Thoughts

It has been a while since I last blogged.

Not that I had intended to take a sabbatical from blogging.

But quite a bit had happened in the last 6-7 months.

I returned to work, at a new workplace, and the first three months was tough, with a new learning curve, etc.

But now I am glad that part is over.

Of course it took a while initially for Ashton to get used to mummy being away the entire day, especially since I was with him for almost an entire year.

But humans are highly adaptable creatures, and it seems like he is used to the “routine” of mummy being away from work in the morning, and coming back only in the evenings.

Ally has also grown up, and I am heartened to see that she has grown into a responsible little girl, and loving her little brother. In fact, we had quite a hard time with her the last two years, especially after the birth of Ashton, which quite a few in the family attributed to “sibling jealously”. She was throwing tantrums, having mood swings. It was a difficult time for us to parent. I hope that she is beyond that phase and as she grows up to be older and wiser.

Dave on the other hand, has finally decided to go for his knee surgery two week ago.

As readers of the blog might be aware, Dave has generally been a rather active and sporty individual but it was unfortunate that he had tore a knee ligament earlier this year. He had went for regular physio sessions which helped a lot and a surgery was optional. However, all things considered, he had decided to opt for the surgery so that he can continue with some of his passions. As such, he’s generally immobile right now but we are glad that he has the support and care of his family so that I can concentrate my time and energy on the little ones.

Recovery will be a long road, but we will get there.

As for me, it has been rather busy for me. Work, family, etc.

As such, I didn’t really have the time to blog as much as I would like to.

But I am glad that I had the time today to write this post.

Dave recently bought a copy of the book “Playing with Fire”.

As some of you FI aficionados might know, the author Scott Rieckens, recently shot and released the first every FIRE documentary – Playing with Fire.

This is a really good read and I would highly recommend to all. I am not sure whether you can get a copy of it in local bookstores but we bought it off online.

One of the highlights for Scott in compiling the materials for the book and documentary was his meeting with Vicki Robbins. Before they left their meeting with Vicki, Taylor, Scott’s wife asked Vicki if she could give them any advice (as a new couple on an FIRE journey). Vicki considered the question before replying

“My advice is to figure out what you really want to do with your life, figure out what’s important to you, and intern yourself in those situations. FI is like heading toward a cliff, and if you don’t learn to fly before you get to the edge of the cliff, you’ll never jump.”

What Vicki advocates is having a concrete goal in mind and heading towards that. Too many times have we read stories about individual who have read FI but unclear of what they want to do.

At the same time though, I always wonder whether it is always necessary to have everything mapped out post FI.

Personally, I am never one to live life by having a clear goal in mind. Yes I am a very objective focused person, and that helps with tasks in my life, and perhaps is how I managed to thrive at work. But on the bigger scheme of things, the end goal, I vaguely have an idea, but never on the details.

I always think that the interesting and lovely thing about life, is it’s spontaneity. As the old adage goes, life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get. If you know exactly what type of chocolates it’s going to get, what flavours they are going to be, it removes all the surprise elements, and all the exciting riding up to it. In fact, what you will end up doing is probably assessing the workmanship (if there’s such a thing for chocolates) ensuring the quality is up to par, etc.

But I know vaguely what I want to do, what I want to engage in.

But everything is fluid.

And I think that’s the best part about that. That fludity.

That choice to choose what you want to do. Or to change it.

Argh…. priceless.