I’m new here. Although I didn’t know it until very recently, I am a Mustachian. As I have been binge reading through MMM’s blog posts over the last few weeks, I find myself identifying with basically all of it. One thing that I admire about Pete is the post-FIRE fire that he has for life and generally making the world a better place.
I quit full-time employment 18 months ago with significant FU money, but probably not quite enough to fully retire on (I am 33 and FU money is about 15yrs expenses). The plan when quitting was to enjoy an epic honeymoon with my now wife and when that was over to pursue endeavours that I am passionate about. The endeavors of passion would probably make enough money to fill in the gap between the FU stash and a FIRE stash and life would be good.
Fast forward 18 months, the epic honeymoon is over and I am working a part-time consulting gig of at most 10hrs per week (not an endeavour of passion). This part time gig gives us more than enough money to cover our expenses and here I am realizing that this shit is just too easy. It’s too easy to work a few hours a week and just relax the rest of the time. It’s too easy to have a pleasant life and never achieve anything worthwhile. I haven’t been totally unproductive, I’m probably in the best shape of my life as a result of the amount of time I’ve been on the bicycle and in the gym. But even so, I’ll get back from the morning gym session and just sit around and read some stuff, or mess around with some stuff on the sailboat (also our home), or spend half the afternoon cooking some stuff and then realize that another day is gone. Life is good, but after about 6 months of this routine I’m sitting here and realizing that I haven’t made any progress in those “making the world a better place endeavours”, because, I guess, life is good and I don’t really need to?
I won’t drag this out any longer, but I guess my general question is:
For those of you that are on the mustachian path and are (or have been) passionate about achieving significant, meaningful things, have you had a hard time maintaining the drive post-fire? Pete seems to be immune to this condition. Unfortunately I have not been, but I’m thinking that being a part of this community will help get the drive back.
Mustachian people problems…