Gone Too Soon

I broke my writing streak last week, as I went home to Pittsburgh for a funeral. My good friend from high school, T, passed away suddenly. He lived in the same neighborhood as me, and we graduated together. If not for some weird last minute circumstances, he was going to be a groomsman in my wedding. He was my age: not even forty years old yet, with a daughter left behind.

The trip home was a conflicted one. The gut-wrenching feelings of seeing my friend in the casket and knowing that this would be the last time I saw him were paired with a rare reunion: getting to see all my old friends again, all in one place for once. I caught myself feeling happy at times in seeing loved ones I hadn't seen in years, and then felt guilty for feeling that way. Why should I be happy at a time like this?

The CEO of Me Inc., Quitting, and FIRE

I've often heard that people should think of themselves as businesses: that I am the CEO, the Chief Marketing Officer, and sole employee of "Me, Inc." I honestly kind of like the metaphor. I like the idea that, when it comes to our money, we should think about it in terms of profit and loss statements, of investing in ourselves the way a business invests its capital into its own people and its equipment, and how it might be helpful to have some sort of formal vision statement to guide this little company of Me, LLC.

I like the organized nature of this kind of worldview: its commitment to efficiency. And I find it empowering, in a way, to think of myself as the CEO of this tiny organization. You and me and everyone we know: we're all the head boss in charge, in a way.

Our Half Baked Slow Travel Plans

You'd think that after working towards financial independence and early retirement since 2012, a full seven years, that we'd have a thorough plan of what we want to do right after leaving work. Even though we have some decent ideas of what we'd like to fill our days with -- walking Baby AF and yet-to-exist MC Baby to school, volunteering at school and with local charities, helping with homework, making dinner as a family, writing more on the blog, making a podcast and maybe creating a boardgame -- none of these things on their own is necessarily a 'life plan', whatever that is.

They're a lot of things we enjoy, of course. But they're also things that we are either doing right now, or that we could do if we wanted to. None really require us to leave full time work.

But after years of traveling at our quick pace, maybe four or five days in a city and then on to the next, and seeing that Baby AF traveled like a champ earlier this fall, we've finally come up with a thing we'd like to do that truly would require the freedom of a retirement from our current jobs: some slow travel.