I have not been very prolific on the blog in the past few weeks, but then I have not been idle either. Contrary to that, this one month past has been one of the busiest and most productive months of my life.
It has been a month of a lot of introspection, reflection (watch out, the big words are flying) and planning. About where I am now, where I want to be, and how I hope to achieve that.
Finance
The initial frugality bit was only a start. As I started planning and budgeting, I started asking myself more questions, and forcing myself to look at things which I had been unconsciously avoiding and now I am in full fledge attack mode.
I sat down and asked myself what I really want on the financial front. After some soul searching, I defined my goal – to fully retire at 55 years old with enough to support myself and my parents comfortably.
That led to the how bit, and I added excel sheet after excel sheet to calculate and track everything I can think of. And came to the realization that my goal would be very, very difficult to achieve, but not entirely impossible.
I won’t bore anyone with details on the processes, but the gist of it is, I have a financial goal now, at 32 years old in life. A bit old to start, but hopefully never too late.
Fitness and Health
I mentioned to my coach the other day that my fitness goal is to fit into the wardrobe I acquired pre-surgery. Once there, maintenance would be my focus. I could tell he was quite disappointed. As he rightly pointed out, I could aim for more than that.
And therein lies the next part of what kept me so occupied last month. Figuring my priorities and working out some sort of balance. I am already well aware I don’t do so well with multi-tasking.
Back to my coach. Whittling myself down to a bikini worthy size 0 may be achievable yet, but the net ROI would not be worth the time and effort to achieve that. All I ask is that I don’t waste my wardrobe and be healthy. It also ties in majorly to my revelations about certain other parts of my life (which is another post in itself), but there you have it. There has to be some kind of balance between a whooping 81 kg and drool worthy 45 kg, and I think….this is it.
Work
My top priority is my goal of early retirement of course, but I don’t want life to pass by while I try to achieve that. To that end, I will work as hard and as much as I need to meet my goal, but I have no plans to climb the corporate ladder aggressively. I am sure everyone had enough of whiny work-related posts from me last year. I am half convinced that ovarian tumor was a result of stress accumulation during that one year.
Social
I am fortunate, or maybe some consider unfortunate, that I don’t have many friends and social obligations
There was a period of time in the past two years, when I thought I needed to get out more, meet more people and make more friends. Though it was alien to my nature, I forced myself to do exactly that. And ended up tired and fried, irritated and disappointed, and generally miserable, with a rapidly expanding Facebook friends list but not a lot of people I still talk to on a regular basis.
I don’t think I have grown any wiser since then, but I am certainly more honest with myself these days. While I can see the usefulness of a big social network in many aspect of life, it still does not mean much if I can’t live life the way I want it – left alone. I don’t need to spend a lot of time socializing to feel happy. In fact, too much of it irks me. I am happy enough to meet whatever friends I have for meal/drinks once a month. Somewhat “hermity” to be sure, but there needs to someone to balance the social butterflies out there.
And I intend to keep it this way.
Education
Finish my MSc. I can’t afford the 40K it would take otherwise if I want to retire by 55 years old.
What an about-face after my last whine! But money talks! Really!
Me
This part was the easiest and most fun to plan!
• Go to the library, read good books, and think a lot.
• Read the news, and think a lot
• Go to the bookstore, read trashy novels and think, not so much though
• Talk to smart people, and think a lot
• Treat myself to KFC once a month
• Sleep…and enjoy it
• Spend time with my parents, but not too much (for all our sanity)
• Travel once a year
In conclusion….
I feel like a computer which has undergone defragmentation. Various bits that have been tucked away in various spaces of my psyche have suddenly been pieced together and properly organized. As a result, I have a direction, I am more efficient, and more importantly….
I am contented.
And I can really, really ask for no more than that.
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