This is a continuation of my monthly series that records what’s happening in my final stretch to early retirement. If you’re interested in previous posts, they’re here.
I’m trying to continue my habit of updating y’all monthly on what’s happening in my world and in my mind as I inch closer to early retirement in case it helps anyone on their path. In previous months we’ve covered the drama surrounding where we’ll be living next year, the sad decline of my current company in my eyes and reflecting on why I’ve felt stressed lately. This month we’re tackling an age old topic: My Impatience.
At the beginning of last month, I joined a few new work projects and then this happened:
Uh oh – I felt genuinely interested in something at work today. Is this what y'all "I love my job" people feel all the time?!?! It was a weird feeling😉.
— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) June 4, 2019
The new projects were unlike any I’ve been on in recent memory: they were relevant to recent news and might actually make change within the world. This was new for me. I’ve mentioned before how my main frustration with the jobs I’ve had is that they don’t matter. I may bust my ass to deliver an ad (from my Mad Woman days) or an infographic that then sits in an executive’s email inbox until it’s accidentally deleted (or so I imagine…).
My career earns me a great income and isn’t as stuffy as the work my Mom has done and described to me, but it doesn’t matter at all in the large or small scheme of things.
And before you ask, yes I have looked into other careers that would matter more to me and sadly discovered that they are still littered with things I greatly dislike about jobs in general, such as office politics, inefficiency and incompetence, with the added benefit of paying me a lot less. Overall my current situation is the best one I’ve found after examining all the factors, but it still has downsides.
So I joined these new projects and felt a twinge of interest and excitement, but I’m sad to inform you that the feeling was very fleeting. In fact, looking back, the last month was the most hellish month of work I’ve had in over a year. My joy at dealing with something new and important was quickly overshadowed by everyday frustrations, such as:
- A colleague who didn’t do their work, but promised the client it would be done by a certain time so I have to scramble at 9:30pm to do it for them because breaking that promise degrades my trustworthiness to the client as the head of this project and the client service lead.
- A client who insists on approving every aspect and step of the project, but will not respond to my requests for feedback or approval and then asks why we’re behind schedule…and declares we must do anything possible to catch up.
- A contractor who agrees to a very clear timeline upfront and then tells me 24 hours before everything is due that they “need more time” and starts complaining about their other freelance clients and all the errands they need to run…WHAT?!
I’ve always been curious if projects that were more in the spotlight or seemingly ‘important’ would help me move closer to where the “I love my job” people hang out. The fact that I encounter them about as often as a purple unicorn should have tipped me off because it appears that not even work that matters to people and is relevant to the world helps me overcome my daily frustrations working with other people.
As a result of all this exasperation combined with the many late nights I’ve spent working with little sleep and burnout peeking over the horizon, I’ve been seriously battling with my old friend impatience. I even read that very article that I wrote again to try and remind myself of the tips I laid out to fight it previously, but they didn’t work this time – I suspect because I’ve already implemented them as best I can. It seems this isn’t a job for small tips so maybe mammoth distractions will work 🙂 .
Instead of focusing on my tiredness or frustrations or how 14 more months of this seems like an eternity for some reason, I am going to try and shift my focus to all the awesomeness that is happening outside of work and the exciting events on the horizon, such as:
July
We have two fun camping trips planned – one to Diablo Lake (awesome name) and another to the Peninsula with a friend I met through this blog. I think of camping as the ultimate test of friendship (more so than traveling together) so after this trip I’m excited to officially welcome her into my ‘inner circle’ 😉 .
August
I will be working from my parents’ house in Atlanta for 3 weeks in August and already have made plans to hang with rich & Regular, Seonwoo and Rho from Their Money Goals while in town. I’m also going to be taking a road trip with Mama Purple to visit the hilarious Steph from Simplistic Steph in Nashville.
I’ll also be able to see my partner’s brother and wife who live nearby with their new son. August should be filled with a lot of love and fun hangouts and when I get back, we have the final camping trip of the season scheduled in the San Juan islands. Way to wrap the summer up with a bang!
September
In September I will be attending my first conference ever that will also be my first ‘official’ personal finance event: FINCON 2019! I’m so insanely excited to meet my ‘internet friends’ in person! I was lucky enough to win a scholarship to cover the ticket (Thank You FinCon Team!). It should be an awesome time. If you’re going to be there drop me a note below – let’s hang out!
October
In October I will be going to Mexico for a week to celebrate my 30th birthday with my partner and my Mom. I’m planning to tan, eat, read and generally be a slug while reflecting on how far I’ve come since I was that scared 20 year old frantically networking in college to try and combat a difficult job market. October will also mark less than a year before I’m planning to quit my job so there’s a lot to celebrate.
November
November should be nicknamed THE DECIDER. This is when I will look at my current net worth, my projected savings and the market to decide if I’m locking myself into quitting my job by October 2, 2020. If I’m confident I will hit $500,000 by then, I will book a 6-8 week trip to New Zealand and Australia for October through November 2020. We need to book this far in advance because we’re using travel hacking to book the badass Etihad apartments and there are only a few.
Booking this trip will ensure that I will have to either quit my job in September of 2020 or (if I end up not hitting my number by then) telling my boss that I’m going on a 2 month sabbatical and leaving Seattle, but willing to work remotely when I come back if he is…not sure that would go over well 🙂 . So booking this trip sets my countdown to leave Seattle in stone and my countdown to quitting my job set in…something slightly less hard than stone depending on what my boss says 😉 . Either way, my life will completely change and this is the month I lock in when that happens.
December
In December and early January I’ve booked a full FOUR WEEKS in Atlanta to hang with my family (if you’re around and want to hang out let me know!). I’ll still be working during the week, but opening my laptop at noon after taking a long walk in the park with my Mom helps me remember why I’m working so hard and saving so much to retire ASAP.
Conclusion
And that’s what I have on the horizon! There’s something major planned for every remaining month of 2019. If being practical can’t get me through the rest of this year focusing on these exciting milestones might do the trick. Let’s see 🙂 .
How was your month? Do you have any tips for how to distract yourself through tough times? Are you inching closer to your goals?
It’s gonna be like waiting for that annual holiday. But this time it’s forever!
Hahaha that’s an awesome perspective. You’re totally right!
Lots of plans! Have you ever thought about Airbnb’ing your apartment when you’re out of town so often? (Of course your partner would probably want to be out of town too). Could definitely generate some extra income.
I haven’t really thought about it, but that’s a good idea…except that it feels like work 😉 . Do I need to reiterate my #SlugLife post over here? It could generate some income, but I’m currently too lazy for that.
One of my biggest flaws is my impatience, so I can totally relate to this. I love that you laid out everything that will be happening between now and then – it’s created a roadmap of awesome things for you to check back in on during your most impatient days. We are going to Europe in a couple of weeks and even that for me is not happening soon enough (lol). I’m just trying to focus on all the lovely summer days I’ll have before then!
Glad I’m not the only one 🙂 . I’m trying not to count down the days to these milestones, but sometimes that’s the only thing that keeps me motivated. Ooh Europe that’s exciting! And I know what you mean about a couple of weeks feeling like a long time 🙂 . I love the idea of focusing on summer days – I should do a sun dance over here! It’s been raining for a few days.
Your description of your current gig is a perfect summation of mine too; “Overall my current situation is the best one I’ve found after examining all the factors, but it still has downsides.”
Some days are a tough slug, but it’s all about the big picture, right?
But it does sound like you have lots of cool plans on the horizon.
Yes it’s all about the big picture – I just need to remind myself when I’m in a work rut and it feels like it will always be this way. It won’t. Optimism! And yes I’m excited for these plans – hopefully focusing on them will help me get through the next few months 🙂 .
what are you planning to do with your “stuff” when you leave seattle next year? even if you don’t have much you have to put the high quality items somewhere, right?
diablo lake is a great name, indeed. i always just lived with the impatience. focus on what’s going on with real non-work life and tolerate the rest was my strategy. having something to look forward to certainly helps.
I’m donating all of it. I really have high quality items – who do you take me for?! I have a few pieces of pretty furniture from my grandmother, but I’ve taken pictures of them and am planning to donate them as well.
Love the focus on ‘real’ life – I’ve been trying to do that, but lately have had to cancel my exciting real life plans because of nonsense work that had to get done at the same time. Yuck. I’m going to keep looking forward though!
Hmm. Patience is not my strong suit either. At least you’re only a year-ish out; I’m more like ten, thanks to an uncooperative partner. :-b
Perhaps start using “I’ll presume you agree with X if I’ve not heard otherwise by reasonable-time so we stay on track *for you*” for the client, and emplacing and invoking penalty clauses with the contractor. Heavy pushback from either raises presumption that they want success at your expense, and possible replacement. Along with the colleague.
Oh no – I’m sorry about your partner, but hope they come around. It only took me 2 years to do so 🙂 . And I like that phrasing! I’ll see if it flies. I usually go with “We need X by Y to maintain our current schedule.” Love the idea of penalty clauses too. I’ll see if I can weasel those through the politics of this place. Thank you for the suggestions!
Admittedly, it can be pretty heavy-handed, so I only pull it out of my toolbox when there’s a history of schedule abuse or project neglect.
I got so little response to the bare “I need X by Y to maintain current schedule”; it rarely got me X by Y. Or Y+1. Or “the second schedule slip”. (Those clueless enough to reach three, I cut off.)
That’s totally fair. 99% of the time I get a good response from that approach (need X by Y) and for those with a history of abuse or neglect I recommend we don’t work with them and if people don’t listen to be I leave the project 🙂 . Maybe I’ll adopt a more heavy handed approach when necessary…I’m curious what would happen.
Sorry to hear your job is stressful. That’s exactly why I don’t like working for a corporation.
Just hang in there. The last 12 months will be a slow slog. You just have to keep at it. Try not to countdown the days. Go with percentage instead. It worked better for me. Good luck!
Yeah it’s not my ideal life that’s for sure 🙂 . Working to hang in there with all the kitten posters I can find! I like the percentage idea – so far I’ve been counting percentage to FI based on how much I had invested, but a percentage countdown of time is an interesting idea. I’m currently 86% done with working for a corporation…that does feel better. Thank you!!
That time will fly by before you know it! Reading some of your frustrations reminded me why I couldn’t stand the corporate world! You’re doing the right thing- planning ahead and looking at the positive and fun things in front of you. Good luck!
I hope so – though I’m also trying to balance that with not wishing part of my life away 🙂 . It’s a hard balance for me. I’m sorry to unearth your frustrations as well – they seem to be pretty universal interestingly. Trying to focus on the good over here. And thanks so much!
I have STILL never been to Diablo Lake. Our neighbors who recently moved kept trying to get us to go with them but the timing never lined up 🙁 Or, you know, they were booked up last minute when we finally looked for campsites lol
Haha yeah I wonder which it was 😉 . We booked this like 9 months ago LOL!
I am impatient AF! See you in DC for FinCon!!!!!!
Glad I’m not the only one! And yes SEE YOU THERE!!!
Omg hahaha the client/colleague part is hilarious. SO strikingly similar to my previous agency life, especially the client part. Oh the struggles.. thanks for the laugh 🙂 I’m really glad your team landed a project that could make more of a positive change though. I would get so burnt out in my previous job because I was working my bum off, and yet the job didn’t seem to deliver any value.
As for the tip on going through tough times, I think there are things that are manageable and others that are not. If it’s the latter, I become a fast quitter (ooh not my best advice haha). Of course it’s the popular opinion to stick through, but I think you know in your GUT when you can’t carry on with something anymore. Like how I quit college as a design major and reapplied as a freshman, and how I quit that agency life because of issues you have laid out.
+ Also you’ve inspired my latest post, except I couldn’t do a shout out to you on Twitter because sadly I STILL have yet to make an account (I cry). So I thought I’ll just mention here instead, my current marketing strategy is only using the current mediums that I use, so don’t think I’ll be using those Twitter, Pinterest anytime soon..
Haha I’m glad you find it hilarious and am sad to say that despite moving from agency life to marketing sometimes monster clients still appear. Maybe one day I’ll get away from them, but I doubt it in this life since client service and project management are my main skills. I backed myself into a corner on this one. Sadly that possible positive change is long done and I’m back doing things that are worse than not mattering – they’re time wasters for everyone involved.
I’m with you on manageable vs. not. If the cons start outweighing the pros (great boss, working from home etc) I’m out. They haven’t yet – mostly because I value those pros so highly. I do usually know in my gut what’s up – that’s how I’ve quit all those times in the past. We’ll see if it comes to that here. I am optimistic it won’t come to that though since most of my projects are short (3 months or less).
How exciting – I’ll check out your latest post! And your approach to social totally makes sense – I only use the platforms I was already on as well. Thanks for stopping by!
Haha yuy 🙂 Btw just wanted to let you know I didn’t include Finimize in that post because I haven’t used it for a whole month yet and do not have a full opinion on it! So far though, I really like the convenience of learning more about finance in ONE mail (instead of only have a brief excerpt and me having to click on links to read more), the Q&A section being both interactive and educational, and as you said – their language is totally my style haha. Love their copywriting! The only thing is I hope they send these out less frequently (..maybe 3x a week?), but that’s just me 🙂
No worries at all and yeah at least a month is a good minimum to get a feel for something. Totally agree – link aggregation drives me a little crazy because it leads to…too many tabs 😉 which I then add to OneTab after they’ve been open a month and then I never read them. Vicious cycle. I love the Q&A section and their writing for those reasons too. That’s interesting you say you’d like it less frequently – I’d like it to deliver every day including weekends instead of just weekdays 🙂 . To each their own 😉 .
I look forward to meeting you in DC and reading about your travels and big decision in November. Impatience is hard–working travel into your present life is a wonderful way to stave off that feeling a bit.
Me too – see you there! And yes upping my travel time has helped a lot. I think I’m at critical mass (about 2-3 months away) where I need to stay in the apartment I pay for the rest of the time to make it worth it 🙂 . I should find a way to do that for less though.
Sounds like a fun year ahead! New Zealand is an incredible place to visit. It’s on our short list of places to spend a year once we reach that point in our financial lives.
Yes – I’m trying to make it as fun and distracting as possible 😉 . And awesome on NZ – I’ve never been, but the photos look too good to pass up! And spending a year there sounds like an amazing plan! Do you know where in NZ you’ll want to stay or will you be traveling throughout the year?
Look me up if your travel plans include Melbourne!
Will do!!
Keeping busy as you will be in the fall will definitely help! When I am counting down to a date, I always do a backward countdown as well. So if I am doing something in 60 days, I calculate what 60 days ago was and what I was doing then. It helps put in perspective how long or short the time may really be.
But I can totally relate to being impatient now. Close to finishing up my two year project at work and then trying to figure out the best time to leave for good!
Hang in there!
That’s a great idea! I like to do that when I think a year is a long time away and then I realize that I vividly remember a vacation 2 years ago and think “maybe it’s not that long.” And oh wow – a 2 year project is hardcore! I can’t even stand 3 month long projects 🙂 . Thank you! You hang in there too!
I’m sorry your last months of work have been so rough! What a great post though, to reflect on this and shift your focus to the good things ahead! Coincidentally it fits quite nicely with my draft for my next post so definitely linking to this. You got this and I really like Dragon’s Guy’s reverse method of looking at time in the past to remind yourself of how quickly it might go by!
Thank you 🙁 if only work was easy all the time right 😉 ? So glad you liked the post! I think it will be a good one to revisit in 2 years for sure to see how things have changed. And ooh excited to read yours! And thank you for your support lady and your kind messages – I really appreciate them. And yeah Dragon Guy is onto something there!!
Thanks for the thoughtful post, APL! It is interesting to read where your mind is at considering that you only have 14 months to go. I have been experiencing similar thoughts about meetings and commuting etc. But since I have more years to go until FI, I have distracted myself by allowing myself to be a part of that world more, if that makes sense lol.
It sounds like you have some awesome plans coming up! The Fincon and trip to Mexico especially. I think the next 14 months will end up going by fast. I can’t wait to follow your journey over the next 14 months and beyond! Have a great week, APL!
So happy you enjoyed it! And yes I recognize that my thoughts/feelings are currently ridiculous given my short time frame, but I wanted to be honest about how I’m feeling 🙂 . It’s gotten a lot harder for me as I get closer to the goal strangely. I think that makes sense and love the idea of distractions. I try to fit them into my life too. There’s a tipping point for me though when fun social things become added stressors when I don’t know if I’ll make it or have to cancel because of work nonsense. I hope they do go by fast while still allowing me to enjoy them 🙂 . I hope you have a great week too!
Woot woot! Can’t wait to see you!
As for dealing with impatience, I’m all for the distraction route lol. I look at lengthy periods in smaller chunks to make them more bearable. All of the exciting plans you have coming up do that for you, so try to focus on those, and before you know it, the time will be flying by. Hang in there!
Same – super excited! Breaking time up into smaller chunks is a good idea. If it works for marathons runners it should work for me right lol? Thank you – I shall hang in there!