Articles with lifestyle change

Depression: A Decade in Review

When my dad killed himself in 2008, it touched off a major depression for me and I almost didn’t escape from it. It lasted over 10 years, and while I thought I dealt with it through talk therapy, due to hurtful stigmas, I avoided seeing a psychiatrist or getting on meds to help with those consistent, recurrent suicidal thoughts and ideations, and ever-present negative thoughts and feelings. I mistakenly thought that I’d be able to handle it on my own and slowly I started accepting worse and worse standards of living accepting that, “this is ok”, “these are perfectly normal and ok thoughts to think. I’m just having a hard time and will get through this. Eventually…”  For me, eventually never came, and out of desperation and a “well I haven’t tried that yet” mentality I barely escaped the clutches of my depression. This is how it has affected me these last 11 years and what drove me to a seek a better place.

Suicide Destroys MANY Lives

When someone decides to take their own life, it’s usually out of a place of pain, desperation, loneliness, and more. Their focus usually isn’t towards messing up everyone else’s life, rather trying to stop the pain in theirs. At least, that’s what I tell myself because that’s how I felt when my suicidal ideations would gain traction and start forming into plans. When my dad killed himself back in 2008, it broke me. It broke me more than I knew and it took me 11 years to figure out how badly I was broken. It didn’t just break me though. It also broke my brother, sister, half-sister, his sister, his family, and like a stone tossed in the pond, the ripples keep going.

This happened about 6 months before Mrs. SSC and I got married and it broke that relationship too. It broke my relationship with the kids, or it tried very hard to. Suicide wreaks havoc with everything in its path, directly or indirectly. I knew things were bad when around the first of the year or so, I was making plans to kill myself too. I hurt, every day, all day. When I was awake, when I was at work, in meetings, hanging with Mrs. SSC, it was a pain that cut deep, and didn’t disappear no matter where I was, who I was with, how much alcohol I drank or who I talked to about it. I didn’t want to feel that way anymore so I made a plan and then waited to act on it.

My Suicide Plan

My plan was pretty simple really, just wait until Mrs. SSC goes to bed and shoot myself. Pretty straightforward, but I’d do it in a way to minimize cleanup and all of that. I mean it’s the least I could do right? Typically, Mrs. SSC goes to bed before me, and so I was waiting and waiting and waiting. She kept staying up and hanging out, and we were at like 10pm which is way past her bedtime. Maybe she could sense something was wrong, but she just didn’t go to bed. Finally, she asked me if there was anything wrong or something I wanted to talk about and I literally thought, “Fuck it, I can always do this tomorrow.” And I opened up to her and told her about my feelings and my plan that night.

We found a talk therapist for me and I saw her for the next 4.5 years, sometimes for 2x a week but mostly once a week due to insurance restrictions. In hindsight, I should’ve checked into an inpatient place for a week or so, but I didn’t think I was “that bad.” Those places are for “crazy people”. Um, wanting to kill yourself, isn’t sane, so maybe that should’ve been a clue.

Stigmas prevailed and I slogged on with talk therapy. Over that 4.5 years, we unpacked and dealt with all sorts of childhood crap, trauma, feelings, and more. It was amazing. But I never had the ever-present negativity and suicidal thoughts and ideations disappear. It was like the world’s most insidious salesman hanging out in your head every single day trying to convince you that today’s the day, you’ve had enough of this shit, and you should just do it. That was my life for over a decade.

Life Goes On, Right?

Sure, life goes one with depression, fortunately, unfortunately, but in what way, and at what quality? I self medicated with alcohol to try and get my brain to shut up. If you imagine a flood control reservoir and dam, that’s how I picture my emotional storage capacity. Essentially, my emotional reservoir was full, overflowing, and the flood gates were fully open. Due to the depression, I didn’t have emotional capacity to deal with life. I couldn’t handle anymore. So instead of dealing with emotions in a calm, responsible manner, I exploded, I snapped, I yelled. I became the worst version of myself that I could be. I wasn’t physically abusive, but emotionally and verbally abusive behaviors were what happened when I was at home. Not all the time, but enough that I got the nickname Angry Dad from the kids. Yay, parent of the year, right here folks! It’s so embarrassing, and shameful, and holy shit it just feeds the negativity that’s already there and makes a maddening shame spiral of self-defeat.

Houston was where it all came to a head. I’d had a talk therapist in LA, so I had an outlet there even if she wasn’t helping with the chemical issues in my brain. In Houston, our schedules were different, busier, and remember me saying I was slowly lowering my bar for “good quality of life”? Well, that bar hovered near the ground at this point with me accepting the daily suicidal thoughts, ideations, and constant negative chatter as “acceptable” and “the new normal.” I hated me, I hate my thoughts, my life, the dad I’d become. I was over it and after 7-8 years of feeling like this, I’m more than over it.

Fully Funded Lifestyle Change (FFLC)

During this whole depression, I should’ve been enjoying life. I mean, I graduated with a Master’s from CO School of Mines, a tough school to get into, I got hired on with a major oil company, I got married to an amazing woman and life was good. Yet I was the least happy I’d been in my life. With our FFLC revelation, I was glad to hear that, because I wasn’t planning on making it to retirement. Life sucked too much and I didn’t want anymore to do with it, who gives a shit if it’s FI or not FI? Fucking keep it, was my attitude. So, I developed my own plan. I was planning on getting our family to the FFLC point, and since Mrs. SSC was planning on keeping working, I didn’t have to worry about leaving them in a lurch financially if our planning was wrong. She will be WAY more than taken care of, the same with the kids.

I was planning to get our house in Canyon Lake built, paid off, and then check out. That would leave Mrs. SSC and the kids with $500k of house/land, more than enough money to be FI, the kids had a great start in their college funds (~$50k each then) AND I wouldn’t be around to make their lives miserable anymore. It’s a win for everyone. At least that’s what I told myself then.

New Location, Same Old Problems

When Mrs. SSC got this position in Oklahoma, I was more than okay with it. Again, she wanted to keep working now that she’s gotten into her dream job, and this would require me to quit my career, become a SAHD, and then be default parent for our new single income household. Sure, that sounds great! One caveat if I moved with the family, (yes, we discussed me not moving with the family, I mean have you read anything up until now?) was that I need to focus on my mental health and get that shit sorted. Sure, sure, I am on board with that, no problem, whatsoever. Honestly, I was on board with it because I’d hit my rock bottom, or the point that I needed to shit or get off the pot. I figured, why not try a psychiatrist, I can always kill myself later. Seriously, that’s how “normal” and present those thoughts had become in my brain. Suicide was ALWAYS an option and had been for 10 years at that point. My attitude was the same, my thoughts were the same, my suicidal ideations/thoughts were still just as present, the negativity tagged along to Oklahoma too.

DBSA, Shrinks, and Meds, Oh My!

I started going to the DBSA (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance) meetings here in town and found them to be helpful. Like when I attended my first Fincon and finally felt like I was with people that got me, it was the same thing at DBSA. I joke that it’s like Alcoholics Anonymous for mental health issues, we just don’t offer as many meetings. Although, I think more meetings than once a week could be a good thing, but it is what it is. I finally met other people that I could talk candidly about my depression, suicidal thoughts and more and not be judged, but also get helpful feedback and validation and support. It was amazing! Over a year later and unless I’m single parenting, out of town, or sick, I’m at my weekly DBSA meeting.

I also found a psychiatrist (shrink) and started taking an anti-depressant and lithium. My family history with mental health issues is that my dad was undiagnosed bipolar for 50+ years and only got diagnosed after his alcoholism was in full force. That didn’t help trying to get meds balanced out to work for him when they’re getting messed up with a fifth or 2 of liquor a day… My sister was diagnosed bipolar in high school and on meds until she was “better” and would stop taking them, and then wasn’t better and she went back and forth like that for years. I asked my therapist if she thought I was bipolar and always got, nope, you’re not bipolar. Ok, settled. Whew!

My psychiatrist also thought I wasn’t bipolar, rather I suffered from major depression with mixed features, meaning instead of being a bed slug when I’m depressed, I turn into an angry, bitter, asshole. Oh, joy!! What a treat! Also, since my suicidal thoughts and ideations were so present, consistent and I had no protections (things to keep you from doing it) he prescribed lithium which is also good for suppressing suicidal thoughts.

Meds To The Rescue

I won’t say all problems can be solved with the right meds, because that’s not true, nor the best way to attack any problem. However, when the problem is chemical, no amount of talk therapy can correct it. For the first time in a LONG time, I started feeling like me again! However, it didn’t come without its bumps, and rough patches. My last suicidal plan came together this past summer while on vacation. Yeah, on vacation, because that’s how this stuff works. We were in Santa Fe for the night and I had to get my steps because we had been driving most of the day. I went out to walk around this mall we were right beside and during that walk, something clicked. Something bad clicked and my brain started making plans to kill myself. I’d been “retired/sahd” for almost a year at this point. Involved in all my volunteer work, yet my brain still wants to kill me. WTF, brain!? This plan culminated in me taking $10-$15k out of one of my retirement accounts, putting it in a bank account that’s accessible overseas, and go hit a couple of bucket list places before checking out somewhere in the world. My thought was that this way, the kids and Mrs. SSC don’t have the trauma of finding me anywhere, and I can just be that dad that “left to get smokes” and is never coming back. Again, these all sound like good plans when you’re depressed.

The whole crew at the Farmer’s Market!

I reached out to some PF Twitter peeps and they helped talk me off the proverbial ledge. We were all staying in one room in a hotel that night so I was sequestered to my phone in the dark much earlier than usual. After conversations with that person, thank-you person, you know who you are!! I started trying to think about this from a rational standpoint. I realized I’d probably dealt with my dad’s death the least of all the problems that got brought up in therapy. Looking back over the past 10 years, I realized that almost ALL of these issues have come up because of his suicide and how badly it broke me emotionally. While my latest suicide plan tried to ease that loss with the kids by me “disappearing”, it would still leave them with years and potentially decades of trauma and bad feelings to deal with, and I didn’t want to do that to them either.

For the first time in over 10 years, I decided that suicide wasn’t an option.

Moving Forward

Moving forward with this new life is interesting. I feel like me, like the me from back when dad was alive and I’d be looking forward to calling him later in the afternoon to catch up. The me that didn’t walk around with this interminably deep, wrenching pain in their heart for years and years and years. It has been amazing! Angry dad is gone too, and that kicks ass! The kids notice a HUGE difference in OK dad vs TX dad. I have patience, understanding and more with them. Sure, I can still get stressed with them and they can drive me crazy, just like those dang 5th graders but my emotional reservoir is only like half full all the time, so I have capacity to handle emotions, life and more without going apeshit over nothing. Mrs. SSC and I have been working to repair our relationship as well. Me being a depressed, bitter, angry, resentful asshole for our whole marriage has just done wonders for our relationship let me tell you. No, no it hasn’t. Not at all. There’s a lot there to unpack with defensive behaviors that came about as a result of my shitty mental situation and well, it hasn’t been good. We can just leave it at that.

Summary

Hindsight being 20/20 and all that I should’ve just gotten checked in to an inpatient facility and nipped this in the bud back in 2009, right? That would’ve been awesome, because all this shit wouldn’t have happened and I could have 10 years of my life back. Hell, we all could get those 10 years back. But, that’s not how life works. Life always moves forward, never looking back, and that’s what I’m doing. I can’t waste energy beating myself up for what could’ve been, or what an asshole I was this past decade, I can just move forward to try and be the person I want to be for me, the kids, and Mrs. SSC. The person that this guy was for me when he was in the “good part” of “being undiagnosed bipolar”.

A much younger Mr. SSC and Dad hiking on Father’s Day.

I feel like I’ve got a new slate, a new start, a new life even, considering I wasn’t expecting to see 2020 with how things were going. What that will look like going forward, I don’t know, but I know suicide isn’t an option, my depression is managed right now, and I haven’t had any suicidal thoughts/ideations in over 4 months. That may not sound big, but to someone who had daily, constant suicidal thoughts/ideations for over a decade, it is ‘YUGE!!

If you’re dealing with depression, reach out! People want to help, even if you don’t believe them. You can call the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255. If you don’t want to talk to people you can go here and chat. That would’ve been SUPER handy for me back in the day. Find a local DBSA group near you. I found that super helpful for me. Please don’t let the stigma of meds or “seeing a shrink” keep you depressed. I fell victim to this one, as did Mrs. SSC, and it was super damaging to all of our lives. Had I seen a psychiatrist early on and gotten meds, I feel a LOT of this could’ve been avoided. Please, don’t make my same mistake, don’t accept that this is your new normal and that “it’s okay”. It’s not, get help and be a better you. Reach out to me if you need an ear or person to text and don’t want any judgement, I’m here. @coffeesippers for Twitter DM and I can give you my number. I’ll respond as soon as I see it. Reach out to any of your close friends too. I understand not wanting to go that route or trusting they may have different intentions, but they’ll be happy you opened up and want to help. I promise. Do whatever it takes for you to get better for yourself. Just don’t be like me.

Who You Are is NOT Defined by What You Do

It’s amazing how perspective changes over time. When I first quit work, I felt I had to justify my existence as a Stay at Home Dad (SAHD) by using all the titles of my “past life”. I would meet people and when they would ask, “Oh, what do you do?” I’d go into my canned speech, of, “well, I used to be a geologist, but now I’m a stay at home dad, but I do all this other stuff to make up for it.” As if I’m apologizing for not working or something… When probed about how easy it should be to find work around OKC, I’d go on about, nope, not looking for work right now, just volunteering and doing family stuff. Then I’d even talk about all the volunteering I was doing like it would earn me a prize or something.

Later, much later, I realized I was looking for validation since I wasn’t getting that with many of my current volunteer roles. I mean sure, everyone loves a volunteer, but where’s my performance review?! Where’s a bonus showing how well I did?! Where’s a gold sticker for fucks sake?! Oh right, I don’t get those because it’s volunteering and um, well, that doesn’t happen. So, what happened to make me not even mention my past life anymore, much less my new job, and now I can be more than okay with it? A perspective shift, confidence in who I am, and accepting my current role for what it is.

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Camp FI Texas: A Very Late Recap

About a month ago, I was able to attend and speak at Camp FI in LaGrange, Texas. When I first heard the location, I immediately heard the guitar riff from ZZ Top’s “LaGrange”. Anyone else, anyone? If you are like a few camp members I met that had never heard of it, well, hear you go, LaGrange. It’s a great rocking song, but I digress…

Camp FI seemed like a good alternative to Fincon for me, and I was hoping it would be a nice Personal Finance (PF) recharge, with being around like minded folks, talking goals, dreams, life, and of course money. In short, I was not disappointed! It reminded me of the newbie feeling I had at my first Fincon in Dallas. I came back from that conference and wrote this post about how I Found My Tribe and this felt very, very similar. In fact, unless I get more active with the blog, I don’t see a need to attend Fincon anymore. Gasp!! If the thought of thousands of people swarming around looking for Vanguard bags and mugs freaks you out, try a Camp FI. You will not be disappointed and here’s why.

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Retirement is Killing My Blog

Before I quit my job and headed into the great of unknown of being a Stay At Home Dad (SAHD) I had all kinds of thoughts about how this blog could follow along. First of all, I could be different from other bloggers that hit retirement and then faded into the sunset (and kudo’s to them for pivoting away from the blogging world to live life). That won’t be me, I said, I can write about all this new stuff! There’s so much new stuff it won’t be difficult at all coming up with blog posts each, I said… That’s true! I have a shitload of new and different situations going on with the SSC family. Except that one thing has changed that has made a significant impact on the blog. That one thing is the fact I’m not in front of a computer 8-10 hours a day anymore.

Unlike most bloggers, I did most okay, all of my blogging at the office. Oh yeah! I got to work at 6am and had a solid 2 hrs before the rest of the company showed up to work. If you look back at old comments you’ll notice most come between 6-7am, lol. I also used that time to write posts, edit posts, and tinker with the blog. Nowadays, my computer is upstairs in my music/art/office area. It’s great!

The instruments are right there!

My own little space, nice view out the window. A perfect writing nook. For it to be functional, I need to actually be up there and writing and that just hasn’t been happening. I’ve got too much other stuff going on to head upstairs for 2-4 hours a week and bang out a post, respond to comments, etc… Life is just too damn exciting!

What’s Been Going On

I’ve been staying busy with the house, kids, getting adjusted to the SAHD lifestyle. It’s been pretty great so far! I haven’t been super great at managing time as I wanted to be. My time debts get racked up pretty quickly some weeks and others are smooth sailing. The cold has finally broken here so I’ve been a bit more focused on the outside since things will be green, ticks will be out (wait, they’re already back), snakes and scorpions will be out again, and I can’t willy nilly go grabbing anything off the ground. We’ve gotten a LOT done over the winter and the “backyard” is way more usable than it was when we moved in last summer. Not the fenced in part, but the woods outside of that area. We had someone gather and haul off 120 cubic yards of brush/trees that I’d gathered up or where scattered around the property. I cut down over 30 trees and hauled at least 20-30 cubic yards of mostly decomposed wood into an old ravine on our property. I figured I could use it to make a hugelkultur of sorts and fill it with wood. The guy with the skid steer squashed it down once, then I mounded it up again and he squashed more and then topped it with dirt from around the yard. At least some of the trees will go back into the ground, right?

School and CASA

School volunteering is moving along, but it hasn’t been as consistent as I expected. Mostly from my own doing, but I’m getting back to at least once a week being a Watchdog. Prior to that, I’ve been volunteering for every other thing like, field trip chaperone, state testing monitor (OMG, so dull…), PT librarian, and more. That’s been fun and it’s great getting to see the kiddo’s during the school day.

CASA training is nearly complete! Woohoo!! 8 weeks of training is coming to a close and we’ll have our swearing in this Friday. It’s been difficult as it has been 3 hrs a week of training, but mostly difficult because it occurs at the same time as my DBSA group meetings. DBSA is the Depression Bi-polar Support Alliance and the have group meetings for people dealing with those issues or anxiety or anything else they want to come and talk about.  Those have been super helpful for me and I’ll be glad to get back to my Thursday meetings. It’s just nice having a place to share and be open with people dealing with same/similar issues. It’s been rough missing those, but that’s almost over.

Hobbies

I previously thought I’d be doing exercising/training a lot and putting in time to all my different hobbies with all this free time and that hasn’t quite worked out how I thought. Everyone is always saying “retire TO something…” not away from things. Well, I have a shitload of stuff I retired to, but like my last posts have pointed out it doesn’t mean that your hobbies are now your new default time killer.

Yep, whatever habits you had before retiring don’t magically change with more free time. If you wasted a lot of time on phone games, that won’t change until you break that habit. Same with TV, naps, procrastination, etc… Like Maggie at Northern Expenditure said, “Retired you is still you.” That is SO true. I’ve struggled with this even though I’ve also been doing hobbies and tackling the yard/woods/house like crazy. I finished building my banjo and it actually plays! Yay! I put together 2 adirondack chairs and stools that my FIL brought up for us. I’ve got the plans picked out for the cedar woodstrip canoe I’m starting on, and have been scouting spots for a garden for next year or this fall. I’m putting in a compost pile today and have the front flower beds I’ve been transplanting bushes out of and making a plan for them.

Inside, I have a lot of painting to do, an attic exhaust fan to rebalance, one last horrid push of adding insulation before it gets really warm and the attic comes to life with spiders, scorpions and god knows what else. They’re already moving around as I saw a spider in our shed yesterday, so sooner is better than later… Also, it’s a really, really tight spot, just to get into another really tight spot. Shudder…

Exercise

Triathlons and that kind of exercise have disappeared lately. I let the Texasman tri and OKC Memorial Marathon (half-marathon for me) sneak up on me and won’t be ready for either of them. Mainly because I haven’t been running consistently or swimming at all since we moved. Unless it’s open water swimming, my only other option is joining the university pool or the Y. Both are a little spendy considering when the kids get out of school in another month or 2 I won’t have free time to bike, run, or swim as I’ll be full-time babysitter. Yipe!!

Also, the meds I’m taking are not helping with my motivation. In short, if I could nap 2-3 hrs a day I would. I sleep from about 10-10:30 pm – 5:50 am so it’s not like I’m getting too little or too much sleep. Regardless, I feel like I have zero energy constantly, zero motivation, and a massive amount of apathy towards exercise in general. That’s led to putting on about 8-10 lbs though, so I need to get over it and get back into exercising, drop some weight, and be a better health role model for the kids.

Time for New Habits  

In short, I’ve designated April as the month to break bad habits and work on new ones. Starting with this blog post! Sure, it’s a day late from my usual Tuesday posts, but it’s also a month behind my last one, so… You gotta start somewhere right? Secondly, I deleted a couple of phone games as I realized they’re way too much of a timesuck. I’m going back to my previous google calendar schedule of exercise, playing music, painting, woodworking, CASA, school volunteering, etc… This will just have to be a slower approach to some of these, but as long as it’s consistent I think it will work. Finally, I’m getting back to blogging consistently, well more consistently than once a month, lol. There is a TON to write about with how things have changed with our budget, lifestyle, routines, spending, just everything. I need to be better at putting it out there and writing about how things change post-work life and every other thing I’m now dealing with, like grocery shopping (I found our ALDI and had good $$ wins there), being default parent (kids dr’s, dentists, summer programs, homework, laundry, etc…), and taking care of this property. There’s so much I want to do, but it just takes time. Like bees! I wanted to get a couple of hives, but will have to wait until next year due to budget issues – mainly my allowance is at $0.

Summary

I let life run my schedule and didn’t fight back when important things got pushed out of it. It’s easy to get so “busy” living life, cleaning house, doing your thing that you realize it’s been 2 months since you’ve done the stuff you thought you’d be doing all the time. It’s time to be more mindful of my time. I mean, I’ve been mindful of it, it just hasn’t been spent the way I would’ve thought. Now to redirect it back to the things I’d rather be doing, and the blog is one of them. Yay! It will continue! I realized when I was working I had limited time so I made the most of my free time and tried to fit as much stuff in there as possible. Now that I have loads of free time, the drive isn’t there because – I can do that tomorrow – and guess what? Tomorrow never comes… That changes this month.

Have you experienced this or am I the only one?

Time Can Rack up Debts, Just Like Money

As I wrote in my last post transitioning to a non-work life is hard. I think a lot of what makes it difficult is having all of that unstructured free time and figuring out what to do with it. We all have visions of early retirement and what we would do with all of that time. I know that I did and I was severely mistaken how that looked when I actually did have all that time to myself to do whatever my heart desires.

Today I’ll be talking about intentionality with your time. Like being intentional with your money, if you’re not intentional with your time it gets away from you. You can rack up all kinds of “time debts” and stress yourself out in new ways you didn’t even know existed.  The beauty is that just like monetary debts, you can free yourself from these time debts by being intentional with your time. Here’s what I’ve noticed over the last 6 months and how I’ve racked up and cleared a lot of time debt with myself.

Time Debts

You’re probably asking yourself, “What the F*** are time debts?” I see time debts as things you need or want to do yet, push off for some meaningless, worthless task that distracted you. For instance, let’s say in the morning, I plan on reading blogs, commenting, and checking in with the PF (Personal Finance) community before I go do other things. Easy Peasy right? Nothing to stress about and it’s an easy task. After Mrs. SSC heads to campus at 7am, I sit on the couch and slowly sip my coffee and flip thru the news on my phone. Then I flip thru Twitter, because it’s PF related too right? I get an email pop-up and it reminds me I need to research brush hauling companies, and while I do that I get spun off researching used trucks and next thing I know, it’s an hr and a half later… I’ve done nothing of what I planned.

What I did do was create a time debt that I’m going to have to pay back to myself by taking from some other planned activity later in the day or the next day. That sounds a lot like surfing the internet or getting distracted, so what’s the big deal, right? I thought the same thing until I noticed I was adding stress into my life creating lots of these time debts. Like credit cards and student loans, they don’t magically disappear, they just compound and get bigger and bigger. Eventually, you have to pay them off. Especially like credit cards and student loans, they just add an additional background layer of stress reminding you that they’re there. I find it very annoying. How can we pay them off or avoid them altogether?

Spending Habits Apply to Time Too

I found that how I spend time is VERY correlative to how I spend money. In the past, I had no issues acquiring debt, and I would spend money like a drunken sailor. I’ve reigned it in quite a bit, but I can still spend all of my “allowance” money every month and wish there was more around. Yikes! How am I a PF blogger?! When I initially had free reign over my time, I found I also spent it very freely and very unintentionally. Actually, it was intentional, but more selfish intentional. For instance, I’d be in the yard cutting down trees, and chopping them up until the kids got home. Then I’d keep on until Mrs. SSC got home. Instead of having dinner started and time with my family, I still needed to put up tools and take a shower. I’ve not only created a big-time debt for me but also my family, because I’ve just stolen their time for me to do yard work and they have to cover dinner and other responsibilities. Damnit, now I’m a time thief?! Argh!

I found that exactly like finances and spending, I had to be intentional where I spent my time and where I was stealing time from others. Instead of having this looming feeling of guilt that I’d stolen time from the family, I could stop working by 3pm, because it will be there the next day, and be cleaned up by the time the kids get home. It sounds like a simple concept, but man, it was really hard for me to implement.

Habits are HARD to Break

I started thinking, how can I quit creating these time debts and being so sloppy and un-intentional with my time? I tried making a schedule and putting it on Google calendar but all that did was give me more things to dismiss during the day when the reminders would pop up. This wasn’t helpful for me in establishing new habits with spending time, so I gave up and quit trying. Ok, I’m kidding, I didn’t quit, I just kept trying new things. I found that using Google Calendar was good for setting schedules like kids snack day, dr appt’s, vet appt’s, school events, volunteering, training, FIRE MM’s, etc… but what about that pile of free time I had in between all of those?

How do I keep from building time debts doing stupid shit like playing phone games instead of doing something more productive and constructive? I have to be intentional about it and use discipline. Gah!! Not discipline… Why can’t it just be easy and happen without work? Well, that’s not how life works unfortunately, trust me I tried. For instance, yesterday, I walked 16,000 steps and ate an apple and I didn’t lost one pound!! So frustrating! It should all be easy, but it just isn’t. If you’re not willing to put in the work to make the change, the change won’t happen. Not with spending time currency, real currency, or trying to lose weight.

I also found that a change in mindset was needed. Instead of feeling guilty about some of the time debts I’d create for myself, I’d just acknowledge that I wasn’t a good steward of my time and work to do better. I would note what I was unintentionally spending time on and curb it. Deleting phone games is easy – thumb down, move to trash, and done. It took time, but I noticed patterns and worked to create patterns I liked better.

Track Your “Time” Spending

Time and Money are so similar, it’s eery. After realizing this, I realized I needed to track my time. What were my time thiefs, what were my time equivalent of daily $6 latte’s, or $250 monthly gym fees that aren’t being used. Paying attention to these will tell you a lot about yourself just like tracking your $$ spending will. Just like tracking $$ spending, tracking your time spending shows lots of patterns and you can use that information to adjust your schedule to something you’d want to spend your time on and not fritter it away unintentionally. It reminds me of someone that used to say, “That’s a future Mr. SSC problem”. Guess what? I’m future Mr. SSC and I still don’t want that problem.

I found that a lot of my time debts came from phones and tablets. Who would’ve thought?! Shocking, I know! I also found that I needed to set alarms on my watch so that when I’m busy into something intentional, I make sure it doesn’t bleed into stealing time from someone else. My hobbies created a lot of time debts for me with housework, groceries, dinners, etc… Like I mentioned before, seeing those patterns helped with setting boundaries and like finances, learning to better manage my time.

New Patterns Emerge

I settled on a hybrid version of a rigid schedule and calendar reminders. While I still use calendar reminders religiously, and couldn’t be effective without them, I found other things that helped me develop better time spending habits and have settled on this type of schedule.

I put things into days like, Monday’s are for cleaning, Tue/Wed/Fri is for hiking/running, and Thur is for volunteering at the kids’ school. The rest of the “free” time in those days is where I put all the other stuff like groceries, yard work, wood working, music playing, etc…

I also found that I am more of a list person. If I have a list of things that need to be done during the week, and I am MUCH better at getting them done within the “free” time frames that don’t steal time from others. I find it hard to be a set schedule person because some days I may feel like woodworking, and not cleaning. Ok, I never feel like cleaning, but I can bump it to a day that I’d rather be inside or that most of my day is chewed up with other time sucks. By being intentional, I am aware that if I bump cleaning to a different day, it will cut into hiking, which will cut into woodworking, which will bump it into the next day. I ask myself, “Is it worth it to not clean today, when it might mean I can’t do woodworking tomorrow? What am I going to do instead of cleaning that is better than woodworking and make it worth it?” I found that just framing it like this to myself helped a lot too.

Now I can keep a more fluid schedule, a list of “must-do’s” for the week, and have a general idea of what my “wants” are and be able to spend my time more effectively. Get it? Spend… Time… Groan…

Summary

Time is like money, and like money, I was not very good at managing it effectively. I racked up a lot of time debt and had to figure out how to clear it all and get into better time spending habits. I did it by tracking my spending of time, finding my time sucks and eliminating them, or at least acknowledging they are there and being aware and intentional toward any “wasted” time going towards them, and finally finding a good time management strategy that works for me. Like personal finance, your strategy will be different from mine, but I think it’s worth looking into and figuring out. I found it took a lot of background stress and noise away.

 

2018: The Year of the Lifestyle Change

What a year 2018 was for the SSC household. There was a LOT going on with the kids, the dogs, our house, and most importantly both of our jobs. At the beginning of the year we were designing a house to be built on our property at Canyon Lake and expecting to be in Houston for another 2 years. By the end of the year I wasn’t working and we were celebrating Christmas in our “new” house in Oklahoma. Wow! Just wow… Even for us, things seemed to come so unexpectedly the only thing that we knew to count on was that our plans would constantly be changing. Ultimately, it was the year we kicked off our dream of the Fully Funded Lifestyle Change (FFLC)!! There was a lot more detail than just that, so let’s get into the 2018 recap.

Moving Time

Early in 2018, Mrs. SSC landed a really sweet gig working at a well-respected University with a strong and established petroleum program. This forced us to move to Oklahoma and it wasn’t even on our radar for places to live. We found a great place out in the country with 2 untamed acres. On the plus side, we could shape it to be as wild or as manicured as we want because literally nothing had been done to the woods except let them grow wild.

Goodbye Green Wall of Doom!

The downside is that there is a TON of downed timber across that 2 acres, a lot of underbrush, and it isn’t anywhere I’d want the kids or myself wandering through in the summertime. I’ve been putting a big dent in clearing that brush, and I’ve cut down about 20+ trees already. I have marked so many more trees with flagging tape that I ran out of 200’ of tape. Yipe!

Selling Property Sucks

Our Houston house went on the market in mid-March and we figured it would be slow until summertime, but expected to be able to sell it over the summer. It went 90 days without a showing, in part I believe to the “okay but not great” photos that were taken. Pro-tip – interview multiple realtors prior to picking one. Ours was Mrs. SSC’s trainer and was convenient, but I feel like we could’ve found a better realtor and saved ourselves a LOT of $$ and anxiety. Mid-summer we got an offer and man were those buyers nit-picky. They argued over every single dime wanting us to put up more and more money. After a month of negotiations on post-inspection fixes, we found out these jack-wads weren’t even approved for a loan! How does that happen!? Well, they barely squeaked by for a pre-approval with a high 500’s credit score. Fast-forward 5 months and who has been missing car payments and racking up MORE debt? Those guys. Needless to say, their credit score had dropped to low 500’s and they couldn’t get approved for the loan. Thanks for keeping our house off the market the last month and a half of summer and being jackasses about EVERY single item… Ugh…

Buyer #2

The next buyers wanted our property, but didn’t want to make an offer until their house sold. However, they wanted us to take it off the market and hold it for them. Can you hear me laughing? That was rejected, and the house stayed on the market. Another buyer put in an offer and had the inspection done, then pulled their offer 3 days later. Their main concern was having to replace the water pipes due to the amount of rust coming out of them. We were puzzled and then remembered we’d replaced the main shutoff and the plumber told us to run the water to flush any rust/sediment/etc… that had gotten knocked loose and that it may look dirty until it gets flushed. We asked our realtor to do that and he had done it, according to him. Those pictures of the bathtub with rusty looking water said otherwise… Ugh…

Third Time’s a Charm

FINALLY, we got another interested couple, they made an offer, were easy to negotiate a price with, and we were under contract. We waited for the inspection and heard nothing. Literally nothing. We contacted our realtor and he said that they’d gotten the inspection and didn’t have any follow-up requests for us to fix. Yay!! While we technically closed in 2019, we did finally close on that house and that 2018 contract went thru. Yippee!

Leaving My Job

Me leaving work was a little tricky due to the fact that I had to prep the house for sale, keep it under wraps, AND spend time driving up to Oklahoma for house hunting, home inspection, and closing. It was easy enough to tell work that I’m “taking time off” but everyone was convinced I was interviewing at other companies. That was just fine with me, because what do I care what they think? I’m leaving in 3 months.

 

One Friday, I was at my desk and get a call from my boss to come to our bosses office. I get nervous and then think, wait, why am I nervous? I didn’t do anything wrong. Then I got excited thinking I might be getting laid off and could get a severance package. Buoyed by that prospect I went in, sat down and was told I was being promoted to my bosses position but for our Texas-Delaware Assets. Hooray… Ultimately, I declined that offer, and you can read more about it here. Since my upper managers now knew I was leaving in August, I wasn’t getting any more additional work or put on other special teams. Double yay!!

When the time got nearer for me to leave my boss proposed a 3 month remote work assignment to help with reserves. It got approved and ultimately we had 3 more months of pay, health insurance, and a little extra $$ we hadn’t counted on to help with the “new” house projects. It turned out to be a mixed bag that you can read more details about here, but ultimately it worked out well for everyone.

Money Pit

The new house is the last big topic of 2018. When we moved in we knew it needed some cleaning and maintenance as it looked like it hadn’t been maintained in the 16 years it has been around. We got the ducts cleaned, I vacuumed the walls, and I dusted and cleaned every other surface and Mrs. SSC was still having troubles with allergies and breathing. The previous owners had a cat, so I suggested that we replace the carpet sooner than later. We did that and her breathing got immediately better. Hooray!!

The house temp wouldn’t get cooler than 83/84 F on days when the outside temp was over 93. We had an AC inspection and it was working correctly and pumping out cool air, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was that it was a 3 ton unit and this house needed a larger unit than that to be effective… I shopped around 4 different contractors and found a great deal on a higher efficiency unit than we previously had, and after it was installed problem solved.

I also noticed that the upstairs bonus room was a heat/cool sink for the house. Everywhere else appeared to have adequate depth blown-in insulation but the walls for this rom were only 4” thick. I wanted to get some more insulation and add it to them along with some other spots I’d noticed that had thin blown in insulation (4” or less). On Black Friday, Lowe’s had 30% off their insulation. Score!! I bought 24 batts (11 pieces in each batt) of R-30 insulation for ~$1k discounted, installed it myself, and have seen some great results. Plus, now I can keep the heat off in the bonus room. On the coldest nights it gets down to 58 but mostly stays between 60-64 without any heat on. Double Score!!

Summary

That’s the very long recap of our year. I’m sure I may have missed some things, but those were the biggest ones for us. So far, we’re loving the town, country living, the kids school, and our neighbors. While this state wasn’t even in the running for places to consider living in, we are really liking it. There’s more topography than we expected, especially in our home area. The people are super friendly and it feels like it has a great sense of community about it. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2019! Be on the lookout for a “new” home spending post. There’s way too much to put into this one, and it is ridiculous…

Hope your 2018 went as great for you as it did for us.

It’s Official, I’m Unemployed!

A LOT has changed since my last post. First of all, I’m unemployed for the first time since I was 16 yrs old! Woohoo! Stay At Home Dad (SAHD) Lifestyle Change is now officially in full swing. Yeah!! As for the rest of what’s been going on, my last post was in early September, so there’s a lot to unpack and sort through since then.

I left this as my out of office reply…

My biggest success since we last left was getting my mental health squared away better than it has been in decades. Literally, decades. Here’s a very brief back story. When I was in 6th grade one of my good friends was tragically killed when he hit a powerline while climbing a tree. I felt responsible and went into a fairly heavy depression. It lasted the better part of a year before my parents sought help. The child psychologist recommended me to in-patient treatment if I “didn’t snap out of it soon”. After overhearing that, I started putting on the happy face and pretending everything was fine. I’ve been doing that ever since and have just been going around being whomever I’m supposed to be that day. While I’ve gotten really good at it, I’ve never gotten rid of that inner voice of shame, guilt, negativity, depression, etc… It’s just followed me around like a little devil on my shoulder trying to convince me of all sorts of bananas shit and not let me enjoy my successes. Hell, it hasn’t let me “just be” in over 29 years.

Until these past few months that is. I got proactive and started going to a depression group here in OK, pretty much since we’ve been here. I also went to see a psychiatrist to figure out what’s wrong, because clearly, I’m not fixing it on my own. With the help of my shrink and my group, I’ve had no negative self talk, depressive voice, or any of that the last few months. It’s been freaking amazing!! Why the hell I waited so long to do this, I have no idea. If any of you are struggling with depression or any mental health issue and feel like you’re stuck and can’t figure it out on your own, take that next step. I’d done therapy (talking) for 4 years in LA and it helped with a lot, but not that. If you’re struggling, try kicking it up a notch and seek different help, or any help. It has made a HUGE difference in my life. HUGE.

So Much Free Time?

My remote contract ended on the 2nd, and I was officially “free” from work. To be fair, I hadn’t done any “work” in the last month and a half. I’d made 2 trips to Houston which were all but worthless from a business standpoint. I literally flew to town to sit in a conference room and watch my team present for 30 min and I didn’t say anything, offer anything, nothing.

A lot of this the last month of “work”…

Then 3 weeks later, I flew back for an all day meeting to watch my team present 1 geology slide in a 9 slide, 10 minute long presentation. Yep. Living the dream, baby!

With all that free time, what have I been doing? Well, trying to get a volunteer gig for most of it. The Watch DOGS (Dads of Great Students) group at my kids school took applications on family night, the day before school started. Then wouldn’t submit those applications until after their WatchDOGS BBQ late September, and I still haven’t heard anything other than – here’s a link to where you can buy shirts when you’re approved. Maybe it’ll happen before Christmas, who knows… I also submitted an application at CASA and they are meeting with me Nov 16, so we’ll see how that goes.

Amazingly, even with no actual commitments, it’s super easy to see my free time frittered away every day and think, “Holy crap?! It’s 3:20 pm already?!” I’ve done very little music practicing, even less exercise, and not much outdoor anything to be honest. I’ve just been enjoying the fall and getting to wear long sleeve t-shirts and jeans again. Woohoo!! Fall!!!

Set a Schedule?

Beyond that, I’ve been trying to get on a more productive schedule. Mrs. SSC came up with a nice schedule for weekly and monthly cleaning, and I need to get on to better meal planning and having dinner ready at nights. I haven’t adapted to that part of the SAHD lifestyle yet. I’m getting there, but it’s a lot. I did go into gmail and set up some blocked-out times mostly for exercise, playing music, and cleaning. I need to add in writing as I feel like there is loads of blog fodder around me most days/weeks and I just haven’t given a f$*& lately, to be honest. Hell, I didn’t even get out a “Here’s how Fincon 18 Went Down!!” post.

That’s okay, because I’m not being critical of what I didn’t do, I’m just being happy that I’m here now, writing. Yeah, writing! And exercising, and getting into doing what I need to do, not what I should have been doing. You can’t change that anyway, so why beat yourself up over it?

Finally, I spent some of that time revamping the blog! Yeah, a new layout, fresh new look, and hopefully cleaner interface for all of you that are gracious enough to stop by and peruse the blog posts. Thanks for your support and reading. I’m working on being more consistent with writing once again and like I said, there is loads of blog fodder around here.

Fincon 18 Quick-Take

Fincon 18 was pretty awesome! Good setting, if you knew how to play Frogger, great weather for running (if you were used to the Gulf Coast weather), and a great group of attendees this year. I loved getting the soul recharge of seeing old friends that you only run into online. Just as awesome is the new friends you get to make and get to know. There were so many of those it was almost like this was my first Fincon all over again. I was deep in depression that whole week, and it took a lot to get out of my room, but once I did, man, it was an amazing 12 hrs+ of talking each day. The parties were good, but the people are what made it epic. Thanks to everyone that made it a great Fincon for me and I hoped I added as much to your experience as all of you did to mine.

Faces clipped to protect the “innocent”
Summary

Look for more posts soon on finding my ikigai, adapting to our new budget, still cleaning up the yard (now that it’s cooler, that’s started up again), DIY vs contractors, me finding paid work (whaaaa??!!!) and more. Just kidding, I’m not looking for paid work, just seeing if you’re paying attention.
Anything big going on in your life lately? New changes ahead or just happened? Let me know!

Escaping Limbo: Why My Remote Work Sucks

When I made the decision to leave my job, I felt like I wouldn’t be a good PF blogger if I didn’t monetize my departure somehow. Just plain old quitting is for suckers! Financial Samurai espouses, “Negotiate your severance” and for $85 I’ll tell you how! I had multiple people tell me similar things, “you should ask for a remote work assignment, so and so just got one!” “You should ask for severance, you never know if you don’t ask…” Company policy is that I have too few years to be entitled to anything. No severance, no partial bonus next cycle for this year, no LTI payouts (long term incentive – the stocks), nothing. I’d already looked it up. If I went to negotiate a severance, what leverage did I have?

To be honest, I didn’t give a shit. I was already leaving over $150k of stock incentives on the table, we already have “enough” money, and personally, I didn’t want to be immediately tied to a computer when I left. However, to be a “good” PF blogger, I split Sam’s book with a colleague that was also wanting a change and we wanted to see if it could help. I started reading it and I couldn’t get past Chapter 4. I just didn’t give a shit. My family was moving, I wasn’t going to “not move” just to stick around trying to monetize my departure by making my company decide between firing me or continuing to pay an unproductive employee… That seemed shadier than just ghosting work, plus, that’s just not my style. I kept asking myself, what’s the point of acting poorly towards them just to get more money, when we already have enough money?

And then it happened… My boss came to me asking about working remotely for a month to “ease the transition.” I said, “Sure. Maybe for a month, but 2 at max.” When it was all said and done, I signed a contract for 3 months of remote work. A month in, it feels like the longest, most drawn out, tediously earned severance package ever. Here’s why I wish I hadn’t agreed to this dumb shit assignment…

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Moving to The Country

While a lot of things have changed for the SSC family in the last few months, there are some things that haven’t. We are starting to get our new schedule established, and responsibilities are getting divvied up accordingly. A new plan of attack is being worked up for this Lifestyle so we can make sure we don’t screw things up budget wise. For those that haven’t followed along much on Twitter, here’s a final update before I get down to brass tacks next week discussing all new meaty PF stuff like these topics. “What the F is the budget going to look like? Where is my sense of purpose going to come from when I quit my remote work assignment at the end of October? What is our new plan? We were successful building, working towards and implementing our Lifestyle Change, but now what?! Life moves on and we can’t just sit around watching it go by, so what are we going to start planning for next?” Stay tuned for all these discussions and more! Until then, here’s a final update on where we are.

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FFLC Transition and Moving Update

Man, this past month has flown by! There has been little fallout at work with them knowing I’m leaving, now if only the home life was as stress-free. There has been so much going on around our house that it has been a madhouse. We have had to keep our current house ready for showings, hosted an open house, closed on our new house, set up moving companies, and more. It has been a whirlwind of activity around here. On the one hand, we feel like we have got things well under control, yet on the other, it feels like we’ve just been hemorrhaging cash. We’ve been doing a good job of keeping things tight, but man, so much little stuff comes up here and there with moving.  Here’s a more detailed rundown of how things have been doing with the transition so far.

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