72.

I’m going to talk about money now.

I’m trying to get as much money as I can so I can stop working. Not to accomplish some noble goal. Not to save the world. Not to whatever. What I truly, madly (deeply, even) want is to gain full power over my own time.

I read a post about an early retiree who explained why retirement was so important to him, why it was worth the decades of sacrifice and lean living. It was about getting rid of fear. From the moment we are born, someone else has had the reins over our time. They tell us where we need to be, what we need to do, and we listen and obey because of fear on some level. Even when we become adults and are supposedly free, we have to go to work and do what other people want because we’re afraid we’d be homeless or our kids would starve. (I should use “I” here instead of “we,” but I’m going to venture that being homeless and hungry kids are pretty universal fears.)

Retirement is freedom. That peace knowing no one can threaten your well-being by firing you is liberating.

So, to get to all that, I’ve been bringing lunch to work instead of eating out. It was kind of great, and I felt good about acting so directly to change my fate. Then it got sucky. I hate it. I hate everything about bringing lunch to work. I hate making it every day. I hate having to carry it on the bus. I hate eating the boring things. I hate washing the tupperware afterward. In fact, I hate bringing my own lunch so much that I will give up a year’s worth of retirement so I can eat out for lunch. Fuck it.