Spending more (and tears)

 Part of what I've been trying to figure out since reaching leanFIRE is how to spend more. Frugality was easier because there was a goal and not a lot of room for feelings.

Yesterday I stumbled up on the podcast/blog called 'I will teach you to be rich.' Granted the people he talked to in the few episodes I read the transcript for where multi-millionaires, but he was basically like stop haggling over a few hundred dollars if it'll make your life easier and better.

I thought I was doing this for the most part, but probably not regularly and not at the hundreds of dollars level. 

This was a huge hiccup in figuring out what I wanted to do for this 2 week lull I have between projects.

I spent so much time trying to figure out the best value cost wise until it stopped being fun and it turned into a chore and wanted to not go at all.

But there was also a lot of emotional turmoil there as well. 

He also talked about adding magic to the experience, which I don't really agree with the term, but basically, he just wanted you to spend more money. One of the guests liked coffee... so the discussion led to a trip to Italy with his wife or Paris to try different coffees and maybe getting a barista to come to their home to show them how to make better coffee consistently.

Or the couple who almost cancelled a trip to New York because one of the nights of hotel stay was significantly more than the other; which meant they ended up switching places midway through the trip.

Yeah, I can see me doing some of this stuff. I mean that is the promised fun of travel hacking after all. 

But I also am questioning how to unlearn some of these behaviors.

One thing he also said was sometimes you have to experiment to figure out what level of spending is worth it to you (that might've been the other host), and you may not get all your spending decisions right.

That is definitely where I get stuck. That somehow one bad spending decision is going to lead to a lot of regret (and an unspoken catastrophic outcome). He also said to trust yourself that you kind of have guardrails in place that you're not going to make a decision that will essentially bankrupt you. 

I guess this is probably okay general advice for the FIRE population and not someone with a spending problem. 

So some food for thought.

Accomplishment:

- having the good sense and using history to even think about booking this getaway

- booking the getaway, despite the mental shenanigans

- spending the money, and even spending for the extra day since my flight leaves late the day before

- spending the money on the flight, the lodging

In this moment, I am feeling quite light headed. I've noticed that has been happening in the mornings when I used the standup desk.

I thought it was because I'd had a banana on Monday and that was too much sugar which led to too much insulin and caused my blood sugar to drop. But it happened yesterday and it's happening today (Wednesday). 

Also my arm got fatigued just showering this morning. And I couldn't make it through brushing my teeth without having to take a break and switch to using my left hand. Groan, when I say physically my time in the workplace is limited, this is part of it.  So I'm not sure if the standup desk is helping. 

In other news, I was still trying to unpack the weird turmoil I was in the 4 days prior to booking this trip. I think some of it was pre-emptive. There was some overwhelm of spending an additional 2 weeks alone with my thoughts. There was the sadness of just thinking about it. And there was sadness of imagining how it would feel. So it compounded on each other. It was 2 different feelings. 

The last person I had a non-work/ non-customer service interaction with was my therapist last Wednesday. He's out of office today, which contributed to some of my panic. 

So all in all, for the last 2 months, I think I spoke to my aunt twice on the phone. And my old work friend a handful of unsatisfying times. Max 5. I've had 7 phone interactions with people... in about 50 days. 

 50x24 = about 1200 hours.

So in the last 1200 hours, I've interacted (virtually) for maybe 7 hours... that's 0.5%... yeah you read that right.

I spend 99.5% of my time alone with my own thoughts. Not talking.