraping out three chords, but I can assemble words into moderately intelligible sentences, so here we are. I’ve thought about trying to put some meaning into the name, like how Avalon is supposed to be some mystical paradise and escaping that could be a metaphor for my attempt at escaping the American dream/rat race. But that would be like when some critic manufactures meaning about a painting of a tree; waxing on about how the artist meant it as a symbol for man’s struggle to capture the indefinable wonder of nature or some shit; in reality maybe the artist just liked trees.

I just thought Escaping Avalon sounded good. 

2. I crunched the numbers, and if I did it correctly, you are either the 11th or 12th regular reader of this blog. Congratulations? Again, I’m still surprised anyone reads this thing. 
3. The kick in the ass to start this blog: I was pissed about 2 things.
   • One-There’s thousands of FIRE blogs out there, but I haven’t come across any that are similar to my work/life situation (no cops, most military writers are officers not enlisted). Like many professions, mine was filled with people who didn’t love the job and felt trapped there. I knew FIRE was a good formula to get out, but it pissed me off that there was nothing FIRE related aimed at Cops. 
   • Two-As the FIRE space grew, it seemed like more blogs were affiliate marketing plays with SEO driven posts which were a blend of fluffy listicles and posts talking about the nirvana that early retirement will surely be. Then there were a few people like Carl from 1500 days and Brandon from Mad FIentist who gave a more realistic view of what post-FI life was like. Like them, I fell into the trap of thinking that once I retired everything would be better, and deferred working on myself for years because I thought once I solved the money equation I’d magically be happy. As I grew nearer to retiring early and realized my mistakes, I noticed that guys like Brandon and Carl were the minority, while many others were selling this idea of FIRE as the antidote to all your problems. I was lucky to heed Brandon and Carl’s advice of working on myself before retiring early, but I wish I had done so years prior. 
   • These two things continued to bug me, and I had already been writing stuff down for a few years as a way to work through my thoughts and try to improve myself. Maybe there was some specific inflection point where I said “fuck it” and finally decided to publish what I wrote with the hopes that it would help someone. But if there was, I was in a sleep deprived haze at the time; best I can remember is that I heard the same “be the change you want/ if not you then who?” stuff from enough places that finally I figured I may as well try. 

Thoughts:

I understand your “one more year” struggle, and I totally get your fear. Because they are not without reason-having no plan, structure, or people to hang around with was a big struggle after retiring. I’ve been to a few FI meetups and one conference, and when people have brought up these concerns, I’ve heard them met with stuff like “you should just quit!!”. This usually comes from others that are still working. I think I understand why people say stuff like this, but I don’t think it’s necessarily helpful even though they have the best of intentions.

Look, I feel the need to be incredibly clear here about where I’m coming from before I give unsolicited advice about dealing with the “One More Year” thing.

While working, my mental health deteriorated in the shape of an exponential growth curve, the little things kept adding up, and by the time I started to seriously address them I realized that if I stuck around my job and it’s inherent risk factors (shift work, constant stress) I would get to a point with irreversible outcomes. Basically I think I passed the point where any kind of self-improvement was going to make my job tenable-nothing was going to get better. Had that not been the case, had I sought out serious help earlier, I would absolutely still be working. So I can’t in good conscience recommend anyone “just quit”. 

All that said, if you’re at the point of no return with your job, and you’ve tried to make changes with no effect, then it’s time to leave. Maybe this means Early Retirement, maybe this means a break before you transition to something else. But at least you’ve got the financial resources to buy yourself some space.

I will say this for the current FIRE space; I really like all the emphasis on how there’s many ways to live life post FI. The idea of mini-retirements, sabbaticals, semi-retirement, part time work, etc. makes way more sense than quitting and hoping you’ll ride off into the sunset. 

Due to union regs, my job did not allow sabbaticals or part time work. If they had, I would have tried that. If I’d been able to keep doing my job at 20 hours a week, I probably would have stayed.

You’ve identified some of the same issues I saw with early retirement. Lack of structure, no one around, difficulty in finding other local early retirees. If I were to do the early retirement thing over again, I would have done some more specific planning to address these issues, as well as a defined timeline where I’d set aside months for guilt free decompression before starting to work on those issues. To give myself a break, this was my rough outline when I bounced, but like many plans, it did not survive me getting punched in the face (unexpected loss of childcare). Also I was pretty general with planning, and it was more of a guideline than something specific. 

Look, things are pretty good now, and I’m glad I left work. 

The solution to my issues was two fold; lots of time for reflection and working on myself, and solving for lack of social outlets by getting a part time job. For nearly a year post retirement while I figured this out it was less than optimal, shit, why mince words-it sucked. Being deliberate about addressing my problems was the primary way I improved, and writing this blog was a big part of how I clarified my thoughts and held myself accountable.

For this reason, I’d really encourage you to try publishing your writing. Also, I think it’d be really awesome if more people wrote their real experiences about this FIRE stuff instead of another listicle on the top 5 ways to sell bodily fluids for VTSAX injections. Personally, I’d love to hear from your experiences.

Thanks again for the comments. I hope this answers your questions, and maybe gives you some stuff to think about. Please reach out anytime.

Everyone else, be forewarned. Though I love comments, if you do leave one you’re at risk of me writing such a long response it turns into a full on post. 🙃