Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Ends to a mean

Isn’t the best part of a workweek day going home time? Our servitude towards money is temporarilyy over. The hours left truly belong to us. The world is infinitely our oyster.

At least that’s how it feels. No matter how many chores are on the list, or how much attention the child is asking for, anything is better than being at work.

Sometimes I walk by the mall, and I can see the literal relief of service workers at the end of their shift. Fold away that apron for the day and moving on to happy hours. Best of all, service workers truly do not have to think about work while they are not at work.

Not so lucky for those of us in the knowledge economy. The higher you are on the ladder, the higher your pay, and more responsibility you’ve got. There’s no turning off the work brain even when it’s time to go home, because a problem on that ongoing project still needs solving. So you’re going to thinking about it all through dinner, and for the rest of the evening.

That’s why they get paid a salary: a facade to avoid actual calculation. Perhaps if one is to add up all the hours that brain signal is being used towards work, the knowledge worker might not be that much higher paid on a per hour basis than the service worker. Especially in California where the fast food minimum wage is unusually generous.

But those are the tradeoffs. Sacrifices have to be made to make more money. Even the illegal drug dealer has to stand in the corner for many hours, risking police capture. Often times I think what I want is to be like Ralph Fiennes’ character The Menu: a plain chef making a plain cheeseburger. Nothing extraordinary, nothing status-seeking. Every day you leave work, you truly leave work.

Plus, He’d get paid at least $20 per hour here in California!

Row my own gears

In this blog I often write about how life is about tradeoffs. If you choose to have a kid, you must wave your single lifestyle goodbye. Trying to have both will only end in misery. To move out of my parents’ house, I had to sell my car, one that I still miss to this day. But it had to be done.

Speaking of cars, a typical mark of a car enthusiasts is the ability to drive the manual transmission. My first three cars all came with the row-yourself stick. On my fourth car (don’t waste your money on cars, kids), the manual was not an option. And since then, I’ve not had to select my own gears for the past six years.

And I really miss it! There’s an incredible joy to the stick shift. A perfectly executed heel-toe downshift is satisfying every single time. In order to experience this joy again, it would mean buying a manual transmission car. But that’s when the pros and cons start to factor in.

Ideally, I would buy a second car to supplement my current BMW M2 Competition (automatic). However that’s not a good use to money because I don’t even drive the M2 much as is. Having another car to simply sit around? I don’t have the kind of income level to support such luxury.

I can replace the M2, but then I would have to drive stick-shift all the time. Part of why I bought the BMW in automatic - manual was an option - is to avoid the pain of constant clutch use whilst stuck in traffic. There’s no doubt the automatic gearbox is superior in any situation that isn’t a spirited drive on windy mountain roads.

We truly cannot have it all, can we? We pick a path, and try to forget all the tradeoffs and might have beens. Sad to say, but I think I’m okay with never owning another manual transmission car again. The pleasure I got from my previous manual gearbox cars are memorable chapters in the book of me, and it’s fine for those chapters to close.

Just do it

R/bogelheads is a subreddit dedicated to discussing Jack Bogel’s investment strategy. (For those of you under a rock, Jack Bogel is the founder of Vanguard, a pioneer of the index fund.) Genuinely: why does this subreddit exist? Bogel’s investment philosophy is as simple as it gets: consistently buy low-cost index funds periodically for a very long time. What else is there to talk about? R/Bogelheads should consist of one single pinned post outlining that exact strategy, and nothing else.

Same with r/personalfinance. What can there possibly be to talk about when personal finance can be boiled down to a single sentence: spend less than you make, save and invest the difference.

Same with r/fitness. Go move some weights every few days, consistently for a very long time. That’s it. Gyms have not changed, nor has barbells and dumbbells.

I think we get mired in discussions on the margins, seeking ever more nuanced information, rather than doing the damn thing. Or, we’re already doing the damn thing, but we want to keep ingesting information about that particular subject as some sort of feel-good pacifier. You only need one podcast with David Goggins as guest to know that you should get off your ass. Finding 10 more just like it with essentially the same information is just procrastinating.

Once you know the secrets, you can leave! Rather than scrolling through the same information day after day, that time is better spent doing something else. It can even be for leisure! Go start a new streaming TV series. Go play some video games. Go hang out with your actual friends and family.

Too busy adulting

I recently loaned my car out to a friend for a few days. He’s back in town from spring break. Because I have a walk for a commute (thank the lord), the friend is free to use the car during my work-week.

Which is just as well because I otherwise would not be putting much miles on my BMW M2. Upon returning the keys to me, the friend marveled at how little I drive it. He can’t imagine owning such a fantastic machine and not drive it at every opportunity.

Welcome to true adulthood: you have to make choices on what you spend your time on. We don’t get a spring break. They also lied to you: you cannot have everything.

Soon as the weekend hits, the last thing on my mind is taking the M2 out of a leisurely cruise. There’s groceries to shop for, laundry to do, exercises to perform, and general life maintenance that I didn’t get a chance to do during the work-week. By the time that stuff gets done, well, it’s evening again. Perfect time to drown myself deep into YouTube land.

Never mind that gas prices and insurance costs are not getting cheaper.

Obviously, I can make driving the car a priority, but something else would have to go. (It definitely would not be sleep.) That’s not a trade I’m willing to do at this moment. In a hypothetical world with infinite money and infinite time cheat code, sure, there’s lots of things I would like to include in my repertoire of hobbies. But in this real world, I can only pick a few at a time.

We all do. Those who birthed kids but are still clinging onto some semblance of their prior life will only drown.

I officially feel old

Perhaps I’ve come to this realization too late in the game. Along with many of my fellow Americans, I was watching American football over the weekend. It was during one of the games that it struck me: I am older than every single player out there on the field. It’s one of those “you know you are old when” moments, one that came shockingly because we’ve all grown up looking up towards professional athletes. For the longest time, these were people who are older, stronger, better, and richer. And now I’m just an old fart watching kids play a game.

This is it: being older than entire sport teams is my demarcation line. I now firmly feel like an adult, one hundred percent. Any remnants of childhood innocence have ceased to exist. No one mistakes me for a student at my university job. I probably won’t get carded at bars, if I were the drinking type. There isn’t enough cocaine-grade retinol to erase the age lines on my face.

At least my hair is as full and black as it ever was.

This is not to say I was immature before. As the child of first-generation immigrants, I had to be an adult way earlier than I should have been allowed to. But it’s not like crossing the magic 18 or 21 somehow bestow upon us some magical new feeling. Maybe the difference between 20 and 21 is truly just the number on the birthday cake. The changes are so gradual year-over-year that it all feels the same. There’s nothing extravagant about it: make money, then try not to spend all of it. (That’s not very American, is it?)

I think for my friends who have birthed children, there truly is a “switch” of sorts. Soon as the baby comes out of the mother, the clarity of where you stand and the job to be done must be absolutely crystal clear. The success of this thing will be entirely dependent upon you for the next two decades. Surely that will make you feel like a full-on adult very quickly!

Can't have everything

I read on Reddit about this guy who wants to be a competitive bodybuilder, but is lamenting his inability to hang out with his friends. In order to get lean and jacked, the guy cannot go out to eat, drink alcohol, or smoke weed. He wants to have his cake and eat it too, though honestly, who buys cake to not eat it?

What I am reading is the unwillingness to sacrifice. What you’ve heard about life is incorrect: you cannot have everything. You have to choose. The amount of effort and dedication required to be a stage-ready bodybuilder is immense. Those who go on that journey will have to forgo many things in order to achieve the goal. There are no shortcuts, you cannot have both.

It’s the wanting to have it all that leads to upset, depression, or raging against the night. People are pining for the impossible. The new parents who can’t stand to see their single friends hanging out and traveling. Sorry, the tremendous lack of sleep and non-existent social life is part of the deal. The bargain may feel Faustian, but one really can’t be resentful of their kids ruining the life they once had.

I too have felt the misery when I have to choose. For example: I love cars. I’ve been toying with buying another car to compliment the BMW M2. However, it would absolutely crater my long term financials. (I’ve already done it once.) I simply cannot keep two cars and hope to have money for other things I enjoy, such as travel, or expensive camera gear.

I can of course switch careers and get a higher-paying job, but that comes with its own trade-offs. Work-life balance would surely go to shits. Is it worth that just to feed the car enthusiast side of me?

Maybe. I don’t think there’s a wrong answer here. You make a choice, and a door opens while other doors have to close.

Take it easy

It’s been said that depression is dwelling on the past, and anxiety is focusing on the future. To be perfectly content, you must be attentive to right now.

I guess my anxiety lately then is focusing too much on what’s coming next, even though I am thoroughly enjoying nexts that are coming up. Life is going great. I like the work that pays me well, and my hobbies and whatnot is intensely fulfilling. But that doesn’t obviate the fact there is a list of things to do, every day. Things need to get done, no matter that I enjoy doing them.

And there lies the problem. I would wake up and get anxious about the to-do list. You know how back in the schooling days, we would get home from school and eagerly tackle our pile of homework. Because we know that soon as we finish, we can go do the fun stuff, like playing video games. I’ve been treating my daily to-do list kind of like that: to get them done as quickly as possible so I can relax.

But that’s the thing: I can’t relax. There is no leisure to be found when knowing that the very next day - after a wonderful night of sleep - I have to do it all over again. So I end up chasing this phantom that never arrives. Sure, I am getting things done - but to what end? If all of this is what I want to do, why can’t I seem to achieve this promised peace of mind?

What I need to avoid is speed-running through life. The only thing waiting at the end, is death. I have to slow all the way down. Don’t walk so fast to get to work. Take my time and allow in the magic of the walk itself.

That’s what I am working on these days: slowing the F down.