2017 has been a good year for me. What a relief, because 2016 was a year of disappointments. In 2016 I got certified to dive so I could get into the Seattle Police Harbor Patrol but it turned out they didn’t want me. I took my family on an epic sailing adventure to the Inside Passage to Alaska but the woman I thought was the love of my life, Jessica, was miserable the entire time. It turns out she didn’t want me either. After this devastating breakup, a new year came and things began to turn around. In 2017:
I learned to ride a motorcycle. I decided to conquer my fears and see if the risk is worth the reward. After taking the class I bought an old bike and carefully practiced riding around my neighborhood for months. Once I became proficient I did long rides to British Columbia and Oregon. I loved it. Motorcycle touring is my new hobby. Motorcycles are a hack to the transportation system. You can ride in the HOV lane. You can ride for free in toll lanes. You are the first on and first off a ferry. You can park in an RPZ without a permit. You get rock star parking everywhere no matter how crowded it is. The motorcycle is a metaphor for how I try to hack the system to make my life better.
I met my true love, Kat. We are connected to each other intellectually, socially, physically and emotionally. Like me, she is adventurous, yet responsible. She hopped on my bike for a ride around the block on the first date. After we’d been together only a week we opened our laptops and shared the progress of each other’s retirement accounts.
I established a consistent exercise routine. My blood pressure was a little high when they checked it during a routine doctor visit. It has previously been my practice to swing from being a couch potato to a marathon runner and back to sedentary. I decided to be boring and stick to a consistent simple workout routine. Every Monday through Thursday I do the same thing: get up at 5:30 and run a mile. Then in the evening while watching TV I do 25 push ups, 25 sit ups, 25 more push-ups and 25 leg lifts. This is a mere 30 minutes a day commitment but it is enough to make me a little sore so I rest Friday to Sunday. The simplicity of this routine has allowed me to be fanatically devoted to it. I ran on Christmas morning in the dark through the snow. I do a long hike or bike ride on the weekend. After a couple of months of exercise, my blood pressure was back to normal.
I discovered podcasts. There is a scene in The Matrix when Keanu Reeves puts a plug into his brain, goes into a trance and when he’s done he says “I know kung fu?” That is what it is like listening to podcasts! It’s a way to effortlessly absorb enormous amounts of information. I have always listened to NPR stuff like Hidden Brain, but those aren’t true podcasts. They are slickly produced radio shows that you listen to on the internet. A real podcast is long and freeform. My podcast enlightenment came when I discovered
http://www.dancarlin.com/. He’s a golden-throated former radio guy who likes to talk about history. A lot. His series on World War One is 30 hours! Next, I found
www.ChooseFI.com, which interviews all of the thought leaders in the FInancial Independence movement. I have been interested in this topic but never really did anything with it. ChooseFI motivated me to make some big changes that I will discuss below. The creators of ChooseFI said they were inspired by the podcast of
https://tim.blog/ Ferris, a Silicon Valley life coach. He asks hundreds of prestigious guests in the arts, sports, science, and business such as Peter Thiel and Arnold Schwarzenegger their secrets to success. The consistent theme I’m seeing is that most brilliant people practice meditation. This is something I’ve never tried, but I am intrigued...
I reinvigorated my career at Seattle Police. Burned out from years of investigating sexual assault and child abuse, in 2011 I found a place to hide with the graffiti detective position. Eventually, I was able to get assigned to Criminal Intelligence which investigates organized crime or any crime too complex for a conventional unit but I was still the graffiti detective. I started volunteering to take difficult cases and this year became a full member of the team with a take-home car and the responsibility to handle the most sensitive high profile cases in the city.
I did a news detox. Influenced by the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by
https://markmanson.net/, I decided to stop worrying about things I cannot control. I realized that I was getting constant alerts by email and Facebook from about a dozen news sources, which I eliminated. I don’t miss it at all and am much happier with my mental energy freed from this negativity. I plan on avoiding the news indefinitely.
I abstained from alcohol for three months. I was drinking two beers a night which is too much. I lost weight and slept better when I was not drinking. I plan on limiting my alcohol intake going forward by not drinking at home and not drinking alone. This is a bit of life hack to force me to be more social and keep in touch with friends.
I put myself on the path to F.U. Money. I’m way too polite to tell anyone that, but I do want freedom from the mindless drudgery of being a debt slave. At the beginning of the year, I was saving 8% of my take-home pay. By the end 2017, I was able to save 30% by optimizing my life. If you count me overpaying my mortgage, my savings rate is 54%. The average American's savings rate is 5%. By packing a lunch and not going to Starbucks, I am saving $3,000 a year. I do dozens of other little things to reduce spending such as not buying paper towels. Each one of those things alone barely moves the needle, but as an Aggregation of Marginal Gains, I am saving tens of thousands of dollars toward my goal of a Position of F.U.
http://www.mymoneyblog.com/f-you-money-gambler-movie.htmlIn 2018, I am going to:
Teach myself Spanish. This will be a useful skill when I FIRE and circumnavigate on my sailboat.
Learn to be a Wordpress developer. 28% of the internet runs on Wordpress, an open source CMS (Content Management System for building websites). Having this skill will potentially allow me to work as a web developer if I want to have a side hustle.
Travel hack. You can get $10,000 worth of travel a year for free by taking advantage of bonuses to open credit cards. I haven’t been to Europe in over a decade so I intend to go there for free in 2019.
I hope everyone has a great 2018!
