I love the updates as well, and read them assiduously. For me, a month and half in, I am noticing some interesting things. Early on, I had brief bouts of "ennui" at night. Perhaps eliminating the background constant thinking about my job freed up some mental cycles? I have NOT thought about the job AT ALL.
I have been contacted by 4 colleagues for work. I need to be better and clearer about saying no. The first zoom meeting I took (for something that I thought I should just make sure wasn't a great opportunity, even though I figured it wasn't) was so classically corporate. The guy barely asked me any questions and instead gave me a 45 minute sales pitch for their product. At the end I think we mutually agreed it wasn't a fit, because I had already defined for myself certain work that I wasn't going to do again, and when I clarified to him that I wouldn't do *that* task but was possibly considering *this* task, he didn't like that.
After the call, I had a flashback of my pre-corporate life of invoicing client companies and trying to get paid. At that moment I realized that unless it is fully in the realm of my passion project (and perhaps not even then), I ONLY want passive income. I don't want to invoice, I don't want to carry small biz insurance, I don't want to listen to some asshole pontificate. As someone else on this forum put it recently, I don't want to do it the way they want it, only the way I want it. Anyway, that was clarifying. However, I still need to follow up to two requests and politely decline. I declined another but even there was a bit equivocal and said check back in a few months, even though, again, I have no desire to do that work (for my old company, no less)!
I'm trying to be a bit kind to myself. I still have my checklist mentality about my day, but I will remind myself that it's OK if I don't do anything at all.
Also, there's a lot of releasing, but in the best way. I am the kind of person (I'm sure common on this forum) who becomes quite immersed in their profession. To realize now that I don't have to care about any of the attendant aspects of my former profession anymore is amazingly freeing. I thought I would feel like it was a waste of my decades of experience. Instead it's simply a chapter that's closed now. Sure, I could come back to it. But I have shut off all news from my former profession.
The biggest thing so far is a sense of wonder/disbelief at this truly working out. Like, it still seems impossible to me that I actually saved enough to live off my investments. But I want to reiterate what many have said: leave as soon as you have "enough" (or before). You are truly master of your fate when you can say "I came, I worked, I saved -- and then I left and started a whole new phase of my life." NO RAGRETS!!!
