Skip to main content

Is it time to go all in? At a cross roads

    In the last post I asked if I hated living in the country. I answered with a pretty subjective "No."  There are parts of it I am not fan of.  One of the reasons I agreed to move to the country is that I was hoping to make a change in my lifestyle.

    I've never been afraid of hard work, I used to work 60 hour weeks right out of college when I worked for an engineering firm.  I've owned my own company in one form or another sine 2008, which has supplemented my main income and padded both my retirement savings and paid for vacations.  I have discovered however that hard work in the country is not the same of the hard work of a city mouse.

  However, I'm tired and burned out.   I find myself wanting to retire more and more and enjoy my time here and now.  Full retirement for me is still twelve years away and age 70 would probably make more sense.     Given another year, both cars will be paid off in full as well as a personal loan.   Within two years, our credit cards will be paid in full.  At the risk of sounding like an asshole, we did it right.

    In other words, other than the house payment, we are pretty much debt free.  The thing that scares me however is a possible change in my job which could easily throw my plans all our of whack.  When I left Tampa for Pennsylvania the division I worked for told me they would allow me to work from home on a permanent basis.        However I got promoted and moved into a different division of the company last year.  Now I have to go to Cleveland at least two or three days a week starting sometime in October or November.   

    These plans are tenuous at best as Covid is wrecking havoc in the states of Texas, Florida and Ohio.  Which just happens to be the states were our centers are located.   New York Life if headquartered in New York City.  There is a possibility that we could spend another year working from home.   Which makes the argument that we should go back to the office harder to make.

    If my company does make me go back into the office two or more consecutive days, then that throws a monkey wrench into my financial plans because now we are spending more money on gas and even possibility hotel rooms. 

    
A possible double garage
    I moved to the country to avoid city life, to simplify things, to plant my own food.  While I had no intentions of becoming a homesteader, parts of that lifestyle - being more self sufficient, do appeal  to me.  

    Frankly the only way for me to learn how to plant and garden, the only way for me to fish and prep my own fish, or even go hunting is to just go and do it.   Until I do, I'm just skirting the edges of things.

    Going "all in" to me means that I either figure out how to be a self sufficient homesteader come high or hell water, and find another job that is "local.".    Or finally stay where I'm at.   

    That is why I am having sleepless nights now. 

    We did not get as much done last year as I would have liked - such as planting a garden -and I know that for us to make the last few improvements to this house (remodel the bathrooms, the kitchen and add a "shed style" garage) will take about 25 to 30K.   We will be doing some of the work ourselves and have some of the materials already.

    We are also talking about adding solar power and Susan would like gas in the kitchen, however those things are not priced yet and not included in the final cost estimate.  Although I would not be surprised if that cost another 10K.  A remodel is a good investment however.

    All of this of course takes time and that is something I would not have running back and forth to work in an office roughly two hours away two or three days out of every week.  We are two...maybe three years from being in a financial state to complete everything at once, but that depends on some things. 

    It sounds like I'm being a whiny little jerk, and there are other reasons that I wish to stay home. However those reasons are kept private for a variety of reasons.    Personally I don't care if you know my situation or not, other family members do.   As such I can't discuss some of the other reasons we wish to stay home more.

     So frankly I can't leave my job anytime soon...and even if I did, I will never get the benefits I have currently.    However if I'm being completely honest with myself, I am burned out and tired of it.

    I don't care for this life of ours to be so much up in the air...and that's the biggest issue that I have right now.    Not knowing what the future holds.   My job is determining what that is...and right now I don't know what my job is going to bring.

 


**UPDATE**    I decided that I needed to have something "local" which to me means anything within 45 - 60 minute drive time.  I have some leads and some options so now it's just a matter of making the right choices.    I'll never get the benefits I have now again, I know that.    However I don't believe I'll have any work - life balance staying where I am at.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

What all the cool kids are reading.

In praise of the simple pumpkin. It has a lot of potential other than pies.

As I write this the temperature is climbing.  We have a window or two open, knowing that soon enough we will be shutting up the house for the next three months or so we can protect ourselves and our cats against the onslaught of winter.   Our wood stove burned overnight to take the chill out of the air and I found myself buying new boots and gloves and driving home with the windows down. This is the nature of autumn in Western Pennsylvania and as I sip on my pumpkin flavored coffee, I cannot help but praise the fruit of the season, and yes it is a fruit, the simple pumpkin. A few things are still growing in our garden, the last of the herbs and tomatoes...a stray pepper or two that needs to be picked.  Yet I find myself interested in growing pumpkins next year after realizing their potential and that they are high in nutritional value.   It's easy to forget in our modern world just how easy we have it as compared to our great grandparents and their grandparents....
1 comment
Read more

Dopamine fix and my take on AI.

When I sat down at the computer recently to type all of this out,  I let out frustrated sigh.    I had plans to release a completely different blog post long before this date but over the last two weeks or so I've done everything I could do but actually work on the yard, or write, or just do anything that was constructive. When you are moving towards a dream or an idea or...well anything really, you can't break the chain.  Even if it's just 10 minutes a day working, that is constructive.    I have an addiction.  It's not to drugs or alcohol and in a way that would be a bit more excusable.   I have an addiction to dopamine .    Dopamine simply is a chemical in your brain that makes you feel good, and it in turn unleashes other "pleasure" chemicals in your brain.  In my case it a program called Second Life,  (SL) which honestly, I used to be on all the time in the early 2000's.  It's hard to explain but the term multius...
1 comment
Read more

A sense of time in place - traveling in Central PA

One of the first items that Sue and I bought as a couple all those years ago was a grandfather clock.  We used to snuggle under the blanket and listen to the chimes on the hour, the sound filling our house with a warmth and resonance.   That clock is nothing special, being simple in its design and technology.  It's accurate because of the beauty of physics and math...and is a lost art form in its own right. I thought a lot about time and place as we traveled this week.  I thought a lot about place.   Sue and I finally took a brief vacation recently.  Due to circumstances beyond our control, every plan we had made to get away earlier in the year came to naught.  My father became ill and ended up in the hospital which we decided to stay home "just in case."  He ended up in the hospital at least three times this past year, and I decided to spend what time I could with him. Family, after all, is what brought us back to Pennsylvania. We had p...
4 comments
Read more