Sunday check-in

 Well, I don't remember hacking my way through the night. I didn't go to sleep until well after midnight, and it did start to feel like a sleepover. The algorithm served up too fun rom-coms and I wasn't even feeling bitter that the ingenues were skinny white women.

I'm starting to feel like my old self again. Just not feeling the weight of the world.

I think I'm going to go to this 4th of July event baseball game. Because... um, hotdogs, baseball, and fireworks. What's not to love about an American summer. I'm totally giving into the algorithm! The only thing to solve is getting tickets. Someone on Meetup is selling their ticket, but I don't really have a money app yet. So it's either that or going and sitting by myself. But I actually am fine with it. I already made change to take the bus and everything!

And work tasks was starting to make me nervous. But I have both Monday and Wednesday to work on Ice Queen's tasks, so technically, I should be fine. It just would feel a lot better to enjoy Monday and Tuesday's events if I didn't have work looming. 

If I do become social again, I will much rather prefer call center work to my current job. Because call center work can be left at home and it's predictable. Oh well. I am hopeful though, in this moment, that I'll be okay in early retirement. I've been worried that I'm having such a bad time with all this freetime that it will be even worse when I retire.

But just like getting rid of The House, you just can't always predict how you will feel once a burden is lifted. 

I realize I'm shifting from looking for events to manage my mood to actually looking for things I might enjoy. Bonkers, right! Is this what it's like for other people?? Haha.

So, Warm State in December is still unsolved. For now, I'm thinking of booking International Trip from Newtown and then returning to Newtown and seeing how I feel. Thus giving myself the option of going to Warm State from mid-December to mid-January. The only downside is I will not be off the entire time. But that might be the better compromise if I can't decide. 

The biggest downside of just planning to book to be in Warm State for all of December is the week long International Trip. And also, I won't be able to book housing until November, so it's hard to know what the prices will be. And also, I think there's something relaxing about coming home after an overseas trip. So not sure I'm going to want to be somewhere else other than my own bed with my own routines. 

Again, having to manage emotions. 

Ok. I am officially covered in bug bites. I didn't even believe bugs existed, but they do! And the fact that I didn't even feel some of these bites until this morning makes me wonder if I got bitten while I was sleeping. 

Um, at 4a it looks like someone was trying to access one of my accounts. Kind of scary. I'm hoping it was just an aggregator app, but I haven't gotten that notification all this time, so a little concerned. Just going to try to be a bit more vigilant I guess. 

I spent a couple hours yesterday watching these cash stuffing videos on YouTube and it was fascinating. I don't understand the appeal. 

OMG! I just found a mosquito! I knew it! Because I don't remember being bitten yesterday like this. I was just a sitting duck. I should probably sleep in the bed rather than the living room then. 

Anyway, back to the YouTube videos. It did make me a bit wistful. I wish there were something I could do easily that could make a nice chunk of change. Oh..yeah, work! Except I can't do it easily. Anyway, that was a nice reminder. 

But oh the fascinating thing that I find about all these budgeting videos by young people. And even with the cash stuffing is that their budgets are variable based on the priority of the moment. I've been fortunate enough that once I started my personal finance journey it was mostly with the intent of securing my financial future, not debt repayment or overcoming over spending. I didn't really have to give up anything I loved. Like Starbucks or shopping. Well, I did give up cable, but it wasn't like I loved it. I think probably the thing I gave up was my nice apartment, but also it stopped feeling nice, and just felt like a prison with bugs. And it wasn't like I gave it up to be able to afford something else. It was just I wanted to get to FIRE as soon as possible. 

It will be hard to untangle my personal finance journey from my mental health journey. Because one was used to mitigate the other.

Now that my mental health is on the mend and I reached my leanFIRE number, it'll be interesting to see how the rest of my life goes.

Maybe this is a new start. Maybe I get to enjoy the next 40 years instead of trying to cut it short. I don't know. No promises. I just took 20 mg of pepcid to prepare for eating, so hard to look too far into the future. 

Today's plans

- cook dinner

- eat donuts

- watch TLC

- try not to think about work