The Month Of Freezing My Balls Off: January 2022 Recap

by A Purple Life, posted in Early Retirement, Early Retirement Updates, Finance, Fitness, Food, Hobbies, Keto, Net Worth Update, Spending
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So I haven’t experienced real winter since living in NYC in 2015 and a few months ago I had the (not so) bright idea of spending December and January in the northeast. I was born and raised in Georgia and even during that time, my Mom and I usually went somewhere even warmer like Florida or the Caribbean to tan over Christmas. Well, these last few months were my first foray into snow and sub-zero temperatures in years. Let’s see how it went 🙂 .

I Experienced Winter (Without The Festive Cheer)

As you may have guessed, I didn’t love my time in winter 🙂 . I tried quite hard to find things to like about it, but once the Christmas tree was down and the lights were put away, I started to realize that winter without festive cheer kind of sucks 🙂 . And that’s why a tree needs to stay up until Spring!

Winter without the festivities and family surrounding holidays was not my favorite. It was cold, cloudy more often than not, and it seemed like the sun was barely up before it fell back over the horizon.

I did find some things I enjoyed about winter in the end, such as the ease of spotting birds without leaves on the trees, and the magic of slowly falling snow, but overall I think this experiment ran its course and I’m excited to get back to my usual 60-80F weather and the comfortable walks, runs, stargazing and birding that accompanies it.

I Finalized Thailand Travel

If you’re reading these words, I’m on my way to Thailand at this very moment. As background, my Mom has been planning a trip there for several years. We were originally going to go in February of 2021, but had to understandably cancel everything given the state of the pandemic.

Well, after two years of cancelling our international plans and not leaving the US, we’re finally going for it. We’re flying on a fully vaccinated flight from JFK to Singapore and then from Singapore to Phuket. Most of the month of January was spent organizing the things that are required to enter Thailand. I appreciate the caution and rigor they put into the process to keep people safe and healthy and also was grateful I don’t have a job so my Mom and I could figure all this stuff out.

So this month included a lot of work getting all that together, finalizing our travel plans and getting our visa. To break up all those logistics, we also booked some fun stuff:

We Quarantined (Again)

In early January, COVID numbers started becoming astronomical. At that time we were still staying with family, and after several too close for comfort tangential covid scares, we decided to strike out on our own earlier than planned. I’m getting really good at this spontaneity thing 🙂 . We went from discussing the hazards of staying, to an hour later, booking a 2 week Airbnb for check in the following morning. I’m so wild 😉 !

The next day we settled down in Albany, NY for our stay, and had a few adventures there. Our plumbing in the bathroom went out one morning when it was below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a saga to get it back on that luckily only required a message from me to the Airbnb host (not owning property continues to be a great thing in my life…).

It turns out the pipes had frozen solid in some places, so a plumber came out to fix it. We also had some electric issues that required me to go into the creepy basement of this house that was built in 1900 to flip the breaker. I’m taking all of this as more evidence that I shouldn’t be in the northeast during the winter – all kinds of crazy shit happens 🙂 .

I (Virtually) Hung Out With People

Obviously as a result of being in quarantine, I only hung out with my partner the last two weeks of the month. However, that wasn’t a huge change because when Omicron/Megaladon/Megatron started rocking the world in December, we cancelled all of our in-person plans with friends anyway, so this wasn’t anything new.

I continued my weekly movie night with my college suitemates, my weekly call with my college roommate from Argentina, and my weekly TV watching date with my Mom. I also connected with a friend from Seattle several times and continued the trend of watching Schitt’s Creek with an ex-colleague that I started in December.

Overall, only having online interactions with friends these last two months hasn’t been bad. I’ve needed to re-charge my introvert batteries and the online interface helped. Also, I suspect that the freezing temperatures basically put me into hibernation mode 🙂 .

I Played Video Games!

Basically this:

So I went a little off the deep end into gaming this month and I have no regrets 🙂 . Having my partner’s fancy gaming PC to play The Sims in gorgeous 4K, was a treat. I ended up doing the Black Widow Challenge for the first time and as mentioned above, playing the Cottage Living pack. I’ve now achieved my cottage-core dreams 🙂 . My partner also introduced me to a cute game called A Short Hike that I want to finish (it wasn’t as short as the name implies… 😉 ).

I Read 4 Books

This month I read:

  1. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant
  2. Red, White And Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
  3. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
  4. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

I completed 52 non-fiction books in 52 weeks challenge in 2021 and I am pooped! My new approach in 2022 is to read the eBook library holds I have as they come up. This month I read 3 fiction books and 1 non-fiction one, which I think is probably a good approximation of the allocation I’ll be doing going forward.

If you’re curious about what I’m reading and my ratings of these books, I have a Goodreads account you can check out here.

I Wrote 4 Posts

In case you missed it, this month I published the below posts:

  1. How I Read 52 Non-Fiction Books In 52 Weeks
  2. Lessons Learned After 7 Years Of Blog Writing
  3. Slow Travel Review: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA – The Land Of Chili Peppers
  4. The Month Of Family: December 2021 Recap

In addition to that, I was on a podcast by StashAway. It was my first time on a Singapore-based podcast, which was super cool! Check that out here:

I was also asked back to be a guest at the African American Finance Book Club that I had been a guest speaker at last year. Someone reached out about me being a guest on a YouTube series, which I declined because of my anonymity and Covid (it required travel). I was asked to be a guest at a virtual summit for introverts, which we recorded this month. I’ll let y’all know when it goes live (the summit is free).

On a larger front, a big company asked me to participate in an opportunity to be featured for Black History Month and someone reached out about an interview on CBS, which I once again declined because of my anonymity (that doesn’t work too well for TV I’d imagine 🙂 ), but after I declined I thought more about it and realized…even if I wasn’t anon, that’s not something I want to do personally.

Physical

Sleep

Sleep this month was great since I stepped up my asthma medicine and can actually breathe at night – what a novel concept 😉 . I’ve also been getting much better at falling asleep in new locations. It used to take me about 3 nights of sleep to be able to fall into dreamland quickly in a new place. This month it took 0 nights 🙂 . I fell asleep in our new Airbnb instantly a few hours after we walked in the door. Progress!

We also tried something new this month. My partner likes to bring a Noise Machine on our travels that makes a whirring noise while we sleep. It was originally mine when we lived in our tiny house, but I didn’t want to waste space bringing it on our travels when there are apps that do the same thing from your phone without external hardware. Well, he agreed to try my way this month!

So we’ve been using the free White Noise app to fall asleep instead of using a noise machine and it’s gone really well! Our current preference is “Box Fan” in case you’re curious 😉 .

Food

After the holidays, I went back to keto and calorie counting in advance of all the Thai food I’m going to eat in February 🙂 . It went well and I feel better fitting into my clothes. I also had fun being keto while moving into an Airbnb for 2 weeks. Staying for that relatively short amount of time is always a fun challenge to see how I can eat everything in fun combinations.

This month my staple was Peanut Butter Protein Smoothies. I had an excess of protein powder and peanut butter and bought unsweetened, vanilla almond milk. When mixed together they became a delicious combo that filled me up, got my ‘protes’ down and allowed me to not waste food. Later in the month, I bought a bag of frozen mixed berries and made it a Berry Peanut Butter Smoothie, which was surprisingly delicious – here’s the recipe if you’re curious:

1 cup frozen mixed berries
1 scoop (25g) protein powder
1 tbsp peanut butter
1 tbsp psyllium husk
1 cup unsweetened, vanilla almond milk

Exercise

After a doctor told me to stop running in December based on how poorly my asthmatic lungs were responding to the sub-zero temperatures, I planned to find another way to exercise this month and then…didn’t 🙂 . I tried riding an indoor bike and found it uncomfortable, followed a few dance workout YouTubers and then realized I’m in hibernation mode and focused on that instead 🙂 .

However, I am very excited to finally be in a warm place next month so I can do my usual exploration of a new place by walking all over it and getting back to running as well.

Nail Painting

I’ve been practicing my nail painting again and enjoying it 🙂 . It makes me feel fancy for some reason and is a cheap hobby where I can see noticeable improvement in my skill every time I do it. So basically, wins all around!

Mental

Two interesting things happened this month. I found myself reading in different accents if I’d watched a show with an Irish, British or Southern accent, which was weird and fascinating 🙂 . I also learned that I’ve become way more chill and resourceful in retirement:

Learning

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

Albany, NY

  • Not only is Albany the Capital of New York State, but it’s also the oldest continuous settlement in the US from the original 13 English colonies. A fort was built here sometime before 1614
  • Perforated toilet paper was invented in Albany (thank you inventor!)
  • Albany had the first passenger railroad in America, which went from Albany to Schenectady
  • The story that the phrase “a baker’s dozen” comes from was a bakery in Albany
  • Albany has the oldest pulpit in America, which is in the Dutch First Reformed Church and was carved in Holland in 1656
  • The song “Yankee Doodle” was written in Albany
  • Herman Melville lived in Albany for a bit between writing poems and novels like Moby Dick. He attended the Albany Classical School to study literature
  • Theodore Roosevelt often ran the steps of the Albany Capitol building. It’s how Roosevelt got his daily exercise and it’s said that if reporters wanted an interview him, they first had to beat him to the top of the steps
  • A park near our Airbnb, Washington Park, is built on a cemetery that used to house over 40,000 bodies, which were moved to the Albany Rural Cemetery in the 1840s …if they got all of them 😉

Astronomy

Our time in the north was both positive and negative for my stargazing and full moon watching habit. It was positive because we were usually not in a major city so it was much easier to see the stars without the light pollution that surrounds cities. However, it was also freezing 🙂 .

To see a meteor shower, for example, it usually takes about 30 minutes for my eyes to adjust to be able to see well in the dark and it was too cold to hang out in the sub-zero weather comfortably and do so. For this reason, I tried to see the Quadrantids Meteor Shower, but sadly couldn’t hack it. So I feel lucky that I live in an age with livestreams of these meteor showers 🙂 .

Birds

The birds I saw this month include some standard locals that are still here in the winter and the highlight of seeing a Bald Eagle randomly chilling on a branch. Here are all the birds I saw this month:

Northern Cardinal, Black-capped Chickadee, Blue Jay, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Pileated Woodpecker, Spruce Grouse, Dark-eyed Junco, Bald Eagle, American Kestrel, White-throated Sparrow

The winter landscape does make it easier to see birds so I started my mornings by staring out the window to see who was around that day. Once we moved to Albany my birdwatching turned to squirrel watching – those guys are wild!

A trend that continued this month was people tagging me on Twitter to help identify a bird – I love so much when that happens 🙂 :

Also my partner showed me this bird that I didn’t know existed – he looked like he belongs in How To Train Your Dragon!

The Great Eared Nightjar

Random

Here are some random things I learned this month:

  • Apparently women used to dominate the beer brewing industry until people started accusing them of being witches and modern witch stereotypes took on characteristics of these brewing ladies! They literally brewed the beer in cauldrons and wore pointy hats so people could find them (and their beer) in a crowd. That shit is wild!
  • In cold weather apparently you have to warm up your car before driving it. The engine needs to be heated up to run properly. Who knew?? I’m taking this as a sign we shouldn’t live in the cold 🙂
  • One hilarious thing I learned in the book Think Again, is the origin of “blowing smoke up your arse”: “In the 1700s, it was common practice to revive drowning victims with tobacco enemas, literally blowing smoke up their behinds. Only later did they learn that it was toxic to the cardiac system.”
  • I always thought a click as in distance, was spelled with a “c”. Nope! it’s “klick” and it’s a military term that’s equal to one kilometer
  • A reader mentioned they were moving to “Québec” and I realized that I didn’t know the province (which I’ve visited multiple times) had an accent on the “e” – I’m seriously learning something new every day over here!

Creativity

My creativity well seems to have refilled after a wild autumn 🙂 . I got the urge to write several times throughout the month and have obviously been keeping up with my weekly posting schedule here, which is great. I’ve also had ideas for more film and book reviews than usual, which is another sign that I’m back baby!

Emotional

Emotionally this has been a surprisingly good month despite all the complaining about winter I did above 🙂 . I haven’t had many depressive episodes or an over-abundance of anxiety. I’ve been helping to regulate my moods with my usual constant of music from Spotify’s Discover Weekly and Release Radar while rocking out to my new favorite number from a musical (Encanto) that I’ve been playing on repeat:

I think all of the above bodes well for how I handled winter. I didn’t love it, but it didn’t lead to S.A.D. or anything like that despite the lack of sunlight…or a sunlamp. It was a good month 🙂 .

Money

I think how I feel about money right now can be summed up by this action: I booked a last minute Airbnb without checking how it would affect my budget. In fact, when my partner and I were talking to our family about leaving early, they mentioned that would not be great because it means extra money – both because we didn’t expect to spend that extra money and the fact that last minute accommodations are pricier than pre-planned places. And we literally responded, “We’re not worried about the money.”

I used to watch my budget so closely and think hard about every dollar, but that Purple seems to have been left in the past along with my marketing career. Money continues to not really be a consideration, which I’m very grateful for given the wild pandemic world we’re still navigating and the flexibility it requires. If we would feel safer getting out of a situation and money can solve it – we throw money at the problem without hesitation.

On the investing front:

I had a chat with a friend that involved helping her invest some money that she thought was already in the market. That situation is obviously not ideal, but I’m happy I could be there to help her out when she asked.

The market has been down this month and while all the red splashed across stock market tickers might look scary, I’m unmoved by it. My exposure therapy seems to still be working. The rollercoaster of the stock market doesn’t scare me – in fact, it was kind of a relief to see it go down a bit after the ridiculous run we’ve been having:

Conclusion

And that’s what happened during my first (and last 😉 …) foray into multiple months in a northeastern winter. I’m now taking suggestions for where to spend next winter. I’m thinking of the Southern USA…or the Caribbean 😉 . Until next time!

If you’re interested in the other weekly and monthly 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

Monthly

  1. The Month Of Rest: Early Retirement Month 4 (January 2021)
  2. The Month Of Birds: Early Retirement Month 5 (February 2021)
  3. The Month of Change: Early Retirement Month 6 (March 2021)
  4. The Month of Atlanta: Early Retirement Month 7 (April 2021)
  5. The Month of Portland, Maine: Early Retirement Month 8 (May 2021)
  6. The Month Of New Hampshire: Early Retirement Month 9 (June 2021)
  7. The Month Of The Northeast: Early Retirement Month 10 (July 2021)
  8. The Month Of New York State: Early Retirement Month 11 (August 2021)
  9. The Month Of City Hopping: Early Retirement Month 12 (September 2021)
  10. The Month Of The Southwest USA: October 2021 Recap
  11. The Month Of Santa Fe: November 2021 Recap
  12. The Month Of Family: December 2021 Recap

How was your month?

20 thoughts on “The Month Of Freezing My Balls Off: January 2022 Recap”

  1. Love the box fan sound as well. Puts me right out!
    I suggest key west next winter. Or the British Virgin Islands. I have no reason to suggest them other than I like Key West when I went and the BVIs seem really fun.

    Reply

  2. We are in the deep south and winters are the best! Our morning runs have not dropped below 16 deg F which doesn’t set off my asthma enough to worry about. But the best thing is how good the wilderness hiking is, no bugs, no poison ivy, no snakes and usually only a small amount of snow, if any. The frozen waterfalls are pretty cool as well. Hiking in the summer with the bugs and the sweat is awful in comparison so bring on January!

    Reply

  3. Ha! The city of Québec has an accent too 😉
    But seriously, DAMN, you did a lot this month. I just realized I finished my first month of retirement and did…. kind of nothing. I mean, not nothing, but not a lot either.
    Maybe I can work my way up to reading 1 book in Feb!

    Reply

    1. Haha – thank you 🙂 . And learn from my experience: doing nothing is amazing. I did way too much my first few weeks and had to teach myself that. Good luck!

      Reply

  4. This is slightly off topic of your blog, but have you written or consider writing in more detail about your relationship with your partner now that you’re retired and they are still working? I’m really curious on how you’re balancing this. I’m in a similar situation where I’ll likely hit early retirement before my partner and I would love to gallivant across the world when I do, but I’m a little tore because I know my partner won’t be able to do all of that with me (yet). How does all of this work for you, what’s your perspective on it?!

    Reply

    1. No worries – nothing is off topic since I just talk about whatever I want 😉 . I’ve mentioned that dynamic in passing, but overall I don’t think I’m the person to talk about that because my partner’s job is fully remote and we’ve both previously been without a job at different times while together works. So this isn’t something new or weird for us. We just discuss everything together like where we should travel next, how that would change his work schedule etc. Good luck!

      Reply

  5. Great post and cool facts about Albany. I’ll have to check it out – in the summer. Just wondering if you’re budget is being affected by inflation at all. It’s a little ridiculous how much groceries have gone up in my area.

    Reply

    1. Haha yeah summer sounds like a good time to visit 🙂 . My budget hasn’t really been affected by inflation that I can tell. My grocery budget has gone up as well, but by a percent or two – nothing wild.

      Reply

  6. The winter in the upper half of Australia is pretty awesome. Here in Brisbane (Queensland) we get beautiful clear winter days with temps in the low 20s (Celsius) and nights that are cool enough for a doona (quilt), without it ever being truly tits-freezingly cold. I do hope you get to revive your old plan to visit us “down under”.

    Reply

  7. Nice — we’ve been eyeing Thailand for a while since it’s so cold here. Would love to travel hack JFK HKT for points: about 590k points. I barely have enough and was wondering what are some good way to rack up a bunch of points quickly, or if there’s some hacks to rack up a lot of points in a short amount of time?

    Reply

    1. I don’t know how to rack up points quickly sadly. I had to plan it out over years to accumulate my points. I just planned around big purchases I knew were coming up. Good luck!

      Reply

  8. The Great Eared Nightjar is obviously the love child of a squirrel and some other kind of bird. That thing seriously exists???

    Brainstorm for you, if you’re ever in a stupidly cold place and want to do some stargazing: just hang out inside for a half-hour with something wrapped over your head and eyes so they adjust to darkness, and then have your partner guide you outside? I feel like this would be fun for the whole family 🙂

    Reply

  9. The Great Eared Nightjar is officially my favourite bird, and yes, that’s based entirely on appearance.
    Despite the cold, this winter doesn’t sound that bad! I can’t wait to see your pics and adventures in Phuket! Thailand is amazing.

    Reply

    1. Sounds like a good decision to me! And yeah it wasn’t bad 🙂 . I’ll keep the Thai pics coming on Insta and Twitter then!

      Reply

  10. Seriously, 90% of why we’re working towards retiring early is so we don’t have to experience winter!! November is bearable, December is full of holiday cheer, but then – OUTTA HERE!!! Sounds like you had a great month despite the weather though!

    Reply

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