Approximate Transcript
I think that autonomy is very important. I think that it's a strategic imperative to get as free as we possibly can so that we can chase stoke. I think a lot about how messed up the world is, and I want to apply my freedom-of-action towards doing something about the messed-upedness of the world. I want to spend my time helping transition things in the direction of the successor cultures that will arise out of the ruins of this one. I want to spend my time working on the flotilla, not being caught up in the bullshit going on on the ship.
In 2021 I got laid off and I had some savings so I didn't look for another full time job, I went full on into learning to live well off of very little money and I traveled the world and I built things and I had a good time. I also tried to put in place a lifestyle system I called "as-if-FI", FI meaning financially independent. My hypothesis was that if I had a very low cost of living, and if I chased stoke and did things that interested me and was a generally curious and engaged sort of person, then I would incidentally generate enough income - enough money - to cover my bills and I wouldn't have to worry about money. It would be as if I were financially independent, while not actually being financially independent. I thought it was a great plan.
It kind of worked. It might have worked if I'd kept going with it, and it might work better for someone wired differently than I. So I did things here and there that pulled in about as much money as I was spending - I did some off grid PV work, and helped some neighbors out, and did some this and that work - but the reason it didn't really work is that I wasn't able to decouple my brain from the fact that I needed to be bringing in some money. I always had a nagging voice in the back of my head going "hey, your savings aren't going to last forever, what are you going to do about that?" and I'd say "shut up! Serendipity will provide." and the voice rolled its eyes at me.
Also, sometimes little opportunities would come up to earn money and it was impossible for me to decide if I really wanted to do the thing because I was stoked to do it, or if it's because I knew I needed to make some money at some point and hey look here was some money.
The final reason that this didn't work out for me is that I just wasn't able to really think big. I found myself stopping myself from considering projects that would make me unemployable. I wouldn't entertain really long trips. I wouldn't entertain projects that would require all of my energy for years at a time if they weren't remunerable.
And, look, this experiment of mine might have been just fine IF I wasn't the sort of person who wanted to push his life in a specific kind of direction. I don't want autonomy for the sake of autonomy: I want to work on the flotilla. I want to work on the successor cultures of the year 2400. I want to build the solarpunk future I want to live in. I wanted autonomy so I could decouple the need to earn money from my projects and just dump all of my attention into these projects.
So in early 2024 when an opportunity to build a business with some partners in an area I already had expertise came up, I was ready to take it. I was ready to put the hammer down, earn money as efficiently as possible as quickly as possible, and "solve money forever". So that I could enter a phase of my life, a mental space in my life, where I no longer have to make decisions considering earning income again.
So for the past year and a half that's what I've mostly been up to. (that, and the fact that I finished my book at the end of last year, also explain why there haven't been very many podcast episodes recently).
A week or two ago, I checked my spreadsheets and reflected on my position and realized that I'm going to cross that magical FI threshold here within the next few months. The nature of the work I've been doing is that we're building an asset infrastructure that can be sold repeatedly once built, so it's not like a W2 job where when I quit the money stops. So it isn't necessarily a really clear cut - oh, I've crossed the line, turn in your two weeks notice kind of thing. My intent now that I've mostly got the infrastructure built is to work on reducing my hours spent on the business from 30-40 down to... a much lower number, over the next several months, so that by the end of the year I'm spending only a few hours a week on it and I've hit my FI number and I no longer have to htink about money when I'm decided on what to do.
(Short note to potential kidnappers: the amount of money you need to declare yourself FI when you spend as little as I do, is not worth kidnapping anyone over.)
So this is exciting news, right? I tried a creative approach to autonomy, with the as-if-FI think, and that kinda worked but not really so I took this business opportunity and I'm going to become actually FI here soon and I'll be able to get after my projects and plans to start working on the flotilla and building the solarpunk future of my dreams...
This is great, right?
Right?
Hahaha! Well yeah it is great! Also! It's horrifying!
Are you kidding me? It's not just horrifying, it's horrifying AND terrifying!
I've been talking for years about how if only I had my freedom, man, if only I had my autonomy-of-action, THEN I'll single-handedly built the lifeboat flotilla. I'll build ALL the solarpunk shit. I'll make deindustrial art! I'll go on a dirtbag tour of north america! I'll learn permaculture and build a garden and learn to hunt and fish! I'll build an aquaculture system! I'll write a bunch more books, and put out a podcast every week, and write on my wesbite, and do collaborate engineering-art projects with psychedelic mechanical engineers and occultist passivhaus designers!! The only reason I haven't done all of that stuff and more yet is because of this dang money stuff, this distraction of needing to earn money!
And!
I've!
Just!
Stripped!
Away!
That!
Excuse!
Coming up very soon now I'll have completely removed any excuses whatsoever I may have had as to why I'm not getting after the post-consumer dirtbag solarpunk lifestyle of my dreams. I'm not there yet, but soon, I'll have complete responsibility over all of my actions.
The horror! The crushing responsibility of that! Can you imagine? To have all of your bullshit excuses kicked out from under you? To be faced in the stark clear light of day with your own reflection in the mirror? The sublime existential horror of it is crushing! It's lovecraftian!
It's delicious!!
When I imagined and dreamt of freedom I wasn't aware of this black abysss of horror that I'm just now getting to glimpse into. It makes perfect sense in retrospect but I didn't know - and now that I'm hear -- so many things make sense to me.
See, a lot of people who are into FIRE, they get what's called One More Year syndrome. They say - ahh, I'm not ready to retire yet, what if there's a recession, I'll stash away another year's worth of income. I always assumed these people had pathological levels of financial insecurity and anxiety. Maybe some do. But now i have another suspicion, which is that these people got close to the edge of total personal responsibility and went NOPE fuck that uh uh, and came up with 'needing' to earn more money as a stalling tactic.
It's like when people go to the lake or the river where there's a cliff and they stand there psyching themselves up to jump, and they keep counting down from 3, and then don't jump, and start the count down again.
So that's what I've been doing in my free time recently - wallowing in the sublime existential horror of impending personal responsibility. I am very excited.
And as I've been reducing my hours on work I've been spinning back up a few other projects, namely, writing more and getting my shit together to start making podcast episodes regularly again. So that leads me to today's announcement that this is going to be the final episode of Advanced Retroadaptics. It's been a good run but I've outgrown the concept and the baggage of it, and I need to take things in a different direction now.
Uh, don't un-subscribe, all I mean is that I'm going to change the name of it. I've got a whole schema for how to tweak everything and I'm really excited about it.