The Month Of Argentina: November 2022 Recap

As the title suggests, I spent this month in Argentina! It’s the farthest south I’ve ever been in the world. As a comparison, Buenos Aires has a similar longitude to Sydney, Australia as well as Auckland, New Zealand and Cape Town, South Africa.

This is also the closest I’ve been to Antarctica. I’ve heard that expeditions often leave by boat from Patagonia in southern Argentina, and that the waves are absolutely WILD though so I’ll stay over here and look at videos of penguins instead thanks 🙂 . Anyway, let’s see what I got up to in the Southern Hemisphere!

I Moved To Argentina!

For 5 weeks I visited my college roommate who I haven’t seen in person in TEN YEARS. Wowza. I gave all my tips and tricks on that visit in my Slow Travel Review.

However, what wasn’t talked about in that post were the new skills I learned. I catsat for most of the month and learned a wild amount about cats (which will be in the Fun Facts section below). My personal catsitting successes were that I didn’t throw up while scooping poop (the only other time I cat sat I did). However, I think that might have more to do with the amazing catbox technology they have here. It somehow doesn’t smell like cat piss AT ALL. Usually if a friend has a cat, I can tell the second I step into their house, but that wasn’t the case here. Magic!

Also by the end of the month, I had established a communication pattern with this cat where she would come up to me and touch her paw to my arm lightly and I knew that meant she wanted to be scratched on the head. I would give her scratches and then if she touched my arm again, that meant stop. Figuring out this kind of communication between us helped a lot and resulted in less arm wounds for me 🙂 .

I also learned to fix things and follow my intuition. For example, I was at my friend’s apartment my first days there, and her toilet broke. I knew that she was too busy for me to text and that her landlord wasn’t super responsive (and obviously that interaction would be in Spanish, which I was apprehensive about since it was my first day speaking Spanish in this new country).

So instead of calling anyone or Googling anything, I just opened up the toilet to see what was up. I poked around and thought I had identified the issue and then tried to fix it and: IT WORKED!!! This is not something I had ever before attempted without the assistance of the internet so I was SO excited to see what I am now capable of 🙂 .

Basically the flush button stopped working. I opened the top of the toilet and saw that the mechanism that connected the flush button to the opening of the bottom of the toilet had disconnected with a hook like tool in the middle. I felt around and put the hook like tool back and voila!

In addition, my friend has a gas stove that it looked like you had to light it to get it to work. Her firestarter stopped working for me so I started looking around location shops to find another one and didn’t find one (though I later learned that’s because I wasn’t thorough in checking the nooks and crannies). So I learned how to eat without cooking food for a week. Problem solving!

Another thing I learned while in Argentina didn’t actually have much to do with the country. It was PUZZLING! My Partner and Mom love puzzling, but I hate it with a burning passion.

I went to visit my Argentinan friend and her only table was taken up by a 2,000 piece behemoth so I took it upon myself to help out (she said it had been there for months and she wanted her table back) so I video called my partner for a few hours and he taught me how to puzzle.

I found the process tedious, infuriating and annoying (I’m such a good sport 😉 ) – and after several hours, I finished the border of the puzzle that was mostly the same kind of blue!

Then I had to take a break because I wanted to flip the table with the puzzle on it. BUT on the bright side, I did learn some things about puzzles, how they work and that my eye can apparently detect slight differences in the same light blue color. It’s all about learning here peeps!

I Learned Spanish

FINALLY! After 10 months of hardcore effort, I arrived at the ultimate test: Can I live in Argentina where most people (understandably) only speak Spanish? Well, it turns out that it was a really good thing that I took on this challenge because 99% of the time I was alone in Buenos Aires and basically no one speaks English 🙂 .

I think I would have been screwed if I had come to live here and wanted to leave my house without knowing some Spanish, so thanks past me – great job!

I've been studying Spanish intensely for 10 months and now it's the ultimate test: Living in Argentina🇦🇷. Did it work? Well just today I spoke to people to:
🚆Fill a subway card
💊Get meds
🛍️Check out at a grocery store
⏰Tell a local the time
SUCCESS! Soy hispanohablante🙌🏾!!! pic.twitter.com/8hNktsWFmp

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) October 24, 2022

So since my life was filled with several daily interactions like the above, I decided to change up my Spanish goals for this month so my head didn’t explode 🙂 . Instead of watching 2 movies a week in Spanish without subtitles, I’ve been watching at least 1 hour a day of the local news channels and gameshows to get more accustomed to how fast people speak in regular life and also to learn about local issues in Argentina.

Outside of the television, I’m reading and speaking Spanish at all times – the real heavy lifting 🙂 . It is fascinating to compare how voice actors speak compared to regular people – I’ve never really noticed it in English, but obviously speaking clearly is part of their job so they enunciate way more than people in every day life. This is another reason I thought switching from movies to a “real world” oral comprehension test might be helpful. And it has been!

Before I got here I was so excited that I could finally understand basically all of what was being said in the movies I watched, but then watching live TV with real people turned out to be the next level of hard mode. It felt a bit like starting over since I found it difficult to understand, but I started to think about it just like that – another level on top of what I had already learned. And by the end of the month I was a lot better at understanding what was being said on a gameshow and at the grocery store. I also went from confusion to yelling at the TV the answers to the Argentinian Jeopardy 🙂 . Progress!

In addition to that, I wanted to finish Duolingo Spanish when this happened:

Duolingo: You have 1 test left to complete Duolingo Spanish!
[1 week later]
Duolingo: We've completed changed how lessons work. You now have 138 lessons left to complete Duolingo Spanish!
Me: 👿 pic.twitter.com/MGgk5UwTMd

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) November 11, 2022

That’s right. I went from being 1 test away from finishing their Spanish program to having 138 lessons to go. I went from 90% done to 34%…seriously HOW?! And why would the program change in that way? Ugh so frustrating. Anyway, I learned that I could go to lesson 211 and see if I tested out of those 138 lessons. I did so, which was hard and then I got 50 points total for the effort…seriously?!

And after that, I discovered that I can’t test out of anything else. I have to do 50 lessons for only 10 points each to reach the end. So I’m slogging through it. I now do 1 Duolingo Story and 1 Lesson each day and should reach the end of both by the end of the year. I also continued only texting my Mom in Spanish and speaking to her over video chat for about an hour a week in Spanish.

Back in the real world, I’ve noticed that even though I prepared for the unique Argentinian accent (that I go into detail about in my Buenos Aires Slow Travel Review) by talking to my Argentinian friend and listening to an Argentinian podcast, my brain was not ready for it in the wild 🙂 . I talked in my post about visiting a dentist in Argentina about the trouble I had giving medical information to the receptionist and understanding his accent.

It also seemed to take me a second to acclimate to how new people speak. For example, a few days after I arrived, a cleaning person came to clean my friend’s house. My friend was at work and I let the cleaning person in. I had a hard time understanding her that day, but 2 weeks later I understood everything she said and we had actual conversations over the 4 hours she cleaned. Every week when she comes back, our conversations just got better. It’s like my mind needs a bit to get used to a new voice and also obviously the additional weeks of living in a foreign country most likely improved my audio comprehension in general.

In addition to all that, two cool things happened this month around language. One was that I had two books with Spanish characters speaking Spanish without many translations and I understood all of it!!! The other thing was that someone on Insta tagged me in a post that was written in Portuguese talking about how I inspire them and I actually understood what it was saying because it’s similar to Spanish. When I started my Spanish journey, Portuguese looked as incomprehensible to me as Mandarin so I’m counting that as a win!

I Completed NaNoWrimo!

And holy shit I wasn’t sure I was going to make it 🙂 . Deciding to do this challenge while I’m also living in a country I’ve never been in before and in a place I want to explore daily, was a unique and stupid challenge to take at the same time 🙂 . Especially on top of the fact that my brain already hurt from constantly using my newly acquired second language. Why didn’t any of y’all warn me I was being ridiculous 🙂 ?

Anyway, this isn’t on you and I guess it wasn’t completely ridiculous because I DID IT!!! For the third year in a row, I’m a NaNoWriMo winner and it feels good 🙂 . Me completing this challenge will also bare some fruit for y’all in December – if you were here reading in December 2021 or 2020 you know what I’m talking about 😉 .

So what did I learn from this ridiculous challenge?

Take (Lots of) Breaks

I found that taking breaks every 15-30 minutes was extremely helpful. Even small ones like stopping my writing quickly to respond to a text helped me be able to refocus on writing and not ever make it feel like a slog. I needed to break things up or I would get tired very quickly.

Background Sounds Can Help

I usually need some good jams I’ve heard before and no distractions to get into a good writing flow. However, because I’m writing SO much more than normal and at times am going through more mindless parts to get from point A to point B, I found that having some sounds playing in the background was actually helpful instead of distracting.

I started putting FilmTube videos I’ve watched before in the background and that helped in these specific situations.

Don’t Wait Until It’s Finished

For my two previous NaNoWriMos, I created a spreadsheet (of course I did 🙂 ) to log how many words I added to a particular section. This allowed me to log incremental additions and feel a sense of accomplishment along the way.

However, for some reason this year, I didn’t do that. So while I was writing, my log on the NaNoWriMo website wouldn’t move for days and days even though I was writing constantly. I waited until something was completely finished to log it, which made it look like I was making no progress and demoralized me.

So I brought back my spreadsheet and started logging incremental additions once again and it made all the difference 🙂 . I guess seeing myself numerically make progress was more important to me than I thought.

So that was it – my experience in NaNoWriMo 2022. It was definitely a harder challenge balancing writing so much with exploring Argentina instead of relaxing in a Santa Fe adobe like last year. Maybe I need to book a relaxing location for November 2023 🙂 .

FUCK YEAH✍️🏾💜🙌🏾!!! pic.twitter.com/3xoPgW3exM

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) November 30, 2022

I Got My SSA Edit!

I mentioned in a previous monthly post that I noticed a discrepancy with the income the social security administration had logged for one of my working years. They had more than double counted my income in 2019 and as a result, showed me an incorrect estimate of the amount I will receive in my 60s (which I didn’t even include in my retirement calculations 😉 ).

Me: Hmm – the SSA double counted my salary in 2019 and as a result are over-estimating how much money they should give me for social security. I should tell them they made an error?
Mama Purple: Don't tell them. They'll give you less money.
Me: Isn't that….wrong?
Mama Purple: pic.twitter.com/hC7MmEzB0m

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) September 15, 2022

So I submitted a revision request to include the correct, lower amount. Afterward a few people on Twitter told me that they had been screwed over by trying to correctly edit records so I was sufficiently nervous to see how this went.

Well, I got a letter to my Traveling Mailbox from the SSN saying that my record has been correctly edited. PHEW! Now when I look at my SSN, it gives a more accurate look at what I will receive at age 62 (and no I’m not waiting longer to collect because nothing is guaranteed 🙂 ).

We Continued Booking AUS/NZ 2023

Planning for my next big international trip continues! My Mom and I are heading Down Under in for September/October 2023 and I am SO excited! I’ve never been to Australia or New Zealand and I cannot wait to snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef and explore a whole new continent!

However, like all of our trips – of course it couldn’t all be smooth sailing 🙂 . I’m writing up all the drama that happened with these flights in my annual travel hacking post, but just know – it’s a doozy and I suspect that the golden age of travel hacking may be coming to an end. Time for me to find a new racket 🙂 . Here’s a fun preview:

[The Fun Of Travel Hacking In 2022✈️]
Me: We booked Singapore Air Suites from JFK to SIN!
Singapore Air: We've changed your seat to First Class. No suites for you.
Me: What? Why??
Singapore Air: We've stopped flying that plane to the US. No you don't get any points back.
Me: 👿 pic.twitter.com/bhD2LBi2Je

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) November 24, 2022

I Hung Out With People

My social time was mostly spent hanging out with people in Buenos Aires. However, I still had my weekly Spanish call with my Mom, my weekly movie night and my call with an ex-colleague. I also made time to watch some bad movies with a friend as well, which always makes for a good time 🙂 . Here’s what we watched:

1. Pig
2. The Call
3. Extinction
4. Piranha 3D

If you’re curious about my ratings of movies, I have a Letterboxd account here.

I Read 6 Books

This month I read:

1. The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman 
2. The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman 
3. The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas
4. The American Roommate Experiment by Elena Armas
5. The Gentleman’s Guide To Vice And Virtue by Mackenzi Lee
6. The Gentleman’s Guide To Getting Lucky by Mackenzi Lee

I didn’t have a lot of time to read between exploring a new country and NaNoWriMo, but I still found time to read these lovely books…mostly because I read each of them in a day 🙂 .

I was finally able to read the 2nd and 3rd installment in the Thursday Murder Club series and interestingly preferred The Bullet That Missed (#3) to #2 (The Man Who Died Twice). In fact, it gives the first one a run for its money, which is always a wonderful surprise for a trilogy!

I suspect that I’ll have a lot more time to read in December and if I get the urge, I might even hit 100 books read this year. I’m currently at 83 and don’t want to give myself a difficult goal to end the year with, but if it happens – it happens, right 😉 ?

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 5 Posts

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

1. The Month Of Acadia: October 2022 Recap
2. Medical Tourism: A $22 Dental Exam & Cleaning in Buenos Aires, Argentina
3. How My Diet And Fitness Changed In Retirement
4. Review: American Airlines Business Class 777-200 – NYC to Buenos Aires
5. Slow Travel Review: Buenos Aires, Argentina – The Land Of Nature and Architecture

The other big blog news this month is that I created a Mastodon in case Twitter becomes more of a garbage fire. It’s here: https://universeodon.com/@apurplelife

I’m currently debating leaving Twitter and just going there. Let me know if you have opinions on that in the comments below. Basically, I’ll go wherever my online money friends are and this seems to be where they’re migrating. I’m here to connect with y’all no matter the platform. Anyway, I’m currently still trying to figure out how this new platform works so bare with me. Also I accidentally set up my account in Spanish so that was a fun challenge 🙂 .

In addition to the posts above and cranking for NaNoWriMo, I was asked to write an article for pay this month and them turned down. I already was stressed about hitting my own NaNoWriMo goal so I definitely wasn’t going to add more onto my plate. It’s funny that money wasn’t a consideration in this decision – retired life, am I right 😉 ?

I was also randomly offered a stay at a golf course hotel, which is a bit strange. That’s a no for me – I’ve never played golf (I assume putt putt mini golf doesn’t count 🙂 ). It included a free of charge stay, golfing, food and drinks — I am not sure how I got on that list, but no thank you. It is very interesting the random opportunities that hit my inbox though 🙂 .

I also seem to be getting weekly DMs and emails about being a ‘brand ambassador’ for their products, which is a scam 🙂 . Heads up in case you get those requests:

Physical

Sleep

Sleep this month was a little weird, but I expected that for a few reasons. One is that I’m living in someone else’s house and in space with a cat, which I’m not used to. I was often awakened by a small paw touching my chest, asking for pets at 6am.

In addition to that, how late people stay up in Buenos Aires is not what I’m used to so changing from going to sleep at 10:30pm to going to dinner at that time took some getting used to. Overall though my sleep was good and I fully took advantage of afternoon siestas!

Food

Food this month was delicious! I was very happy with the abundance of new food I got to try and with how I balanced the food I ate at home. It’s been a lovely month, but I am ready to switch it up and get back to keto in December. Switching it up after a while feels good 🙂 .

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by A Purple Life l Early Retiree (@apurplelife)

Exercise

My running this month went wild! I finally ran a sub 10 minute mile, which was my goal for the year. And the wild thing was that I did it without trying. I was taking (what I thought was) a leisurely jog and not even listening to my pump up jams!

I was jamming to a chill playlist and yet I blew my previous time out of the water. I was then wondering if that was a fluke, but then I kept up that pace without pushing every time. Amazing! Next month let’s see how going from 80F to 0F will affect my running. Uh oh 🙂 .

In addition to running, I walked all over Buenos Aires, which is HUGE. The city is 78m²/203 km². I would often walk a 5K and my legs would be too tired to run for a bit, so overall I was exercising all over the place. I also always walked up the stairs to the 4th floor apartment I was living in – grocery bags and all 🙂 . Gotta get those gainz!

Mental

Learning

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

Argentina

• Argentina has a population of 45.81 million as of 2021 and is the 8th largest country in the world. Look at this ridiculousness:

Or for another way of looking at it – look how many European countries you can fit in Argentina:

Buenos Aires

• Buenos Aires is a giant city with a population of 15.37 million in 2021
• “Buenos Aires” can be translated as “good airs” or “fair winds” but the latter was apparently the meaning intended by the conquerors in the 16th century when they used the original name “Real de Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre”
• Buenos Aires is the capital of Argentina, and the 4th largest city in the western hemisphere. It’s also the most visited city in South America
• Within Buenos Aires is the widest avenue in the world named Avenida 9 de Julio. It spans 16 lanes of traffic and takes up an entire city block.
• Randomly I learned that Buenos Aires has Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but obviously no Thanksgiving to balance it out 🙂

The World Cup

• The World Cup happens every 4 years like the Olympics (I had assumed it was annually…oops 🙂 )
• Bangladesh, India is a huge Argentina fútbol fan – and I have no idea why
• Qatar, where the Cup is this year, is pronounced “Cutter”

Astronomy

Star gazing this month went better than I expected. Since I was living in a giant city, I thought it would have too much light pollution to see the stars, but that was only partially true.

I got to see some southern hemisphere constellations, such as the Cetus, Sculptor, Phoenix, Tucana and Hydrus. I also was able to spot Jupiter hanging out in the sky on clear nights. However, I wasn’t able to see the Leonids Meteor Shower that occurred down here, but I knew that was a bit of a long shot 🙂 .

Fauna

Because of my visit to Ecoparque I saw a surprising number of animals, including:

Tapir, Capybara, Guanaco, Caí de las Yungas, Corzuela, Mara, Peacocks

I also saw a lovely variety of local Butterflies, such as:

Bataraza, Espejitos, Monarca

Flora

It was also a lovely month for seeing a variety of new plant life with my visits to the Botanical Garden, Ecoparque, the Rose Garden and the Japanese Garden as well as my visit to the 222 year old Gomero de la Recoleta:

Trees

Jacaranda, Lapacho

Ecoparque

Vara dorada, Ceibo, Jacinto de agua o camalote, Tipa, Ubajay, Barba de chivo, Pavonia rosada, Mburucuyá, Cortadera

Japanese Garden

Sakura, Katsura, Momiji, Azalea, Floss silk trees

Birds

Birding this month was lovely. I love going to new countries and seeing and hearing birds I’ve never encountered before.

I've been in Argentina 🇦🇷 2 hours and I've already seen 5 birds I don't know by heart. I'm gonna be birding here like a motherfucker🤣🐦 pic.twitter.com/36Gl1W3fDR

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) October 23, 2022

To help identify them I had to download an Argentina pack for my Merlin app (worth it!). Here are the birds I saw in Buenos Aires:

Crested Screamer, Sayaca Tanager, Red-crested Cardinal, House Sparrow, Tropical Parula, House Wren, Rufous-bellied Thrush, Pale-breasted Thrush, Tropical Kingbird, Great Kiskadee, Cattle Tyrant, Rufous Hernero, White-eyed Parakeet, Mitred Parakeet, Blue-crowned Parakeet, Nanday Parakeet, Maroon-bellied Parakeet, Turquoise-fronted Parrot, Yellow-chevroned Parakeet, Monk Parakeet, Bank Swallow, Gray-breasted Martin, Blue and white Swallow, Eared Dove, Spot-winged Pigeon, Picazuro Pigeon, Least Bittern

Cats

As I mentioned, I catsat a lot this month and as a result learned some wild things about them:

• Cats have 200 million odor sensors in their noses while humans have 5 million. I wondered how this cat always seemed to know when it was her owner was coming up the elevator, but apparently cats can smell their owners up to 4 miles away. That’s scary 🙂
• Cats don’t meow at each other. They only meow to communicate with humans. Say WHAT?!
• Cats rub on you to put their scent on your (possessive much?)
• Cats also kneed you for a similar purpose to mark their territory with the scent marking glands in their paws
• Even if you are petting a cat at their request (this cat asked me to scratch her head by meowing – we figured out our own language 😉 ) they might freak out and scratch you after a little bit. Apparently that’s because they get overwhelmed with the stimulus after a while. Maybe I should start biting people after they’ve hugged me for an appropriate amount of time 🙂

Random

• Apparently 1/4 of cowboys in the 1800s were black…I had LITERALLY no idea. That’s a lot of people to erase from a narrative
• The bump on Beluga whale’s heads are squishy. I don’t know why, but this blew my mind 🙂

Creativity

This month was obviously NaNoWriMo so it’s the only time of the year that I try to push my creativity towards a stretch goal…I guess besides getting 1 post out every Tuesday 😉 . As a result, not surprisingly, getting my creative flow started getting harder as the month went on. I’m going to see if I can ‘refill my cup’ in December.

Emotional

This month my depression flared up for the first time in a long while. In fact, I can’t remember the last time it happened (which is awesome). So I’m not sure if I was overdue for one (if that’s even a thing), but it’s been a chunk of time.

For me my depression usually manifests itself by it seeming insurmountable to do fairly simple things like showering, getting dressed and going outside. My deeper depressions are also accompanied by a complete negative mental state I can’t shake.

However, this wasn’t a deep episode luckily. It actually felt similar to the depression I had while living in Italy away from my loved ones, which made me wonder if being alone in a foreign country had something to do with it.

That’s something I need to think about and if it’s a factor, I might need to rethink longer term solo travel plans. It’s all good though – know thyself and all that. Anyway, after a few days, I went back to my usual chill self with the help of exercise, sunshine and my loved ones. It’s all good 🙂 .

My anxiety was also high this month, but with reason 🙂 . I was finding my way alone in a foreign country in a newly acquired second language, which seems to involve embarrassing myself 99% of the time. I’m used to only embarrassing myself in 50% of interactions, so this was a bit of a change 😉 . 

The last thing to pile onto my emotional heap this month was that it was the first time I’ve spent Thanksgiving alone. My friend had to work late and hadn’t come home the day before so it was me, her cat and, for a little bit, her cleaning person. I knew this might be a challenge for me because I’m always either with my partner on this holiday if not having a Friendsgiving or visiting family I’ve chosen.

Being alone, even in a country that (obviously) doesn’t celebrate, was difficult. I took myself out to a fancy lunch, which I LOVED and picked up some prime ingredients for dinner. I then watched some of my comfort films, but IN SPANISH cause the learning never ends 😉 . Just kidding – it’s because I’ve seen them so many times the lines are memorized so they’re still comforting and familiar in another language (which is a trick I need to remember for later).

So I snuggled with a cat, texted my loved ones, ate carbs and watched comfort movies to ring in Thanksgiving. I didn’t think that was a big holiday for me, but it turns out because being completely alone (sans cat) was a whole different rodeo. I’ll plan appropriately for November going forward 🙂 .

Money

I published a Slow Travel Review of Buenos Aires last week listing out all my costs, but overall I am WAY below budget this year. Oops 🙂 .

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by A Purple Life l Early Retiree (@apurplelife)

There’s one month left in the year and my 2022 Spending currently rests at $16,381. My goal for this year was $21,200 and I’ve only spent 3/4 of that. Wowza. Net worth wise, the market refuses to go into a bear market and I’m still chilling over here 🙂 .

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by A Purple Life l Early Retiree (@apurplelife)

Conclusion

So that’s what I got up to in November! It was a lovely time exploring Buenos Aires during their spring and enjoying some sunshine before I head back to a frozen Northeast to say hi to family for the holidays. I’m gonna need so many hot cups of tea 🙂 . Anyway, until next time!

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

Weekly (2020)

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 (2021)

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

Monthly (2022)

1. The Month Of Freezing My Balls Off: January 2022 Recap
2. The Month Of Thailand: February 2022 Recap
3. The Month Of Spring(?): March 2022 Recap
4. The Month Of México: April 2022 Recap
5. The Month of Mérida: May 2022 Recap
6. The Month of Seattle: June 2022 Recap
7. The Month of Washington State: July 2022 Recap
8. The Month Of New Hampshire: August 2022 Recap
9. The Month Of Maine: September 2022 Recap
10. The Month Of Acadia: October 2022 Recap

How was your month?