Soon after my first kid was born, I found myself watching a lot of youtube. He was up all hours of the night, and I’d be up with him, trying to get him fed and back to sleep. My brain was mush, and his frequent wakings made 10-20 minute videos the perfect length for quick respites of entertainment.
Having never gone down the youtube rabbit hole prior to his birth, I decided to start watching videos about stuff I would like to do someday. I found some amazing videos about people sailing around the world, plenty of stuff on mountain climbing, and some cool kiteboarding videos. I’d grown up sailing small catamarans, done a bit of climbing in the Army, gone kiting on a couple vacations, and have wanted to pursue these activities more.
For the first few weeks, watching the videos was a nice break. But then as the reality of my present situation set in I found they were making me unhappy. I live in an area where there are no mountains, and no bodies of water that are conducive to sailing or kiting. Sure, I could maybe drive all day to get some kiting in if the weather lines up, or fly somewhere to climb or sail. But was I really going to leave my wife to care for our infant son, in between both of our work schedules, just so I could go off and have fun? I guess I could once or twice a year, but really I wanted to go sailing with my family, and be able to go climbing and kiting regularly, which would require us to live somewhere completely different. That wasn’t in the cards given our careers at the time. And it looked like it would be years before we’d be able to move somewhere where such activities were a possibility.
I felt trapped, and despaired at the growing resentment I felt for my current situation. Total first world problems, I know. But the feels were still there. So I decided to curate for happiness.
First I thought of what activities I enjoyed locally, especially within the constraints of being a present Dad and working full time. I’d mountain biked a little before our son was born, and knew I was just scratching the surface on the depth of my local trails. I wasn’t as excited about mountain biking as I was about climbing, kiting, or living on a sailboat. But I figured I’d try to use the social media reality distortion(where influencers make whatever they’re doing seem amazing, and you feel jealous you’re not them) to my advantage and start only watching mountain biking videos.
Luckily, I fell into the youtube mountain biking world just as some high quality channels like BKXC, Seth’s Bike Hacks, and the Singletrack Sampler were coming into their own. Those dudes made mountain biking seems like surfing on two wheels, but way cooler and super metal. And this was something I could go do 20 minutes from my house! I’ve since dove in, and love mountain biking more than I thought possible.
I backburnered my other dreams, and embraced where I was. Sure, I’m human, I still feel the pang of desire to move somewhere more epic. Hopefully someday I can. But constantly watching stuff that I couldn’t do was no good for my happiness. Focusing on what I can do now seems to help.
I’ve been thinking on the above recently, because as with many things, I fell into the same trap but in a new way. Since FIRE‘ing earlier this year, I’ve continued to read plenty of other popular FIRE blogs out there. Many of these bloggers are out doing awesome shit, traveling around the world, and checking things off their bucket list. My post FIRE life has been the opposite of that.
After we found out our daycare was pulling shaddy shit, we yanked our kids out and I abruptly became a full time stay at home dad. This means I spent the majority of my post FIRE time to date chasing around little kids and being super stressed out. Essentially I went from one stressful job to another.(BTW-Huge amount of appreciation for all you stay at home parents that do this on the reg. YOU ARE FUCKING AMAZING.) Yes, I know; I’m extremely lucky to be in a position where I could do this, and I’m super thankful that I left work before the daycare fiasco went down. God knows it would have sucked way more if my wife and I both still had to work.
I’d be lying if this summer I wasn’t more than a teensy bit jealous of bloggers out doing bad ass things while I cleaned up three different types of shit, accidentally ingested projectile vomit, or just curled up in the fetal position crying as my kids hit me over the head with blunt objects(real life yo) . So once again I had to take my own advice, and curate that fucking blog feed for some happiness.
I still read those blogs, and they’re great. But when I see some headline about “hang gliding in Bali” or “Climbing in Nepal with Snoop Dog”, I quickly skip over that post. Yes, someday maybe I’ll get a chance to snorkel with a megalodon, but not today, and not anytime soon. For now, I’m sticking to blogs that talk about the minutiae of draw downs, or maybe just trying to lean into the crazy.
Here’s to not letting the internet making you feel miserable about a pretty awesome life, all things considered.
Do you struggle with comparing your life to seeing the highlights of others on these here internets? Figured out any way to deal with it? I’d love to hear from you.
