The Target – Fitness

Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.
– Jim Rohn

I’m in decent shape – I can run a couple miles, I’m not overweight, though my body composition could be better. I have good balance and decent strength, and I look decent without a shirt on.

I’m not in good shape, though. I’m not noticeably fit, except compared to your adult cubicle worker who doesn’t do anything with their body.

I’m not trying to perfect my entire life this coming year – I recognize how difficult some of these thing will be, and I’m trying to set realistic goals about how much I can accomplish. I’m pretty sure a moderate fitness routine and diet will actually make my other goals easier by giving me energy and a mood boost.

By the end of 2014, I will be able to bench 225 (decent amateur for my weight), run a half marathon in two hours, and have 10% or less bodyfat. Each of these things will be subject to their own series later, but they’re all realistic goals for my starting point.

The Target – Geographical Freedom

You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.
– Toni Morrison

I have friends and family scattered all over the country, I want to travel, and I want to be able to flee shitty weather (or pursue it, sometimes).

I just got off the phone with some friends several states away – great people who I always enjoy, who I haven’t seen in months (only then because of their wedding) and who I probably won’t see for months more, because of the distance.

I can’t usually go more than two days (Saturday and Sunday) away from my house, because I have to physically return to the office on Monday. This is frustrating – I don’t mind driving and I can afford travel, but I can’t do it because of a constraint on my physical location.

I would be much happier with a typical 40 hour workweek if I could work it from anywhere. I’d be able to stay with friends and family, or visit a new city, more than the one or two weeks a year my paid time off permits me.

So I don’t have a target for working less hours – I understand I’ll probably have to work more, at first, through the career switch. Instead I have a target for geographical freedom – whatever I’m doing for a living by the end of 2014, I have to be able to do it from anywhere, at least 60% of the time.

Writing, $50k, 60% of the time it’s location-independent. Two posts in and what I’ll be doing next year is already starting to take shape.

The Target – Writing

You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.
– Stephen King, On Writing

I want to write for a living. For now I don’t much care what kind of writing it is, and I’d even accept marketing and some types of sales – anything where my job is to communicate stories and ideas.

By this time, next year, I want to be set up – either through salary, freelance, or some other way – to make $50,000 in 2015 through writing alone. That’s enough for me to maintain the important parts of my current lifestyle, and a nice round goal for me to shoot for. If I achieve this, I’ll be able to quit my current job (and avoid other employment in the same field) by this time 2014.

I’ll admit, I don’t yet know how this is going to look – like anyone on the internet I’ve heard a million stories and suggestions about how to make your blog (or whatever it is you do) your main source of income, but I haven’t seriously explored the options that make sense for me. Publication somewhere, of some kind? A monetized blog? Journalism, or marketing, or speaking, or some kind of writing-based white collar job? A kickstarter for a creative project?

All seem realistic, but I haven’t examined any closely. No matter the method, I know the outcome I want – $50k from writing in 2015.

Written out it sounds almost too ambitious. Good.

The Web – A Recap

Sometimes, you have to look back in order to understand the things that lie ahead.
– Yvonne Woon, Dead Beautiful

This is where I am:

I make low-60k range money at a 9-5 web development job outside a midsize American city. I have a four year degree in Computer Engineering. I have a mortgage on a three bedroom house, a shitty car paid off, roughly $14k in consumer debt and another $40k in student loans. I see a handful of girls, I’m in solid-but-not-amazing shape, I’m a novice salsa dancer and my wardrobe is fair to middling. I speak one language, and have never been outside the country except Canada and cruises. I’m 24, about to be 25.

These are the things that keep me here:

• Winning – I am not used to losing, and that makes trying things where I’m likely to lose harder.
• Friends and Family – I don’t want to give up the easy comfort of a few nights with a week with old friends, and support from my immediate family.
• The White Collar – I’m an engineer, and a hard worker.
• Lifestyle – I like to spend money without thinking about it too hard – I live well within my means, right now, but that’s not because I’m stingy.
• Credit Cards – I spend a couple hundred dollars a month just making minimum payments on credit cards debt.
• Home Sweet Home – I spend about 1/4 of my monthly income on a mortgage.
• Uncle Engineer – One of the biggest influences in my life would vehemently disapprove of any non-STEM career.

There are other things, but this is the high level summary.

Next: a series on where I want to be by this time next year.

The Web – Winning

People just don’t understand how obsessed I am with winning.
– Kobe Bryant

I almost always win.

I married my high school crush, when other boys in her peer group had tried and failed. I was recognized and promoted over my peers at my summer job, despite being one of the youngest employees. I got into the schools I applied to, with the degree programs I wanted, with honors and scholarships. I got the grades I wanted, and the internships I wanted, and I did well in those positions. I’ve never interviewed for a job and failed to get an offer. I won contests, prizes, competitions.

My divorce at the beginning of this year was the first time I really, truly failed at something I had tried hard to do.

This is probably the definition of a first-world problem, but it is a problem. I am terrified of losing.

My conception – and others’ – of myself as a capital-w Winner means I don’t take the kinds of risks I should. I don’t tend to start things I think there is a good chance of failing. Obviously this is a problem – many of the things I need to do to get what I want out of life have a very high chance of failure (such as picking up women), and only through trying them many, many times is success remotely likely.

So – this is a strand in the web. If I wasn’t so attached to this image of Agon as a competent, skilled, successful person who gets everything done smoothly the first try, it would be much easier to take risks. I’d be more likely to put myself in situations where I’m likely to look like an idiot, situations where I will lose out to other people or get unlucky or just plain not be good enough to meet my goal.

I almost always win, and since I’m not king of the world yet, this can only be because I’m not challenging myself enough. So my desire to keep always winning is a strand in the web – I need to redefine how I think about challenge and failure, and try harder things. Until I’m putting in my full effort and still failing a significant portion of the time, I’m not pushing to my full potential.

The Web – Friends and Family

I wanted to get that sense of peace and even boredom that comes with long familiarity.
– Debbie Reynolds

I’m a pretty sociable guy. I go out, meet new people, make acquaintances and sometimes friends. I like new people, new groups, and new activities.

But I also like relaxing in the company of old, old friends. Making the same jokes, drinking the same drinks, playing the same drinking games. Passing out on familiar couches.

In that same vein, I enjoy seeing my family – goofing around with my sister, asking my dad for advice about the car, listening to my mom ramble about her job (and make me dinner).

These things don’t get me anywhere. I rarely make ‘progress’, in any area, hanging out with my old friends and and my family. This isn’t necessarily bad – not every minute has to be spent on progress – but it can become a problem, if I choose these things every time over new experiences and growth.

And that’s why old, intimate friends and family count as strands in the web. If I were to physically move far away, or change my schedule and hobbies too much, it would be harder to achieve the kind of effortless comfort they give me.

This already happened, a little, moving an hour away as I did last year – and it felt exactly like removing a strand from the web usually feels. Scary, because I lose some of the benefits from that peg; exciting, because it forces me to find other new ways to get those benefits.

I’m not *terribly* worried about this one – physically moving far away is the only goal it really conflicts with, and I’ve dealt with it to a lesser degree a couple times in the past.

The Web – The White Collar

I was raised on, ‘You go get a nine-to-five job, earn your pay and work your way up.’
– Matthew McConaughey

Separate from the house payment, from the credit cards, from the lifestyle I’m accustomed to and from the expectations of my peers, I have my job.

I’ve always defined myself as a smart person, and for my adult life I’ve defined myself as an engineer. I solve difficult problems by being real smart about them.

If money were no object, I would still have a strand in my web that said “I am an engineer”. It would demand I prove my intelligence by using my brain to shape the world in certain ways.

Specifically, it would demand I work “in a real business” – starting a company would probably be fine, if it was real enough. Working for an existing company is definitely fine. There’s a big part of my brain that thinks if I’m not waking up early every weekday, putting on khakis and going to an office and having meetings and deadlines and a boss, I don’t really have a job and I’m not really an “adult”.

So I’ve got a strand of web holding me to “have a respectable 9-5 job”.

Further, I’ve got a strand – a couple strands, really – holding me to this 9-5 job. I enjoy the people I work with, my peers respect me, and I mostly like my projects. I’m happier here than I’ve been at any of my office jobs in the past, which is saying a lot but not saying enough. To quit – especially to quit to switch careers entirely, or to become self employed – would take a handful of stressful, emotional (if not necessarily difficult) steps.

My job, and my emotional desire to have a “job”, is a strand. I don’t think I’ll have trouble cutting it once some of the money-related strands are cut, but it’s real, nonetheless.

The Web – Lifestyle

A lifestyle is what you pay for; a life is what pays you.
– Thomas Leonard

In short – I wear decent clothes, I eat out a lot, I drink relatively expensive booze (and I drink when I’m out) and I go to clubs, concerts, lessons, and on trips.

I spend significantly more money than I have to, on things that are purely for my own enjoyment.

I haven’t measured carefully – when I did my monthly budget back during my finance phase, I just accepted that my currently monthly expense was roughly where it needed to be.

It’s not, though. I’m well within my means, but I could live a lot more frugally. Maintaining this lifestyle represents a strand in the web, a peg in my geoboard.

This isn’t necessarily one I want to remove. I like decent clothes, decent whiskey, and going out without checking my tab very carefully. On the other hand I like my free time, travel, and pursuing my passions too – and I need to keep in mind that removing or weakening this strand is an option, if I should need more room to move.

The Web – Credit Cards

In short, ugh. That’s a lot of consumer debt.
– Agon

This one isn’t complex, but it’s just as real as the others. I spend several hundred dollars a month making minimum payments on credit card debt I’ve built up over the years. That’s a significant percentage of my income that I can’t use for anything else, which raises the bar for the minimum income that I can survive on.

It’s a peg. It’s straightforward to pull – I’ve already outlined the plan, and it’s been working for the past couple months – but it’s also time consuming, and short of spending less and making more I don’t know how to get it done in less than a year or two. On the other hand, it’s not that difficult of a peg to work around – whatever career or income or expense changes I need to make, they just have to account for an extra couple hundred a month. That’s doable.

More on money next time.

The Web – Home Sweet Home

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
– Henry David Thoreau

Almost exactly a year ago, I bought the house I live in now. At the time I was married and thinking about the long term, and renting seemed foolish – why not recoup some of my “rent” money in the form of equity?

I’m not sure whether that’s smart or not, long term, but it doesn’t matter to me anymore. I don’t want to live here long term. Roughly half my “fixed” expense every month goes towards my mortgage, that’s not counting utilities and maintenance costs that would be significantly less in an apartment, and if I wanted to move, trying to sell the house would be a significant time sink.

So the house is a thick strand in the web. It keeps me feeling stuck in this physical area, it constantly creates busywork for me, and it encourages me to spend more money on things. It helps a tiny bit with romance in the long term – it’s great to have somewhere totally comfortable to bring women – but it’s not really close to any of the spots I usually hang out. A smaller apartment – even one with a roommate – that was passably close to places I troll would be much more effective for this purpose.

The house is a pain in the ass, but it’s an eminently solvable problem.

My ex wife’s name is still on the title and mortgage, so I need to refinance before I can sell. I also need to look at the current balance on my mortgage and the likely sell value of the house and figure out if I can actually sell right now without taking a huge hit.

Either way, selling is completely obvious and necessary if I’m going to get some wiggle room in this web.  This strand will be time consuming and perhaps costly, but emotionally simple to cut.