Early Retirement Week 10: The Game

Y’all have spoken! Last week, I checked in to make sure these weekly updates are still something you’re interested in and got a resounding yes, so the weekly updates will continue for another 2 weeks after this one. This is weekly update 10/12 before I switch to monthly updates!

Yesterday my ‘brother-in-law’ asked me “How are you? What did you do today?”…and I had to think about it for a while. I had a hard time remembering what I did that specific day, but despite that, the day somehow seemed to fly by and I still didn’t get to do everything I had planned.

Retirement is weird, time dilation is a mystery and I’m happy that I’ll have these weekly recaps to look back on when I ask myself, “What the fuck did I do in 2020?” So it’s time to dive into Week 10 of retirement!

What Did I Do This Week?

I played the Sims 4…a lot. In case you missed it, I am an avid Sim-er. I’ve been playing since the first release 20 years ago and even had a Twitch channel for a time after a few of y’all asked to watch me play.

It's finally time: I'm going to play #TheSims4 on our new gaming PC for the first time. Any ideas for careers, traits or goals for this gameplay🎮? Let's see what happens😈. pic.twitter.com/TY5DejOFjV

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) December 4, 2020

This week, I finally dove back in and played for the first time since we moved from Seattle in July and my partner sold his gaming computer. I’m lucky that he built a new one in Georgia for our stay here, even if it made me feel super old:

The gaming PC my partner built is so high resolution it hurts my eyes. Wow. I'm old now🧓🏾. pic.twitter.com/ThFhOaoCzC

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) December 4, 2020

Hilariously, I discovered that the resolution on his new fancy monitor is so high that it hurt my eyes until I got used to it after a day or so. It’s so crisp it’s almost scary 🙂 . So after resisting for many weeks because I didn’t want to get deep into a game, only to leave for Connecticut and be thinking about it constantly without being able to play, I dove head first into my Sims world.

I ended up playing about 4 hours some days – and that’s 4 hours straight 🙂 . I guess I’ve entered the video game phase of retirement! Upon reflection, gaming feels really different than it did when I was working – and not just because I can play during the work day.

Instead of looking up on a Saturday afternoon and realizing it’s somehow been 4 hours since I started playing, and panicking that I didn’t use my precious one day off that isn’t infected with the Sunday Blues to its fullest, I just enjoyed the game 🙂 . I had no time limit. I have the rest of my life ahead of me and that really does release any pressure and just allows me to do what makes me happy without second guessing it.

I enjoyed the first week of the first ever Purplemas!

After the success of my @NaNoWriMo writing challenge, I’m bringing y’all double my normal number of posts in December🙌🏾! So buckle up and grab a cup of cocoa🎄. I hope you enjoy having twice as much Purple in your life this holiday season🥰💜. pic.twitter.com/mXOyGSRLds

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) December 1, 2020

And it was a lovely success! It’s pretty sneaky how NaNoWriMo perfectly positioned me to take December by storm and I’m loving it! If I continue with the blog after my retirement anniversary next fall and stick to my current plan of attempting NaNoWriMo next year, maybe I’ll make Purplemas an annual thing…we’ll see how I feel at the end of this one first 😉 . Getting ahead on a few posts has been great and I don’t want this to at any time to be stressful, so I’m glad I recovered my writing creative juices and am currently excited to continue!

So far during the first annual Purplemas, I posted the below articles outside of these weekly retirement updates:

1. Mama Purple Answers Your Questions: Ask Her Anything
2. A Review Of Lively: My HSA Provider
3. What It’s Like Traveling In An Amtrak Viewliner Roomette During A Pandemic

And after all that, y’all don’t seem to get sick of me, which is a relief 🙂 .

I discussed our nomad future. I mentioned a few weeks ago that my partner and I were planning to travel to the southwest in the spring. Well, that was before the latest wave of COVID exploded. As a result, we are hunkering down for the foreseeable future and all travel has been suspended in our minds.

This week we chatted with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law to see how long they would like us to keep this commune style living together up before we overstayed our welcome 🙂 . We’re now talking about heading out in the late spring to a beach somewhere – maybe Mexico depending on how the pandemic is going. If we’re going to be hanging out alone and not seeing anyone else, I’d prefer to do it in front of the ocean 🙂 .

We used our beloved sous vide to the max. Since I’m back on keto, it’s time to get all those proteins ready (I gotta get my protes!) My partner sous vided some hard boiled eggs and together we made two batches of chicken that was cooked to perfection. Mmm…now I’m hungry.

I went to a Christmas Tree Farm for the second time in my life!

The commune went on a family outing to a local Christmas tree farm and cut down our own tree! It was a cute outing that involved me spotting a group of deer nearby and our toddler nephew trying to wander into the woods – never a dull moment 🙂 . Now we have a lovely sparkling tree that we decorated later that night.

I was featured in an ESI Money Guest Post. A few months ago I mentioned on Twitter that monthly Airbnbs were shockingly about the same price as the monthly cost of my apartment rent in the same city. ESI Money reached out to me based on that comment and asked me to write a guest post for his site about the subject. The final product is here if you’re interested.

Physical

Sleep

Sleep is going well this week. I’m planning to look back at all of these weeks and see if I can identify any patterns of my sleep post-retirement, but overall it seems like I’m sleeping better, waking up in the middle of the night less and finding it easier to go to sleep and overall stay asleep. All positives in my book 🙂 .

Napping has continued to be a godsend. Despite sleeping well throughout the night at times I still feel sleepy in the afternoons, so I take a nap and it feels lovely and decadent. Maybe I should just adopt the Mediterranean concept of ‘siesta’ 😉 .

Food

This was week 2 of being back on keto. As I mentioned in the last weekly update, week 1 went well. I stuck to it hardcore and shockingly was barely tempted to break it (usually it’s a difficult shift for the first few days). Upon reflection, it’s really easy to stick to when I’m not walking around town and seeing new yummy things. A silver lining of the pandemic and our hunker down lifestyle perhaps?

After 3 days, I had lost 4 lbs. This is not unusual when getting back on keto. I usually drop about 5 lbs of water weight the first week off carbs because the bloating I’ve mentioned that carbs do to my body is so real.

Anyway, I kept track of these losses with my BIL and SIL’s awesome and surprisingly affordable Renpho Smart Scale. It gives lots of stats about you in addition to weight, such as body water, muscle mass and body fat percentage. But because I’m a data nerd, I need to be careful not to get too caught up in these numbers and instead focus on how I feel, but it’s cool to see regardless 🙂 .

I feel full even with less calories, which is awesome and overall I already feel better and less blah in my body, which is awesome! My mind feels sharper as well, which is something I noticed when I used to be full keto as well. As a result, I went on a bit of a writing binge for the blog during the week, which was fun 🙂 .

I’ve also been finding that since I have unlimited time, I don’t even question making keto food. Because I have the time, there’s no temptation to say “Ugh fuck it – I had a hard day” or “I’m too tired from work” or “I deserve to cheat today” etc. It’s the easiest lifestyle transition I’ve done so far.

I guess that’s what happens when a lifestyle change can be your entire focus instead of another layer you add onto an already precariously perched stack of things 🙂 . It’s cool to be able to only focus just on this for now and have the time to plan my food with a single minded fury 😉 .

Fitness

I’ve been attempting pull ups almost daily (I think I forgot a day in there somewhere…), but I’m not seeing much progress. A few wonderful commenters gave me suggestions for a more serious routine instead of just “try to do a pull up” so I’m mapping out what a more serious attempt would look like. I’m not sure I’ll implement this new attempt before the holidays though – just being realistic 😉 .

I also forgot to mention lately, my goal to have better posture is still going well! Every time I notice I’m slouching, I perk up and am getting better at it – I’ve been catching myself slouching less and less.

Nail Painting

I started thinking about making painting my nails a weekly ritual. At the end of a week of dishwashing multiple times a day and doing all kinds of activities, my nails still shockingly looked almost perfect. They had a few small chips, but nothing anyone would be able to see unless they looked closely.

Despite that fact, I re-did my nail polish for fun, but think I’ll make re-freshing the polish an every 2 week thing since they hold up so well! I guess I’m one of those fancy women who usually has her nails painted now…even though I’m basically always wearing pjs and fuzzy slippers 😉 . I live to be a walking contradiction 🙂 .

Mental

Learning

It’s time for my favorite segment: Fun Facts Nobody Asked For! Here’s what I learned and explored this week:

• I became interested in another bright star in the sky. It turns out that it’s Polaris aka the North Star. Looking up information on this star sparked a memory in me. There was a children’s book I was read often as a child called Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad In The Sky, which cemented the north star in my mind. The book is about American slaves escaping to the north to gain their freedom and they did so by following the north star. In addition to Polaris, I continued to enjoy seeing Mars, Jupiter and Saturn
• Birding has continued to go well! I saw a Red Bellied Woodpecker in our tree (which confusingly mostly has red on top of their heads instead of their bellies). I also saw lots of Blue Jays, American Robins, Carolina Wrens and Grackle. I also identified a Red Cardinal by sound – it has a high pitched chirp I didn’t remember hearing before. There was also a Bachmann Sparrow on our trellis right outside where I play sims – I guess birds are coming to visit me now! We also saw hundreds of Red Wing Blackbirds gathering. I imagine they’re migrating.
• I’ve been getting Forex bots commenting on my Instagram photos for a while and learned this week that they might be part of an MLM/pyramid scheme, which explains so much! I also learned that Forex = Foreign Exchange Market – even a finance blogger like me has lots to learn 🙂

One of my fav YouTubers just came out with a video about Forex MLM scams. I was wondering why there were so many Forex bots on Instagram that I had to keep reporting/blocking and had no idea they might be part of an MLM scam #ItAllMakesSense. Me right now: pic.twitter.com/wJg3hPd0nW

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) December 3, 2020

• After our adventure to the Christmas Tree farm, I looked up where the Christmas tree tradition comes from! It turns out that it originated in Germany during the Renaissance in the 16th-century. Its origins are sometimes associated with Protestant Christian reformer Martin Luther. It’s said that he was the first to add lit candles to an evergreen tree. The earliest dated representation of a Christmas tree is on the keystone sculpture of a private home in Turckheim, Alsace (which was then part of Germany and today is in France) with the date 1576. Cool! What a random thing we still do almost 450 years later 🙂 .

Creativity

Creativity is still firing on all cylinders! Words are flowing and my excitement to create in all kinds of ways continues – from spreadsheets (my nerd love!), to writing on this blog, to calligraphy and doodling. I’m happy to see this aspect of my life hasn’t fallen by the wayside. If it did, I would have suspected it was just excitement from starting retirement instead of a new level of creativity that’s part of me – I’m happy to see it’s the latter 🙂 .

Money

The market continues to be ridiculous and I hit another new net worth high. I’m glad looking at the numbers below feels like monopoly money instead of a real pile of cash because I can’t really comprehend hitting all these milestone in the year we’ve had and yet – here we are:

Emotional

Mobility

In a previous update, I talked about how I was becoming more mobile or ‘hip with the kids’ 😉 . Basically, the amount of tasks I am able to do comfortably on my frugal and fancy Moto G Stylus continues to expand. I’ve started updating spreadsheets, contacting live chat support and doing things that previously would have always waited for a computer.

I even took my mobile ruggedness to a new level after I dropped my phone maybe 10 times and it finally got a small scratch on the screen. Knowing that there were more to come, I got this sweet $13 phone case and am loving it so far. It’s not overly bulky and I don’t want to tempt fate to get a real crack on this phone – I love it too much. So now I’m mobile and indestructible!

This increased mobility has had an additional positive effect because my computer battery is going kaput soon and despite being interested in thinking outside of the box to sell my old and broken electronics for example, that adventurous spirit does not extend to possibly fucking up my MacBook Air irrevocably by trying to replace the battery myself. Luckily y’all agreed with this assessment 😉 :

I have a dilemma and I'd like your help🤔. My laptop battery is dying👩🏾‍💻. My options are below. Which would you choose?

(Note: I am not a computer expert and might brick mine if I try to fix it myself🤣. Also shipping it to
🍎 & waiting would take an unknown amount of time)

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) December 11, 2020

So checking out a certified Apple retailer in town is an adventure I will take on after the holidays. Let’s see how that goes 🙂 .

Fear Of Notifications

So my years of work created a kind of fear of notifications. I would roll over in the morning and open my phone only to see the dozens of “urgent” emails that awaited me. After a while, I realized that this was far from healthy and not helping me actually be better at my job, since it just started every morning with a kind of panic instead of a calm assessment of what needs to be done to create great work.

So I took work email off my phone. But then this feeling continued when I would open my work laptop in the morning and wonder what fresh hell awaited me. It delayed the problem, but did not fix the problem. I also started noticing my aversion to seeing new emails in my work inbox extended to all notifications in my life. Despite the fact that most of the notifications I received after work hours were texts from friends or personal emails, this feeling persisted constantly.

So comparing all of that to how I feel now is night and day. Not only do I not fear notifications – I usually ignore them all together 🙂 . Most of the time I have my phone on ‘do not disturb’ mode or don’t even have it with me. And when I grab it to check if I missed a text from my Mom for example, the notifications that roll in don’t bother me. I don’t feel the urge to respond immediately or see what’s happening. I’m living my life at my own pace – a pace with a selected amount of technology and constant connection – and it feels good 🙂 . I’m present.

A Sunday Blues 180

So I had this thought:

Uh oh – I just realized that my thoughts on Sundays have done a 180. Instead of the Sunday Blues I've started to get excited that the work week is coming because that means I'll have more introvert time. Wow. I'm a monster. #Retirement pic.twitter.com/mN7rtMp00H

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) December 6, 2020

…and fully acknowledge how horrible that makes me. My bad 🙂 . I also find complete change in how I view Sundays to be staggering. Days don’t feel the same as they used to. They’re usually a blur of good food and laughter that seem to slow down a little over the weekends when the other members of my commune aren’t working, but days aren’t as distinct as they used to be and none of them feel the same. I haven’t heard a lame joke about “Hump Day” in way too long 😉 .

Relationships

Relationships in retirement are still going well. Now that I’m cooking more of my own food, I feel like my dishwasher endeavors are helping to pull my weight around the commune. I’ve also had a lot of friend hang outs this week – I did my weekly video chat with my friend in Argentina and also had a virtual movie night with my college suite mates. We ended up reading a movie review I wrote for my college paper in 2009 and laughed about how ridiculous and harsh it was…oops 🙂 . I think I would be more nuanced in my review these days 😉 .

Conclusion

And that’s it! Life is good. The winter weather in Georgia seems to suit me much better than the darker northwest and the dark and cold northeast 😉 . Also I feel fortunate that I am able to hang with my commune while we hunker down to wait out the pandemic storm for the next few months. I hope y’all are well!

If you’re interested in the other weekly retirement updates I’ve written, they’re all here:

Weekly

1. Early Retirement Week 1: The Freak Out
2. Early Retirement Week 2: The Vacation
3. Early Retirement Week 3: The Whiplash
4. Early Retirement Week 4: The Heartbeat
5. Early Retirement Week 5: The Election
6. Early Retirement Week 6: The Trophy
7. Early Retirement Week 7: The Train
8. Early Retirement Week 8: The Challenge
9. Early Retirement Week 9: The Question
10. Early Retirement Week 10: The Game
11. Early Retirement Week 11: The Recharge
12. Early Retirement Week 12: The Holiday

What did you do this week?