I prefer the person I am becoming - who were you? who are you becoming? I am seriously interested - as I am wondering about the process and how I will change when I actually pull the plug and decompress after FIRE. I think in ways - FIREing forces you to really look in the mirror.
For me personally - it is very easy to derive purpose from the urgency of work. An ever increasing net worth becomes the indicator of my value. Since the productivity treadmill only accelerates, work defines more and more of how I live. Always - "do more, better". The best hours of my week consistently go to the job, leaving scraps for my home life.
The obvious benefit of stopping, my best hours are now mine.
The unexpected - workplace culture defined who I am as a person. If I thought I could do 10 things in a day, I'd try to do 11. If my wife was talking too long, I'd start doing something in parallel with her conversation. When I put the time in to exercise, it needed to be at 100% effort, until I was wrecked. If someone made a mistake, I wouldn't be happy until the mistake was fixed, they knew it was wrong, and it could never possibly happen again.
Living that way is idealized in corporate America. Without continual reinforcement from work, much of it is fading. I am losing the constant sense that I am inadequate. There is no ongoing competition with my peers, no race to see who is going to fall behind and fail the team first. I no longer lay in bed ruminating on (impossible) work problems, waiting to pass out from exhausting myself.
Instead - I am doing much less in a day, but am often fully present. The calendar and clock aren't dictating my life. My productivity is way down. I am happier for it. I was in a state of constant stress, but in denial to the degree of the problem. It is enough to live my simple life. That sense is incredibly freeing.
This emerged when I took FMLA last year. In a matter of days, what I can only describe as euphoria set in. It faded as the return to work approached. I started to dread re-entering corporate culture, but resolved to remember how I'd been living. I made my best effort to preserve that perspective. I tried to form new work boundaries. The effort was an utter failure. Knowing what life could be, I was out of there 2 months later.
Having stopped permanently, it's now clear my ego was still anchored on status afforded by my position and salary. It's funny, because I would never self-describe as a person who values those things. By any outwards appearances, I do not.
Yet, I had internalized work success as the measure of life success. Letting that go is good for me. It's taking some time. I still find myself drifting to ideas for getting money - how I can both not work and see the net worth grow? I wonder - Maybe it was just a bad job for me, and a new place would be different? Etc.
There is a constant temptation to return to the old way. Due to work being my top priority for decades, it is what I am best at. My personal development is heavily imbalanced. I can barely put air in my car tires, but I am a great employee.
Fearing sequence of returns risk, I've purposefully taken 18 months living expenses as cash, to give all those thoughts time to evolve. I want to discover who I am without a job. If I take on something new, I want it to nurture that person. I wouldn't view new work as a failure, but a return to that old lifestyle would be very disappointing.
