When I'm financially free, I can start living the life I really want (part 3)

I challenged myself not to challenge me. And I died. Slowly. Not too painful in a physical way, but it was a damned dreaded rut that killed me after all. A wiseman (ok, an old pianist friend) once said to me: 'After all, all we do in life is trying not to be bored'. And then there was me, the guy who was afraid to live and opted-in on a life of boredom. A fool, I am.

When I'm financially free, I can start living the life I really want (part 2)

So I'm now a broke-assed nobody in desperate need of a job to work for the next 30+ years of my life to pay of more debts than I ever had before in hope to ever recover from a week of YoLo living.

One-and-a-half Joe Average

I’m one-and-a-half Joe Average.

40 days to freedom... and then what?

The timer on the right tells me I'm 40 days away from freedom. At least, freedom of debt. Nothing to do about it anymore, it can't go any faster (and why should it?) and it's nearly impossible do be done any later.

Basically, with reaching my goal, I've been wondering what do do next. I feel like I'm pretty comfortable with living below my means, so I am not too worried I won't save a lot of money the upcoming year. What I'm wondering about now is what drives me. What is my deeply intrinsic motivation in life. I am feeling a bit lost there.

I've recently picked up a new course in self-leadership from non dual perspective, I hope this will bring me closer to what really inspires me. It's not that I can't come up with things to do; I can think of hundreds of things to do, but all of those things don't seem to really touch me or give me energy anymore. And that feels somewhat depressing yet at the same time like the moment in my life to go and look  deeper into my own self. Why do I do what I do and what happens when I let go of all the things I used to do?

Patience

And now we wait...

My debt kill plan is rolling on fine. It's practically guaranteed that I'll be done with the housing debt by the end of this year. Even if that somewhat magical finish line for some reason won't be passed by then, it'll be January next year. I don't have to do anything but dump everything into the great abyss of debt. Those transactions are made automatically by my bank account so there's nothing more I can do.

Rolling on

Whenever there’s cash, I dump in into the great abyss called Debt. Not so long ago I managed to give my motivation and my down payment a giant boost by taking it under 10K. Now I'm even further down to less than 1/3... What a great feeling that is! Now to continue for what ever is left over... in a pace I hope to hold until it’s completely gone.

In the mean time I’m also selling stuff out of my home. Still don’t know why this suddenly hit me, but I didn’t feel happy with having big closets around filled with stuff I seldom use.

So bye bye vintage cupboard, electric drumset, studio monitor speaker set, apple accessories and so on.

I hope to get a lot more to go. Maybe even the digital piano, too. I am trying to learn and play the guitar. Far more mobile than a piano, I must say. So maybe I can sell it and get myself a small second hand guitar or something. Or just sell it. Period.

Couldn't stop myself

I just couldn't stop myself updating the countdown timer and debt kill plan. With my recent calculation I could be debt free with maxing it out untill the end of this year. It will take up near all my savings, but I think every penny is worth getting rid of my debt.
Just watching the countdown timer show a number I can relate to was such a relief!

I know I've been kind of obsessed with it lately, buy I just couldn't take it anymore. (I guess only miss Struggler knew how bad it was, and my best friend since I kinda went underground in my appartement calculating and counting...)

Closer and closer

So I needed a holiday and was willing to spend some money on it, even though I actually am still in debt. Reason was I never been away longer than a week for the past three years. This also was the first holiday with me and the GF where we were together for so long. We had a wonderful vacation (road trip style living in a car and tent for three almost three weeks) and really enjoyed the different landscapes of the parts of Europe we saw. Of course, we ran into some interesting confrontations with each other and ourself, but I think it's better for all of us to get ut of our comfort zone and be confronted with our own way of going through life and question why we do what we do. In the end this will bring us closer and closer.

Possessions taking possession of me

Since a while I'm trying to declutter. And guess what... the more I look around me the less I feel like I really need al this stuff.

It doesn't make me any happier at all, it just stands around keeping me from being able to move in a day if I wanted.

I have got no clue where this thought came from, but I think it has everything to do with me trying to let go of my old patterns and me feeling stuck in life and the never ending circle sleep-eat-work-repeat. I was looking for myself in my mindfulness courses the past two years, and all I can see now is all the little patterns that I set up for myself to feel safe or needed or wanted or whatever. 

It's time to let go of all of my habits and for some reason owning less and less stuff makes perfect sense to me right now.

And we call them crazy

I live in the south side of the city. Across the street there's a institution where mildly "mentally ill" kids reside. Today, they are playing outside in the little playground. Looking up from over my laptop I noticed them walking around, riding a trike bicycle,  sitting on a skippy ball, but what mostly hit me was that the seem to just "be". One of them just walks around, wiggles from one foot on the other, walks back to the nurse, wiggles around, and repeats. Another rides the trike while his friend simply follows him, untill he sees something else that interests him and he walks in that direction. Another one just sits on a skippy ball and looks up to the sky.

This is in no way a judgement of those kids! The whole display really, really touched me. And it felt as if I saw my own brain in those kids. My mind wonders around following whatever comes up. My mind wiggles around, to return and wiggle around some more. My mind feels like rolling around on the floor or hobbling a skippy ball too. All together, at once.

Life costs per second

With my current investigtions and spreadsheet it occured to me I could quite easily calculate what my life costs me per second nowadays. Turns out, my current yearly budget (in which I am trying to get out of debt and without saving really anything) my life right now costs me 0,107 cent every second. Even though that sounds like hardly anything, this adds up to 6 cents a minute; 3,86 an hour (still seems like nothing) yet this ups to an mindblowing 92,66 per day!

With me glued to my screen for the past tho days reading a very interesting blog of a man capable of living of only around 500 a month, paid through rents he gets paid from property he bought after a couple of years of hard labour and frugal living while only somehere in his mid twenties this makes me very, very aware of the fact that I, at 33 right now and still only paying of a debt and hardly saving, am ages behind.

Fears and cravings (1)

Okay, there is no (2) yet, but I'm very sure this is an ongoing theme in my life at the moment. One of the aspects of spiritual growth is that you are being confronted with your fears and cravings to only discover that you've created a hell of a complicated way around them to not feel pain and to hold on to happy feelings. Happy happy, joy joy...

Anyway. The more I realize my fears and cravings, the more confused I get. I thought this was all about self exploration and heading towards all-time happiness? Well ok, I'm not that naive, but I do feel I'm at some sort of intersection in my life. I feel like I have a choice. The choice of choosing for safety, adapting to my old habits and my surroundings and be a chameleon for the rest of my life, or the choice of going for myself. The long trail of personal and spiritual development, fast forward killing my debts and being an independent man. Wow. To just say that sounds heavily and scary responsible. But I'm done with being done with it and I can only blame myself if I don't use this somewhat harsh time for personal growth.

Done with it.

I’ve closely monitored my emotional, physical, working and financial situation and I’m done with it. And to be honest, I’m also done with being done with it. It lacks productivity, motivation and gets me nowhere. So no more complaining and time for change. I’ve come to realize that I lack goals in my life at this moment and the lack of a goal makes me be lazy, unproductive, feeling down and wanting to sleep all day. Heading towards a bored-out you could say, with some serious aspects in my life that need attention. No more hiding my head in the sand, but time to pick myself up, dust myself of and give myself the highly demanded ‘kick-under-the-butt’ forward. 

Gaining weight

In all sorts of ways, I gained weight. All sorts, besides physical, that is.

The weight on my shoulder of my debts was super-heavy once I confronted myself with my net worth. I went straight on a mother-of-all downpayment plan which could make me debt-free somewhere around 2017. Ok, that's fine, ain't it? Well, to be completely honest, it feels as if the weight on my shoulders shifted from the debt itself to the munk-like lifestyle I would have to substain in order to stick with my plan.

Enlightened

Okay. A blog. What's the point of all of this? Lately I've been busy finding inner peace. Although that's a nice paradox, it seems to have been worth it. There are a couple of things I start to see that, to me, sound like lessons in life.