toward the end
What a drab year it has been. I went on two lovely vacations but aside from that, it feels like I've just been surviving. A sizable portion of the drab-ness seems fairly attributable to the overall political, social, and economic mood of the times. Still, I have a nagging suspicion that a not insignificant part is also contained within myself—my attitudes about what I want to do and how I want to be in the world, what makes me happy and unhappy, what kind of life I want to live with my partner, how I want to relate to other people, and perhaps most of all my agency in the world and how much I can currently exercise it.
Lately I've been obsessively thinking about early retirement. I don't know why I've been putting off sitting down and making a spreadsheet to investigate the real state of our finances and what could be feasible for us in the next ten years or so. I love doing that sort of thing. Maybe I'm secretly afraid I won't be in as good a state as I casually think I am, having not crunched the numbers in detail. The funny thing about work is that on a day to day basis, I actually like the work I do. But that's at the micro level. When I take the space to think about the macro level, and what sort of reality I'm contributing to... well, let's just say that's when thoughts of escape start to take over. It's also funny because the job itself is what could actually, potentially enable me to retire earlier than I normally would. Funny, in a dark way.
In any case, I'd like to set an intention for 2026 to take on a different tone. I have always done well when I have clear goals for myself. I can create momentum from within myself and it bleeds into other areas of my life and makes me feel like a more real person. Pretty sure part of the problem is I haven't really had that for awhile. Every New Year's I set my intentions but maybe they've all been too tame, which makes me feel just a bit "oh, well" when they fall off the track partway into the year. I'm feeling the urge to declare some more radical changes. Wipe things clean. Eliminate. Make a huge commitment. Something to not even get the train moving, but to lay down entirely new tracks heading into unknown land. Let's see about it.