Instant feelings

 I think the more I can wrap my head around that a day in a baby's life is like 2 years in adult life. I think I'm just having trouble accepting the fact that things just don't move that quickly for adults. 

I feel like the derivative of k-12 trajectory is a high slope and adult life is like squiggles and stagnancy.

So many thoughts..

I think subjectively I felt less teary on St. John's wort. I woke up crying I think yesterday or the day before. And this morning I was a bit teary. Then earlier this afternoon just looking at the afternoon sun I was again a bit weepy.

So maybe I'll try to resume taking 2 a day again. I thought the weepiness was gone since it's been a month since the boy. But really only about a week since my last shenanigan.

Luckily work has been a bit of a cluster.

Worked till 1 or 2a this morning. Then got up around 7 and did it all over again. Worked till about 2p.

It's okay because my workload has been pretty light and I needed something to occupy my thoughts since I'm not in Seattle.

Although there were a couple cool nights and early mornings, the sun is back in full force here in NC.

But Fall is definitely right around the corner as it is dark at 8p again. I don't mind it.

I like Fall. I love Fall! I love a cozy night. 

I'm so happy I got my work done. I'm actually happy I didn't have the pressure of trying to get it done yesterday or today before a flight tomorrow. Soooooooooo happy. Eventhough it's in a good place for me to hand it off to my co-worker on Monday, I'm glad the pressure wasn't there or I would've been in a bad place.

Actually, I say that but... If I had gone to Seattle, I didn't actually need to take Mon and Tues day off. Those were just scheduled PTO days. 

But it still feels good to not have to work until the last minute.

If it weren't for the recent work drama, I'd be comfortable handing it off but Bruno (we don't talk to Bruno) has upset my chi. I want to throw marshmallows at her face. 

This morning I woke up wanting to schedule a meeting with all 6 of us to clear the air, in the name of speaking up for myself. But honestly, I can't be bothered.

Although I feel some pangs of 'should I' when I see people continuing to ascend the career ladder and pay scale, as long as my workload continues to be light and I can avoid too much interaction with Bruno, I don't plan on investing much else in this career path. 

I filled out my CBT feeling/thoughts/emotions chart for my session on Monday. Didn't want to leave it for tomorrow or I'd be thinking about it all day and night.

I think I'm going to give myself permission to hibernate from 9a to 5p tomorrow, then finish off the last bit of my work task. 

Then Monday just work around my doctor's appointment.

Tuesday I'm off for a dentist appointment and actually - sopresa! Amazon Hourly Jobs texted me and said there were new schedules open. There are quite a few open. So without thinking too hard, I picked a 16-hour/week one that has me working basically 3p to after midnight on Wed and Saturdays.

And luckily, my dentist appointment is in that direction so I'll be able to go and show my I9 stuff.

The 2 days a week made the most sense because it's like a 90-mile drive. So I'm clearly not doing it for the money! I'll have to leave work early on Wed, but I'll just pretend it's daycare pick-up time like all the working moms like to say. 

I was re-reading some of Frugalwoods' old posts about how they decided on their homestead and came up with the plan.

Trying to design my next stage in life feels like that.

I keep coming back to definitely maxing out my 401k in the first quarter of the year. So anything I want to do will have to revolve around that.

Then the thought of returning to Seattle and living by a lake sounds good for Summer (i.e. Memorial Day to Labor Day).

And then coming back and trying to enjoy Fall in NC. Recharge, rest, relax I guess.

I got an email from a boy from one of the apps. So that felt nice. 

Since money is currently my default guardrail, the idea of not making a move to Seattle until I can supplement my income by about $65k gross still seems like a good metric to make it make sense. If I'm feeling really inspired to go, I'm willing to make it work at at least $30k net in extra income. But other than that, it's just dreamland for me.

Or so my mouth says.

It's unlikely I'm flying out tomorrow. But I haven't taken basically any other day this month off the table. If I can make it to October without going, then the chance of me going this year is pretty slim. The weather in NC will be markedly better here than in Seattle in Oct. I'm not looking for misery.

I really wish we could cash out our vacation days! But I guess it's harder to justify for salaried people since you kind of make your own schedule. 

Even though the opportunity to take a block of vacation days off was the thing I wanted to do most when I was at Call Center #1, now the thought of that frightens me. Spending more time at home with nothing to do is not what I need right now.

I finally bought my Kool Aid and sparkling water to have a sparkling Kool Aid beverage to toast my long weekend.

Oh, I was bouncing some numbers around. Seeing people in desirable neighborhoods see such increased value in their homes made me wonder if that was my next step. I was actually thinking of taking the plunge and buying a high priced home in Seattle since the property values are crazy there.

But when I looked at the numbers for some committee members on the east coast, I think I'm fine thinking of my FIRE stash as property. I'm happy with the growth. It's moderate compared to some homes that really shot up, and it's all mine! 

I think once I reached FIRE, I wanted to instantly feel better and secure and know what my next stage in life was. But that's not what happened. 

FIRE was a solution to feeling financially insecure. 

Now I have room to explore options without it being quite as high risk financially and feeling like I have to start over or will end up destitute. 

FIRE is like a financial hug. 

Yeah as much as I don't like living here, it's a financially reasonable safety net. Just the job at Amazon warehouse can pretty much cover my cost of housing. So that's comforting. I wish I would just lean into that more.

Anyway, there's been a wide array of feelings this weekend. So this post is a bit scattered because I wanted to get it all out there.

So on the FIRE blogs now, I find myself scouring for Starting Over stories and Setting and following your goals outside of getting out of debt or saving and investing.