I hit one year in June.
I think 2019 has to go down as the all-time weirdest year to FIRE in the history of Mr. Money Mustache. Seriously, what a roller-coaster.
The second half of 2019 was pure bliss, for the most part. Found out my wife and I were expecting our first child a few weeks before I quit my job, but after I had decided to do so. This was not unexpected, per say, but for some reason I thought it would take longer to conceive since we've had lots of friends our age with issues. Welp, not a problem for us! We traveled up north and out west during the summer and fall, spent tons of time with friends and family, and generally had a great year.
Around the new year, I started to get a bit antsy and decided to do some freelance software development work with a really good/low-key client. Partially, I wanted to do this to keep myself mentally sharp, but also partially just to prove that I could have been successful on my own if I had chosen that path earlier. So far, it's going okay, but the events of this year have been... distracting... to say the least. I feel like I could be delivering things faster for their project, but there isn't a huge amount of pressure to do so, and I didn't FIRE so I could work 40 hours a week again.
Our new baby arrived in Feb. She is adorable and healthy and a whole lot of work, as everyone of course warned us would be the case. Since we have no full-time employment, we aren't paying for childcare, which means a whole lot of time at home with the little one. This isn't a bad thing, but 2020 threw a nice little curveball which has made everything feel a little more claustrophobic and a little less optimistic. I really would like to be able to just meet up with our friends and their kids, but a lot of them are still super paranoid, even though none of them are high-risk and I would have no problem meeting up. And even then, they all work full time and can only meet on the weekends; one of the downsides of leaving full-time employment at such a ludicrously young age.
All in all, I have zero regrets about pulling the trigger. We are inexplicably wealthier and more confident in our plan than we were last June, and it feels good to know I can pull in extra income via freelance work if we need it.
Now we just need to get over this fear-based pandemic nonsense, and back to traveling the world, and all will be well.