Happy New Years Eve! Just a reminder that this is the second to last weekly update I’ll be doing before switching to monthly. I’m sure y’all have some festivities to get to, so let’s get right into it ๐ .
What Did I Do This Week?
I made a wild plan ๐ – 52 non-fiction books in 52 weeks!ย I haven’t officially decided to go full steam with this plan, but I was trying to think about a goal I could have for 2021 and after not reaching my goal of reading a nonfiction book a month because of the emotional hellscape that has been 2020, and pairing that with the fact that my partner and I are not going anywhere for the foreseeable future because of the rampant spread of COVID, I thought of this goal.
This idea sparked the below tweet where y’all gave me some amazing suggestions for books in the following thread:
I'm loading up my library ebook queue and would love your book recommendations๐๐๐พ๐! The types of books I'm looking for right now are similar to:
1. Why We Sleep
2. Sapiens
3. How To Invent Everything
Whatchu got ๐? pic.twitter.com/IXTlD5Xuy3— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) December 8, 2020
…and before I knew it, I had a list of 40 non-fiction books I wanted to read. Rounding that number out to 52 sounded doable and since I’ve been known to read a fiction book a day at times even while working, (fuck sleep, am I right? ๐ ) I thought 1 non-fiction book a week when I wasn’t working sounded possible.
Apparently, it’s a pretty standard challenge on the internet and it would definitely make up for not hitting my 12 non-fiction books a year goal into 2020. But also, it sounds pretty exciting! I’m excited to learn about all these new things about our world. So first things first, I’m going to see if I complete my list of 52 non-fiction books that sound interesting, and decide if Iโm diving in head first in 2021!
I accidentally saw the best search term that’s ever pointed someone to my site:
This is the best search term I've ever seen that brought someone to my site. I am here for my friend ๐ฅฐ. Also my partner thinks I should make this my tagline and I'm considering it ๐คฃ. pic.twitter.com/aH3pqHuN5C
— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) December 14, 2020
I don’t usually get very deep into the backend of my site of how people find me, but this popped up while I was on my WordPress site and it made me laugh out loud. I am so happy this person found me and I hope I could help them see a possible alternate path.
This week was also the second week of Purplemas! In addition to these weekly updates, I posted an overview of everything I earned in 2020, which turned out to be about $78,000 after taxes. Not bad ๐ .
Anyway, it’s been a fun time pushing out more posts than usual and while I’ve been enjoying it, I think I’m going to take #SlugLife seriously in January and lie facedown for a good long while ๐ .
Physical
Sleep
Sleep this week has been interesting. I have been sleeping for at least 8 hours a night, but have still felt tired. I suspect this is a result of messing up my sleep schedule for the meteor shower I’ll talk about below. Who knew routine has such an effect on sleep patterns?! I’m kidding – that makes sense ๐ .
I have however been trying to re-train my brain about how I think about sleep. I was berating myself for feeling tired despite sleeping 8 hours a night and obviously not having a job to drain me, but then I looked out at the two dogs that live with us on this commune. They just seem to nap in the sun or on the couch all day and I’m now aspiring to get on their level.
I’ve heard from other early retirees that it took them at least a year to actually feel rested. So I shouldn’t be putting this pressure on myself, especially after only 3 months of retirement where I have been doing way more than originally planned (e.g. caring for a baby, traveling cross country via car and sleeper train, living on a commune, decking out a tiny house, winning NaNoWriMo and now doing a self-imposed PurpleMas ๐ ).
That list is definitely not the “don’t move at all” plan I had for my retirement and I need to just accept how I’m feeling instead of being negative about it. Sometimes I’m tired even without having a job and that’s ok! I’m still falling asleep and staying asleep way easier than when I was working and I assume that’s onlyย going to keep improving.
Food
I continued to be hardcore keto and have so far lost 7 lbs, which is cool to see. More importantly though, I continue to feel less bloated and more clear headed. I’ve decided that I’m going to keep this up through the end of the week and then go off keto for the holidays.
The commune has been talking about the group meals and traditions we want to create together and I don’t want to ask to make a second version or make a stressful holiday even more complicated. So I’ll be hopping off the keto train for a little bit before getting back on in the new year.
Calligraphy
So as a part of the prizes I received from winning the Plutus Award for Best FIRE Content, I received an awesome and heavy pen that I’ve been using for calligraphy. It’s wild how the weight of a pen or my mood, can affect my calligraphy. If I’m tense, the letters don’t flow properly, and at times, the different weight of a pen adds some personality as well.
Anyway, as a result of receiving this sweet pen, I’ve been doing more physical (vs digital – on my phone) calligraphy. As I often do when I practice, I’ve been writing words over and over again – book titles specifically ๐ . My partner and SIL were discussing different books at the kitchen table, and I kept plucking them out of their conversation onto my paper.
I was writing them over and over, seeing different ways to form the letters – more round, sharp, fancy or direct etc. It makes me wonder how many times professionals practice before handwriting things like wedding invitations – I would imagine a shitton ๐ย .
It’s been fun to get back into physical writing though. Practicing digitally on my phone with my fancy Stylus is wonderful since I don’t feel bad about wasting paper, but there’s something about working with paper and pen that I love ๐ .
Mental
Learning
You know what time it is! It’s time for my favorite segment: Fun Facts Nobody Asked For!ย Here’s what I learned and explored this week:
- This week my sweet (and free) Star Walk 2 app told me that I had the opportunity to see the best meteor shower of the year! It’s called the Geminid Meteor Shower and is unique because of the fact that it’s often multi-colored and that itโs the only major meteor shower that doesnโt come from a comet. The Geminids are actually debris that was left by Asteroid 3200 Phaethon. The asteroid is a huge space rock that’s about 6 km in diameter. 3200 Phaethon completes an orbit every 1.4 years and leaves behind a trail of debris for us to see. However, it doesnโt have a tail of dust or gas typical for comets…and that’s why itโs not considered a comet. Asteroids are usually considered to be made up of metals and rocks while comets are made up of ice, dust and rocky material. Apparently if you see a meteor shower, youโre usually seeing an icy cometโs leftovers that crash into Earthโs atmosphere. Comets are sort of like dirty snowballs. While they travel through the solar system, they leave behind a trail of ice and rocks that linger in space. When Earth passes through these clouds of ice and rocks (aka comet waste), this debris, which can be as small as grains of sand, pierce the Earth’s atmosphere at such speeds that they burst, creating a celestial fireworks display ๐ . The more you know ๐ !
- So, back to me ๐ : I planned to stay up on the night that the Geminid Meteor Shower was peaking and was sad to see that despite the evening being clear, by night time the sky was cloudy. The weather forecast had warned me that that might be the case, but I was too hopeful ๐ . So I checked the sky at about 11pm and called it quits until the next night. Instead, I watched the meteor live stream that was happening that same night from a clear-skied Spain (I love the internet ๐ ). Anyway, luckily the next night was the only clear one we had during that part of the week and the stars were absolutely gorgeous. I bundled up, pulled up a lawn chair and sat watching the stars for 2 hours. It was a gorgeous sight, but I quickly realized that our backyard is actually much less dark than I thought once my eyes adjusted. However, I did see a bright shining meteor streak across the sky and I did enjoy just watching the stars in the quiet dark stillness. After seeing my one large meteor, I crawled into bed at 2am and tried to warm myself up until about 3am when I fell asleep. I think that next year I’ll plan to be in the woods camping or something at this time so I can see even more meteors. Even the ‘burbs aren’t as dark as I thought ๐ .
- Then, in case this week didn’t have enough space filled excitement, there was a Total Solar Eclipse the next day! It was happening across Chile and Argentina. I was messaging with my friend in Argentina while watching the live stream of the moon blocking out the sun in her country and it was super cool (once again, I love the internet).
- So after all that excitement from looking up, I noticed something interesting while looking down. For the first time since we moved to Georgia, there was Frost on the ground in the mornings. We had previously seen dew, but not frost. So of course my newfound energy and curiosity drove me to research what creates frost right then and there. It’s fascinating to me that there’s so much of our world that I acknowledge as reality, but don’t at all know the mechanisms of – despite taking physics…and totally paying attention I promise ๐ . So I learned that air holds a certain amount of water vapor in it at all times and how much water it can hold depends mostly on the current temperature. The higher the temperature, the more water vapor that the air can hold. Apparently this is why when youโre in places that are really hot (particularly when near a large body of water), we often feel ‘sticky’ due to how much water vapor the air is capable of and currently holding (or as I call it a ‘wet’ vs ‘dry’ heat). Anyway, frost apparently forms when a surface cools past the ‘Dew Point’. The dew point is the point where the air gets so cold that the water vapor in the atmosphere turns into liquid. Then this liquid (aka dew) freezes because of the cold temperature outside. If it gets cold enough, little bits of ice, or frost, form. Boom!
- This week in Birding I learned that some people take a year off in or before college to travel around the US and see as many birds as possible within that year. That sounds like a ridiculous goal I might want to attempt in the future ๐ . Anyway, in reality, I had a few fun bird exchanges this week. I saw what I thought was my belovedย Tufted Titmouse bird in a tree next to me and confirmed the identification with my bird song app. Then watched it hop around on tree branches for 15 minutes while listening to other types of bird calls and wondering what they were. I texted my SIL and discovered that the Tufted Titmouse is her favorite bird as well for the same reasons I love them: their hilarious name and adorable mohawk ๐ . I seem to have not-married into the right family ๐ . In addition to my SIL, I texted the whole commune and my partner told me he was sad he missed it (he was working ๐ ) – I guess that means my birding pyramid scheme is complete mwahaha!
- I don’t remember how I stumbled upon this, but I discovered that there is a map and information about every tree in NYC! I want to think that if I knew about this when I lived in NYC, I would have been so excited and engaged, but in reality Iย wouldn’t have even cared – I was too busy and stressed. Anyway, it’s super cool to discover now and I’m excited to use it for exploration when I finally visit again post-pandemic.
Creativity
Creativity is still ballin’ ๐ . For example, I’ve been watching films virtually with friends and the reviews from those have been flowing – even with more complicated films that usually take me a while to process, such as this banger:
I need to write up my reviews for the Christmas movies I watch every year. Adding that to my to do list!
Using My Career Skills For Good
So my sister-in-law is starting a partnership with a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). They’re bartering vegetables for her social media services…even writing that sentence made me smile ๐ . That’s the kind of shit I always dreamed of while working. Helping a business or cause you believed in and not even needing to be paid in money, but in goods while knowing you’re helping your community. Really cool stuff.
Anyway, she asked me to brainstorm with her about how she could help this CSA and I loved it. We talked for a while and came up with lots of ideas of how to get their name out there, show people how they’re awesome and overall just showcase how they’re helping the community. After we finished brainstorming, it took me a while to figure out what I was feeling, but it was a confusing combination of pride and relief – for once the skills I had learned during my almost decade long career were being used for ‘good’ ๐ .
Instead of helping a giant international corporation that has shown time and time again that they don’t actually give a shit about anything but money, I’m using those same skills to help basically the opposite type of organization. Though, in case this sounds like a slippery slope to me going back to work, just for people that won’t pay me – don’t worry…I’m still way too lazy for that ๐ .
Money
The market continues to be ridiculous and I once again hit another net worth high. Here’s the monopoly money:
I feel like a broken record relaying my thoughts on money here, but just to keep the continuity: there’s nothing of note. Nothing has changed. I’m still shockingly meh about money. I’m spending it left and right without thinking, being generous in all the ways that I can think of, but it’s still not making a dent.
I still feel no pressure to check my budget before making money decisions and thinking we are basically just smooth sailing. I think I’m going to write a post about my evolving thoughts on spending money because they have varied wildly.
Emotional
Time To Reflect
Something made me angry this week and I literally mapped out why that might be until I got to the root of it. Then I approached the situation as logically as I could and afterwards I realized, I’ve never really done that before. When something specific, small and angering happened, I’ve never had the time (or took the time more likely…) to just stop, remove myself from the situation and then analyze it from afar.
I’ve done this with big blow outs earlier this year, but not small issues and found that – unsurprisingly, even in these small instances, that’s a much better way to react ๐ . It’s definitely better than just jumping in based on emotions like I would have done without reflecting. So I’m once again grateful that I have the time and took that time to analyze what was happening. Dealing with shit really is easier when I have (or take ๐ ) the time to explore my reactions to it ๐ .
Conclusion
And that was Week 11! I tried to chill as much as possible, but (and I know this sounds like a broken record) often failed. I am a bad early retiree ๐ . Maybe I’ll be better next week…
If you’re interested in the other weekly retirement updates I’ve written, they’re all here:
Weekly
- Early Retirement Week 1: The Freak Out
- Early Retirement Week 2: The Vacation
- Early Retirement Week 3: The Whiplash
- Early Retirement Week 4: The Heartbeat
- Early Retirement Week 5: The Election
- Early Retirement Week 6: The Trophy
- Early Retirement Week 7: The Train
- Early Retirement Week 8: The Challenge
- Early Retirement Week 9: The Question
- Early Retirement Week 10: The Game
- Early Retirement Week 11: The Recharge
- Early Retirement Week 12: The Holiday
What did you do this week?
here is what i think i know about sleep based only on my own experience. this might deserve its own post:
i used to work a swing shift 12 hours for 4 days of 7-7 days, 4 days off, then 4 days of 7-7 overnight. i was tired all the time even with 4 days off every week. 3 years ago i stopped doing that and (like you mention) started working the same time during the day and going to bed near the same time. the routine and consistency made sleep what it was supposed to be. that is very sound and restful.
part ii: when i get regular exercise (nothing fancy more than just breaking a sweat during the day) sleep is much better even with consistent sleep times. i have one of those garmin dumb watches that tracks sleep and heart rate. they are both much better on days when i get some moderate exercise. now you have my 2 cents. happy new year, ms. purple.
Yes please write a post about this! That’s very cool to hear your experiences mostly match mine. I haven’t seen any difference in sleep when I exercise – in fact at times it hinders me falling to sleep, but that was more heavy exercise that left me sore and uncomfortable.
I’ve been reading Why We Sleep, but there’s criticism from the academic community. That bars in charts have been removed, sources aren’t accurate, etc to a degree that many of the findings are not accurate! It may be worth investing the time elsewhere, although the book itself is interesting.
Good to know! Thank you for bringing that to my attention. Unfortunately I’ve already read it, but will dive into the critiques.
Iโm a fellow bird nerd and am actively participating in the pyramid scheme, ha. How about reading about a smart guy who drops out of high school to watch birds?
Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder https://www.amazon.com/dp/0618709401/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glc_fabc_VLE7FbHY7RP2J
Hi fellow bird nerd! I hope the pyramid scheme has been as fruitful as most (aka making no money ๐ ). Hilariously someone told me about the Kingbird Highway last week and I looked into it – I might try it one day ๐ .
My first comment here. All the way from the Netherlands. I like your blog Purple! Thank you very much and please keep writing. If you need some more ideas for books to read; At Home by Bill Bryson and A short story of nearly everything also by Bill Bryson. I think he’s very funny and can explain difficult things in an interesting and easy way!
Thank you Saar!! That’s so lovely to hear. I already have A short story…on my list but will at At Home – thank you!
Sorry, the correct title is; A short history of nearly everything…
I love the idea of bartering. Itโs could be used for so many things- childcare, household repairs, etc.
In 2019 I read 100 books, this year Iโm at 56 I believe. I think reading during the pandemic has been a challenge for many of us. For me, the emotional stress makes it harder for me to focus on fiction.
Truth! And 100 books (and 56 books) is amazing!! Totally with you on the emotional stress making it harder to focus, though for me it’s been on non-fiction. I’ve been devouring fiction like water in the desert.
Love the one book per week challenge! What are some of the non-fiction titles on the list that you’re most keen to get stuck into?
Stay tuned ๐ ! I’ll be listing the ones I read in my monthly retirement updates and might post my Goodreads profile in case y’all want to follow along with my rating and everything.
As I was reading the discussion about sleep, it reminded me of a time (many years ago now!) when I made a goal to sleep 8 hours a night no matter what. I did so faithfully for about 2 months and was feeling terrible. One night I stayed up until 4 am and got up at my usual time of 6 am and felt great. I went back to my 6 or 7 hours of sleep a night and felt much better. Some people don’t need as much sleep as is “normal” and some people need more – even up to 9 or 10 hours of sleep a night. I believe each person needs to find what is right for them, regardless of what everyone else says. Thanks for the post. Best of luck.
Agreed – I seem to need more sleep than other (8-10 hours vs my Mom’s 4 hours). I’m hoping I’ll require less as I age because it feels like wasted time even though I know it’s not with everything my body needs to do when I’m unconscious.
Same here: 7 hours is my sweet spot. Any longer and Iโm a weary all day. I tried to force 8+ hours for YEARS because I was constantly worn out. Then, same story…woke up early one day, felt surprisingly alert, tried it for a week, never looked back. Apparently, too much sleep (for my body) makes me tired. ๐ Bodies are weird and all work slightly differently. My kid is exactly like me, and has slept 1 hour less than the recommended time since day one, while our neighborโs daughter has slept 1 hour more. ๐ด
Yeah human bodies are so weird ๐ . I’m glad you figured out what’s right for you…I’m still experimenting lol.
A link for the wonderful calligraphy pen, pretty please?!?
Oh no – the brand name isn’t on it! They replaced it with the Plutus logo…I’ll do some digging!
Nice one on helping the CSA with your career skills! It feels so good to be able to help out with a local organization doing good. Makes learning those skills all the more worth it.
Thanks for the NYC Tree Mapper! I just showed this to my boyfriend. We’ve been walking more in our neighborhood since the pandemic and sometimes say, “What’s that tree?” but neither of us have had the answer until now.
If you have not hit your limit on non-fiction book recommendations consider, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” about the woman that we got HeLa cells from and the impact they had on medicine and “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail”, the story of an amazing woman who, in her 60’s, was the first woman to thru hike the Appalachian Trail. Both were incredible stories.
Thank you! I’ve read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and everything they did to that woman without permission still gives me nightmares. I’ll check out the other book ๐ .