Early Retirement Week 5: The Election

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Last week we tackled reader questions about my first month of early retirement and this week, we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming of seeing what I am up to each week of retirement. Did I insert that AMA post so I’d have more time to craft these posts after the week is done? Maybe πŸ˜‰ .

What Did I Do This Week?

I kept up with the 5 day US Election.

First, some background: Growing up, I was never active in politics. I was taught kind of a defeatist/”what’s the point”/”my vote doesn’t matter” attitude from the generations of my family who grew up black in America and experienced all the ways their voices had been (and continue to be) silenced. When I turned 18 in 2008, I started voting in the presidential elections…but that’s it.

That vote went to Obama and to my absolute shock: He was elected. A black man was elected to be the President of the United States and I must admit: I did not expect that to happen. I really didn’t think that this country, with its history of slavery and oppression, would ever do that. Someone that looked like me was serving the highest position in our nation. When I watched the announcement on TV I cried happy tears for the first time in my life.

That moment and a lot of the moments that followed, gave me hope for the first time for the future of our nation and the place I could have in it. I started attending protests and voting in every election – though I can’t take full credit for that last part. It was aided by the ease of voting in Washington state – everyone receives mail in ballots weeks before every election, so we can research each candidate at our leisure in the comfort of our own home before making an informed decision.

I didn’t realize that the hope that 2008 sparked in me would become a negative in 2016 when our nation elected someone with no political experience who routinely spews lies along with sexist and racist language and has been formally accused of sexual assault 26 times.

I couldn’t believe the bright America I had started to believe could exist in our future would do such a thing. It was a rude awakening and when I saw the news that day, it strangely felt similar to when I’ve lost loved ones in the past. The America I thought I knew was dead and my hope for the future was gone.

For those reasons, I was scared to allow myself to hope this election. I did not want to hope that truth, science and the pursuit of equality would win against misinformation and bigotry. So despite projections saying Biden/Harris had an 89% chance of winning this election, I did not allow myself that room to hope. However, hope somehow found a way to sneak in.

This entire week has been a frenzy of information. I’ve never refreshed websites like the 538 live election blog as many times or watched as much news as I have this week. Even when I intentionally tried to step away, I found myself flipping channels to see if all the news sites were providing the same information, refreshing websites to see when new vote counts would be reported and even waking up several times a night and grabbing for my phone to see if there was any new information. It was all consuming and I think it was because of that sliver of hope I had tried (but failed) to contain.

You will see below how this affected my physical, mental and emotional states, but if we’re recapping what I did this week: that was a huge part of it. Ironically, on Saturday after constant refreshing and doom-scrolling, I had decided to set my phone and the news aside and try to live in the moment again. I had assumed that we would have a respite over the weekend before restarting vote counting the next week.

I left my city for the first time since we arrived in Connecticut a week before, and was driving through the gorgeous Northeast fall foliage with a friend. It hadn’t even been 15 minutes since I’d left and I was happy to see that I had spotty coverage so I would be forced to resist the temptation to dive back into my information gorging (though normally just being around a friend would do that).

We had barely left my house when I got a text from my partner that Joe Biden had been declared the President-Elect. Kamala Harris, a woman whose parents were immigrants from India and Jamaica was declared the Vice President-Elect.

I once again didn’t believe it – but this time in a skeptical way. I started checking news sites starting with The New York Times and saw the headline “BIDEN BEATS TRUMP: Harris Is The First Woman Elected Vice President“. After checking a few more sites, I was convinced: It had actually happened.

I called my Mom to tell her the news, thinking she wouldn’t know since they had been taking a similar media break, but they already knew. They were dancing in front of the TV with my baby cousin while the announcement was being made. I hung up and then my (black, female) friend and I started screaming in the car. Love had won over hate.

That night, I watched the first presidential speech I’ve been able to sit all the way through in four years and felt a sense of relief. Electing two people is obviously not the end to this nation’s problems, but it’s a step in the right direction, especially when they’re talking about (and “walking the walk”) of moving towards a more united and inclusive nation. So that’s what I’ve been up to πŸ™‚ .

I settled into Connecticut πŸ™‚ .

As I mentioned in my last weekly update, my Mom and I finished our road trip, settled into an Airbnb and then helped my cousin move into a new place. The unpacking and cleaning continued this week. We made the space more livable and did an innumerable number of loads of laundry while helping to care for my cousin’s baby.

And when I say “we” the workload was actually like 90% my suspected robot/vampire of a Mom. She doesn’t seem to require more than 4 hours of sleep or barely any food and yet she’s a non-stop ball of helpful energy that is constantly moving. I feel like a weak slug in comparison because physically, mentally and emotionally, I burned out in less than a week.

As you’ll see in the sections below, I hit my wall pretty early and started needing some introvert time to keep myself happy and sane (I’m sure the anxiety of the lengthy election didn’t help there either…)

By the end of the week, I realized that separate from everything going on, the first week in CT felt kind of like when my partner and I moved to a new monthly Airbnb. It took a while to find my rhythm and adjust to a new normal. I need to set that expectation when going into new situations, even if they’re not a new home. I need to remember that things are going to feel weird for a bit πŸ™‚ and that’s normal.

I started NaNoWriMo! NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and it’s every November. The online writing community gets together to accomplish a shared goal: write a novel (50,000 words) in 1 month. I haven’t attempted this challenge since college and have only successfully completed it once: in high school (and no, you’ll never read that book – it’s legit horrible πŸ™‚ ).

I had assumed in the past that the novel had to be fiction since that’s what I think of when I hear “novel”, but according to NaNoWriMo’s FAQs non-fiction and blog posts count! Basically they just want people to write and get exciting about writing, semantics be damned!

So I’ve been getting ahead of writing on this blog and my new (ridiculously long) weekly updates have been accidentally helping me with that word count – to a shocking degree. In the first three days of November, I had already completed 20% of the challenge and written over 10,000 words. I guess I have a lot to say these days πŸ™‚ .

I fought against 2 sites that stole my articles.

Through pingbacks on my site, I discovered that another website had legit copy/pasted some of my articles and passed them off as their own on their website. So of course I took to Twitter (y’all are so wonderful and helpful!) to ask what I should do:

With the help of the community, I ended up using HostingChecker.com to find the host of the website (there wasn’t any contact info or social media links on the actual website to reach out to) and I filed a DMCA copyright complaint with the host. They got back to me in only a few hours and actually took the site down (I assume because other creators’ work had also been stolen and they had reported it as well). I breathed a sigh of relief – justice had been served!

But then, literally the day after, IT HAPPENED AGAIN! A different site had taken my words. I heard through the grapevine that this might be an inevitable consequence of blogging and that at least one big blogger doesn’t even try to claim them all anymore because digital word thievery is so prevalent. These sites didn’t seem to have any way they were profiting off my words, but I was pissed on principle that they would take what I wrote and slap their name on it. So of course I went after them πŸ™‚ .

I filed a DMCA complaint with their hosting provider and hilariously…the next day, I got a notification that they had stolen two additional posts of mine. Wow. So I submitted a claim for those as well and am now waiting to hear back. I’ll keep y’all updated on this saga because since I don’t have work in my life anywhere, I have to get my drama somewhere πŸ˜‰ .

Physical

Sleep

Understandably, my sleep was not great this week. I suspected that would be the case since I would be getting on a baby’s schedule for the first time, which also happened to be right after daylight savings time (when are we getting rid of that again?!)

As I’ve mentioned, I’m also a very light sleeper, so any time the baby makes a noise, (which was a lot – he seems to have quite vocal dreams πŸ™‚ ) I would wake up. So I was waking up about every 2 hours. I didn’t want to put in ear plugs and miss my alarm or when he finally awakened fully, but after discussing it with my Mom, I’m going to start doing so. She doesn’t wake up at his slightest noise – just when he’s actually awake it seems, so we agree to let her handle that and I guess I’ll stop pretending I’m all that helpful πŸ™‚ .

One positive in all this is that I continue to not have that stressed, angry feeling when I do wake up throughout the night. I haven’t had time to take naps in CT yet, but knowing I have no serious obligations has kept that feeling at bay, which is awesome. Also I’m happy to announce that my body has accepted it’s an East Coaster again πŸ™‚ !

I was worried about that because I would usually come and work on the east coast for 1 month in the summer and 1 in the winter and at no point did my body change schedules – it still thought I was on the west coast. So I was concerned about how long it would take to adjust now that we’re on this coast for the foreseeable future, but it happened! Almost immediately actually – maybe it’s different when my body knows I’m not going back πŸ˜‰ and I’m not working west coast hours.

Food

I kept forgetting to eat this week, which is not great. There was just so much going on! Also babies are quite distracting – who knew πŸ™‚ ?!? We did meal plan with my family this week, which was awesome and my Mom has been a cooking machine to keep us stocked withΒ dinners. We’ve been eating mostly keto with some snacks thrown in there.

It is a lot harder to stick to one type of eating when I’m moving all around and living with people with different dietary preferences who want to eat together. Also I suspected not having a routine would be different, but I didn’t realize how much it would change what I eat.

Even when it was just my partner and I moving to different Airbnbs our last few months in Seattle, I suspected we would eat out often to experience a new city and in doing so, I would still not stick to any type of carb or calorie count…and that fast and loose approach has continued as we keep moving around. I’ve decided I’m currently fine with that realization. YOLO as they say πŸ˜‰ .

Fitness

Carrying around my adorable bowling ball of a cousin was basically the extent of my fitness this week. I did also accidentally go on a 2 hour hike with the friend I mentioned above and almost died (of course I’m not being overdramatic πŸ˜‰ ). I had never hiked up a mountain with leaves covering slippery rocks and mud. It was a recipe for disaster for my clumsy self, but luckily I reached the bottom of the mountain without breaking my ankle or getting eaten by bears so that was a win πŸ™‚ . Otherwise we’ve just been taking 30 minute walks around the neighborhood with the baby and his stroller. There hasn’t been time for much else.

Mental

Learning

Now, let’s get back to my favorite segment: Fun Facts Nobody Asked For!Β Here’s what I learned and explored this week:

Stargazing has been sadly less than usual because of the light pollution coming off New York City. I miss my tiny house backyard and its unimpeded view of the stars πŸ™‚ . The trade off is worth it to see family though. However, Mars was so bright one night that I saw it despite the light pollution and the Moon has entered a new phase and is visible during the morning in the sun filled sky, which is fun to see! The free app Star Walk 2 continues to be my constant companion and I enjoy seeing the position of stars in relation to me on the app even if I can’t see them clearly in the sky πŸ™‚ . I’m also realizing that all this research has made me feel a lot more connected to my world. I now know where north and south are and as a result, where in the sky to look for the planets and many stars. I know which ones are visible during certain times of the year – I’m basically the astronomer I dreamed of being in college πŸ™‚

My Leaf Crunching obsession continues and has expanded because I forgot how many leaves there are in the northeast!!! Seattle has mostly evergreen trees and Georgia basically doesn’t experience fall so seeing all the leaves available for crunching around here makes my heart happy…and makes taking a walk 10x longer πŸ™‚

I remembered What Cold Feels Like…and I hated it πŸ™‚ . I grew up in Georgia and Seattle very, very rarely goes below 30 degrees, so when my Mom asked if I would walk back from a rental car place with her – 2 short miles – I agreed. Little did I know, I had agreed to walk that distance when it was 30 degrees outside with 30 mph winds that tried to knock me over. It was horrible πŸ™‚ and I’ve learned my lesson. I now bundle up more and only go outside if the temperature is more hospitable to my Georgia blood. I guess I should have remembered what the Northeast in November was like – oops.

Since I’m helping to take care of a Baby for the first time in my life, I have made some discoveries and observations like an explorer in a new land πŸ™‚ . Here are the thoughts of a child-free person who has never babysat: Similar to adults, it appears that babies don’t need a lot to be happy. Even when faced with piles of toys, my baby cousin starts playing with the bag they came in instead…kind of like a cat πŸ˜‰ . I also learned that brushing a baby’s teeth is hilarious and adorable. I never thought that they would need to for some reason… another great reason for me to not have kids πŸ™‚ You’re welcome!

I learned that Tenant Laws seem to be different in CT because my cousin was told by the landlord that sending someone to check on a broken heater and dishwasher would be $150 out of their pockets even if nothing was wrong. In all my experiences, landlords foot all bills. My cousin is also working on buying blinds for the apartment herself, which I thought was included. Shows how much I know πŸ™‚

I used theΒ 1% Rule of Real Estate to discuss if someone buying a property to rent is a good idea. I guess I was paying attention to money principles that don’t even apply to me and it came back in a useful way!

During all of my Election Research, I discovered some weird and interesting things about my country that I had no idea about. I knew that the presidential race was determined by the electoral college (a dumb and last minute addition to our constitution that should be abolished ASAP), but I had no idea that two of our states (Maine and Nebraska) have a different way of doing electoral college votes. They don’t just give all of their electoral votes to one candidate like the other 48 states. I also learned that individual states have Secretary Of States and overall that I need to do more research about our political process πŸ™‚ .

Despite being in a more populous area than I have been in the previous weeks, Spotting Wild Life is going pretty well! I saw a Cottontail Rabbit in our backyard. I also saw a (sadly, dead) snake on our hike but wasn’t able to identify it. I’ve also seen more Geese flying around than usual. In fact, our first morning in our 4th floor Airbnb condo, a gaggle of them flew by the window on their way to the water. It felt like I was in one of my favorite childhood movies with the gem Anna Paquin, Fly Away Home.

Other than the geese, birds here have been hard to spot. They move so fast and we don’t have trees in the yard for them to land on, so it’s been hard to get a visual (Do I need bird binoculars?…maybe that’ll be my next purchase πŸ™‚ ). However, I was able to identify a few that congregate near a neighbor’s bird feeder with the help of my handy app BirdNET to find them by sound! I’ve heard: a White-Throated Sparrow (a new bird for me!), a Northern Mockingbird, an American Robin and a Blue Jay.

We’ve also been taking strolls with the baby around our neighborhood (who knew strollers could be like astronaut technology?!) and I’ve been able to identify trees including a Cherrybark Oak, Zelkova, Spindles, a Paper Birch, and Mugwort (which sounds like something that belongs at Hogwarts).

Creativity

Creativity has been a mixed bag. I was killing it with my NaNoWriMo distraction before the election, but was not inspired to write again until Sunday morning after the news broke and I was able to step my mind away from everything for a moment. I’m feeling good though and am confident I’ll be able to complete NaNoWriMo – and I might need to make it an annual tradition!

Money

Well despite all the turmoil of the week, the stock market is once again on a tear and I hit a new net worth high:

So basically, I have $38,166 or 7% more than I planned to at this point in my retirement. Of that amount, I have over $50,000 in cash instead of the $40,000 I was aiming for: so it’s time to make some additional investments!

That additional cash cushion came from fighting for the bonus my company tried to stiff me for, getting paid out for not using any PTO this year, and from the payment for my last day of corporate work. It’s getting kind of ridiculous over here. I’m starting to feel like Scrooge Mcduck.

I have continued to not even think about money. I was wracking my brain the last time I even spoke about it, and I think it was after my hiking trip when I told my friend to Venmo me for gas and anything else she wanted, but otherwise everything is on autopilot or pre-paid for and I’m just chillin’ over here on my pile of money πŸ˜‰ .

Emotional

Stress

My partner asked what I was up to earlier in the week and I had responded “babysitting and doom scrolling” and that was very accurate. The stress I felt during the election strangely felt like the stress I used to feel at work. It was constant and there was nothing I could do about it. I was just on edge, waiting for the next shoe to drop or (in the case of my job) the next email ping. My heart was beating fast continually and I felt a bit sick to my stomach.

Feeling this ‘similar to work’ stress, was a great reminder of how that feeling overshadowed my life while I was working. Luckily, as of Saturday morning, my doom-scrolling became joy-scrolling. My stress melted away and I got back to my baseline of a generally stress-free retirement.

Introversion

After a week of being around people nonstop, including while I’m sleeping, my introvert light was flashing. As I mentioned, my Mom is a weird combo of a superhero, robot and vampire who seems to never get tired and doesn’t need breaks to function, so I felt like the weakest link when I needed to step away for a bit, but it was necessary to keep myself sane.

After the first week of settling in, I’m finding a better rhythm. Similar to whenever I visit the people I love, I was so excited to be around them (a rarity) that I went all in, but quickly realized, a more balanced approach was needed to avoid introvert burnout πŸ™‚ . I’m on my way to that balance and with the support of my Mom, am going to demote myself from assistant nanny to “emotional support introvert.” We’ll see how this demotion affects my sleep and mental health going forward.

Conclusion

So that’s what I’ve been up to! It’s been a weird week, but I was immensely grateful that I had the time to reflect on what was happening and why I was feeling stressed and see if I could combat it instead of trying (and failing) to focus on work at the same time. The future is bright πŸ™‚ .

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

How was your week?

18 thoughts on “Early Retirement Week 5: The Election

  1. Yes, the future is bright! At least as far as the election is concerned. You sum it up beautifully, the joy of watching Obama win and the horror/disbelief of watching Trump get elected.
    My week has been wonderfully calm with the election stress absent, plus abstaining from booze. Hubs and I have been continuing to get our finances in order and signed up for Personal Capital. From preliminary calculations, we could retire in 10 years without any major lifestyle changes (we do own a relatively expensive house in a nice school district. damn kids!)

    1. I’m trying to hold onto the whole future being bright πŸ™‚ COVID and the election were the big things on my mind and vaccine trials are looking way more promising than I expected. Obviously there are challenges after that, but 2 90%+ effective vaccines being announced in 1 week was a (good) shock to my system.

      Congratulations on your week! That sounds lovely and woohoo on 10 years to retirement! And haha to the “damn kids” comment πŸ˜‰ .

  2. I’m so glad the election is over. But disappointed too. Basically, 70 million people will vote for Trump, no matter what. It’s sad.
    Nice job fighting the article thieves. I turned my pingback on again. Thanks for that too. πŸ˜‰
    Hopefully, this week is a little more relaxing.

    1. Yeah it was disappointing to see, but sadly not very surprising to me. For my sanity I’ve started looking at the states in the US as basically their own country since in a lot of ways they are similar in population to other countries I compare us to (e.g. New Zealand has the population of Alabama and California has more people than all of Canada) and the operate similarly (separate industries with inter-connected trade etc). I haven’t felt connected to “all” of America at any point in my life so why start now πŸ˜‰ .

      And happy to help! I hope the pingbacks aren’t too annoying. This week is indeed much more relaxing without my news obsession πŸ˜‰ .

  3. Hey Purple,

    Thanks for sharing the election through your eyes. What a crazy world! I was working nights that week, so was asleep when Biden was announced victorious. No dancing or yelling. Completely different than celebrating wildly in the streets of Boston when Obama won in 2008!

    A sad update to your facts list: Georgia does *not* automatically recount votes if they’re within 0.5%. It was actually ordered by the (Republican, obviously) Secretary of State Raffensperger, although Trump would’ve requested it anyway. Just some Republicans spending a lot of money and effort to keep another Republican in office. Looks like they’ll thankfully come up short.

    1. Oh wow – thanks so much for clarifying! I misunderstood and have removed that part of the post (can’t be spreading misinformation myself lol). I’m glad you enjoyed the look through my eyes and am sorry you were working those nights. I’m sure we’ll have reasons for dancing and yelling in the future πŸ™‚ .

  4. Hopeful for the future with the vaccines being announced and expecting the new administration to listen to science when it comes to the environment. It’s great that more people are paying attention to political issues at the national and local levels, so hopefully we’ll get to see society move towards a more fair and inclusive place. Everyone benefits when everyone has the opportunity to contribute to the best of their ability and not live in fear of violence or poverty.

    On the astronomy note, I love hearing about what you’re learning in your fun facts section. It feels like a special treat whenever I’m somewhere dark enough to see the colors of the Milky Way.

    1. Yes indeed all around!!! So happy you’re enjoying the fun facts and astronomy in particular. I’m looking forward to doing more of that once I get back to a less light polluted place πŸ™‚ . I miss the Milky Way.

  5. Your mom sounds like my mom, lol. Every time she & my dad come to visit, they do like 10 house projects (including revamping my electrical – thanks dad!).
    I appreciate you sharing the apps for stars & birds.
    The relief over this election was immense. We have taken a step back from the precipice we were about to plunge over. The real work is still ahead, and I’m here for it!

    1. Haha yeah she’s a go getter that one. To be fair though 99% of the time when we’re together we just veg on the couch and it’s amaaaazing πŸ˜‰ , but when shit needs to get done she’s the one pushing me off that same couch so we can do it together πŸ™‚ . That’s awesome they help you so much around the house – we don’t touch electric out of fear lol.

      Happy to share those free apps – they’re super fun! And agreed on stepping back from the precipice – I was scared we’d tumble over, but luckily not. Too true about the real work – let’s do it!

  6. I forgot all about NaNoWriMo!! Thank you for reminding me, I actually put a reminder for next year since this seems to slip my mind until mid November every year.

    And I feel you on the election-front. I have not checked my phone that often since I had a corporate job, and I’m sure glad things are finally settling down and we have some stability coming back to the executive branch. It took a couple yoga classes but I think my shoulders are down away from my ears now, lol

    1. Haha yeah it comes up fast. Smart idea to put it on your calendar! I did the same this year and that’s probably why I remembered πŸ™‚ . Yoga is a great idea – I’m glad your shoulders have lowered πŸ™‚ .

  7. Thanks for sharing again. I can relate to your feelings about elections. I felt the same way over the last 12 years. A super high when Obama was first elected, a funeral in 2016 and now a birth. America never ceases to amaze me. We can go from great to crap in the blink of a voter apathy. I am glad that so many persons were motivated to change directions. Looking forward to better days! Keep up the good postings!

    1. No problem! “We can go from great to crap in the blink of a voter apathy” – that is a great line πŸ™‚ and so true. I’ll do my best!

  8. Those DMCA issues are exactly why I always make sure to write content that isn’t worth stealing! What a whirlwind of a week (and year), especially for someone entering early retirement! Love these updates and am living vicariously through that Northeast fall (knowing it’ll be winter soon).

  9. I love the fun facts! The white throated sparrow song is one of my favorite sounds of winter. And I love mockingbirds. If it’s making a racket in the middle of the day, it’s probably a mockingbird. 🀣

    Politics and policy are very interesting. Domestic vs. foreign policy, etc. If you’re in Connecticut right now, you might try following Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. I interned with her one summer in college and, surprisingly, it gave me renewed faith in the political process.

    1. Haha yay! Me too πŸ˜‰ . And that’s so cool you have a favorite winter birdsong! Fair point on Mockingbirds πŸ™‚ . I’m back from Connecticut now, but will still look her up! That’s so cool you interned with her and that she can give you that renewed faith – there are a few politicians I follow on Twitter who do the same for me now.

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