Why I Enjoy Walking My Groceries Home

I feel like people are always calling me a weirdo for some aspect of my life. I’ve started to wear the label with pride. One part of my life that seems to be met with the most shock and horror lately is that I walk my groceries home. This might be surprising to friends because we live halfway up a 400 foot hill. There is a grocery store at the bottom of our hill and at the top. Either way, you’re climbing a hill in one direction, often with pounds and pounds of groceries on your back. When someone asks where my car is and I tell them I’m carfree for life usually the first question is: “But how do you get groceries?!” Continue reading “Why I Enjoy Walking My Groceries Home”

How Have I Changed After 1 Month of Public Blogging?

As some of you know, I’ve been writing this blog privately for 3.5 years. It was on the internet, but couldn’t be found or read by others. It served as a way to catalog my journey to financial independence: to show what I was thinking, feeling and what steps I took to accelerate my journey. For those years I found it really helpful to see what Past Me was thinking and feeling in different situations. It’s been great to see how I’ve changed as a person while approaching this goal. Continue reading “How Have I Changed After 1 Month of Public Blogging?”

The Opposite Problem

So I started my weight loss journey over a year ago because I wasn’t able to fit into a lot of my clothing and I refuse to waste money buying the same clothes in a larger size. So I dove into keto and lost 50 lbs. Now I’m being faced with a different problem: A lot of my clothes don’t fit now because they’re too big! Continue reading “The Opposite Problem”

Simple Living Like A Princess

I’ve always been fairly frugal. I’ve always bought generic brand everything – maybe it’s because I was in advertising, but I knew that the only difference was the label. I didn’t see the point. When I cracked down on my budget at the end of 2014 and started paying attention to what I was spending and trying to reduce it I discovered that the one place that wasn’t out of control was my grocery budget…possibly because I didn’t cook 🙂 . Continue reading “Simple Living Like A Princess”

Watercolor & Calligraphy: New Hobbies?

One of the things I want to learn in retirement is watercolor. I was feeling down a few weeks ago and started wondering – wait, why am I waiting until retirement? I’m still in this city for another 2.5 years. That’s plenty of time to learn a skill and get rid of any utensils I’ve collected for the hobby. Continue reading “Watercolor & Calligraphy: New Hobbies?”

Moving from Blogger to WordPress

I started this blog over 3 years ago to catalog my journey to early retirement. Originally I just wanted to start writing and getting my thoughts down on ‘paper’. As a result I didn’t take basically any time to decide on my platform. I typed in “free blog” into Google and (of course) Blogger, their subsidiary, was the first hit. Continue reading “Moving from Blogger to WordPress”

2 Weeks Off Keto

I originally started keto on January 4, 2017. On February 13, 2018 I traveled to Singapore. Almost exactly a year before that I was on my way to Thailand – only 1.5 months into my keto journey and ready to give it all up for 2 weeks to experience this new country. Continue reading “2 Weeks Off Keto”

Tight Clothing

A month ago I noticed something different in my life: I looked forward to putting on clothes! I’m a full-time pj lover (especially since I started working from home) and usually almost dread getting dressed because previously everything was too tight and uncomfortable including (TMI) my bras and underwear. I felt like a sausage stuffed in its casing. Continue reading “Tight Clothing”