A Letter to My Future Self

A Letter to My Future Self

Congratulations!

After nearly a decade of hard hustle you reached the status of being financially independent.

I’m writing this post… This letter, whatever, to address some of the concerns you may or may not have at this moment.

To be honest, I’m pretty sure you don’t have them… But being careful as you know we are, let’s address some of the worst case scenarios.

“I don’t have anything to do”

For how long have you been FIREd?

Having no long-term goal is completely fine if you’re into this for less than a year.

Give your mind some time to adapt to the new reality and see what happens. Check back in a year and reevaluate if the issue persists.

But maybe “this is the problem, here’s the solution” is not the type of answer you need to hear. So let me put some more detail into the picture.

You spent a decade focusing on making more money, aggressively saving, and increasing your net-worth. It will take some time until you start seeing the the value in non-material things again. Don’t put that much thought into this. Just live and your mind will automatically adapt.

I have no suspicions that you’re on top of your physical health, so keep at it. From where I am, that’s the most probable field to bring you fulfillment. You even wrote a post about strength training on your personal finance blog. Who does that!? While on the topic, did you do a one arm pull up already?

Video editing was something you enjoyed but neglected due to lack of time and ROI. Why not come back to it now? Let the creative side resurrect slowly and please don’t rush it.

The things you’re doing now don’t necessarily need to bring (material) value back. I know that you stepped away from exploring your “right brain”, but dive into your fantasies now.

And I get how you feel.

You’re feeling idle.

Maybe you’re attributing it to having “too much free time”.

Let me give you a guarantee: you won’t be happier if you get a software engineering job for the sake of doing something. If you had a thought like that, I’m sorry to break your heart, but you became the people you were describing in this post.

Here are a few quotes you wrote in 2019:

It’s both sad and heart breaking witnessing how small and overworked souls have lost every sense of self.

Not having a job doesn’t mean sitting around all day. Revolutionary ideas don’t come from putting in a 9-to-5, but from a real passion and burning desire to research, create, develop, or accomplish something.

I’d highly encourage everyone to think again if they don’t want to sit all day or they brought themselves down to the point where there’s not much to do apart from sitting.

There’s more to life than work.

And by all means, go make more money if you want to, I’m sure it’s still a rewarding experience… Just don’t make money because of lack of alternatives.

Set the trend, don’t chase it.

“Did I give up?”

No. You actually won!

This is what you were after.

You weren’t after climbing the corporate ladder and being underpaid. You were after not climbing the corporate ladder and being overpaid!

I understand that your mind was conditioned for a long long time to measure value based on society’s expectations. You might not have been aware of it until now.

And indeed, while working you got all the rewards of being an obedient high-performing employee. All that money, feedback, promotions, relationships, recognition… Feeling like young money – everything a professional in his twenties can wish for. And then you could chill out on a fancy vacation and watch your accounts pile hundreds of thousands of euros while you’re just doing your thing. Amazing!

It also followed you while getting your bachelor and master degrees – the sense of productivity of passing an arbitrary exam allowed you to unrepentantly practice excessive indulgence in debauchery, non-life-threatening vices, and wicked polygamy, all while being productive in fields you have a sincere passion for. Beautiful!

Same thing while in high school, where you could indulge in weird teen activities and exercise freedom, while you were tolerated by society because you were considered smart by your peers. The intelligent bad guy. What a reputation maker!

And although at the end of the day, as you are now, you were aware that everything is pointless on a certain level, you felt good.

What I’m trying to say is that it might be a case of lacking a clear goal this time, progressing towards which can give you enough sense of purpose and social acceptance (you’re an idiot) to pursue and explore your stupid human instincts and be happy.

But here’s an undeniable fact: nobody figured out the point of life.

So just live.

When you die, it will be just over anyway.

But unlike previously, now you have time to try things out.

Do it.

“I’m not giving back”

The ambiguity is killing me… Let’s break this nonsense down.

Giving back, Monk? For real?! You gave your share!

You worked in the Netherlands. Your tax ruling was taken away and you took a pay-cut of around 1000 EUR. You lost more than €35k just like that – an amount of money that was way more relevant to you back then than it is now.

Remember how you felt when that happened?

I’ll remind you: a dark cloud occupied your soul for weeks. Your family noticed and started becoming worried.

I hate it when I read about “giving back” from bloggers who reached FIRE. Please, please, I beg you, please don’t look at your contributions to the world through the lens of paying more tax.

Tax is evil. If you changed your mind on that, I hope you have a great argument to back it up. Hopefully it’s something that makes more sense than “some people didn’t have the opportunity“. While there, don’t forget where you came from. Nobody “gave back” anything to you.

Nobody owes you anything and you don’t owe anything to anyone.

And lastly, WTF is “giving back”? Don’t use ambiguities you know you can’t define in order to approve some miserable position you somehow got stuck into.

You took unnecessary risks just for the sake of reaching FIRE faster. And nobody held your hand when you were wrong. Of course, I’m not asking you to be a victim of consistency biases, but I am pointing out that there is a reason why you’re where you are.

Btw, you had (and hopefully have) a blog in which you wrote educational material for free. You shared in-depth knowledge that still has potential to change peoples’ lives. It certainly changed yours, hasn’t it? Open the emails and see the questions and feedback you were receiving through 2019/2020.

You were giving and I’m sure you’ll proceed giving back.

While there, associate the emotional trigger of not thinking about giving back with the thought of giving back.

You’re welcome.

“I’m bored…”

Let me tell you a secret: you were also bored while working. Every single day.

You were waking up with the thought “here we go again…” for a long time. Even when you enjoyed the work you were doing and while life was good, the concept of pushing through until 70 made you feel miserable. Daily!

And I know it’s not only boredom you’re questioning. You might be feeling worthless and giving signs of other forms of self-hatred and depression.

I hear you: “Why am I not happy yet?”

Once again, give yourself a year.

Let your human mind rewire itself and accept that, on this level, it’s not a numbers game anymore.

This issue might be more related to your character traits or “intelligence” than the fact that you have all the time to pursue whatever you want.

Don’t forget, at a certain level of abstraction everything is pointless. We’re all effectively dead.

Pro tip: start by indulging into short-term pleasures a bit more.

“I’m a failure”

Okay, I accept this one.

Needless to say, apparently you’re not measuring success based on education, career achievements, relationships or other factors that are quantifiable and socially acceptable – such as money, in which case you’re loaded and are a success. 💪

But let’s work with your distorted perspective.

I’d start by asking you a simple question: can you name one person who is not a failure?

Whose life is so perfect that you would give away everything and swap places right now?

You know that if you zoom out enough we’re all just beings who somehow developed something we refer to as consciousness and coexist in a limited space which is just a point in the universe and in time that’s just a moment in the infinity or the axiom of it, living something we call life that may or may not be determined and maybe in the name of some greater purpose that we either don’t understand or doesn’t exist.

In other words: you know that every human being is a failure (for lack of less cliche way of saying “nobody’s perfect” or “nobody has it figured out” or “we’re all finite” or “nothing matters”).

By your definition, you can’t be a success so you might as well not worry about it and enjoy the thing we gave the name “life” to.

“I’m feeling unproductive”

Hey, no worries! As long as we can talk specifics and not get too philosophical – it’s EZ!

First thing first, forcing productivity for the sake of being productive means that you’re dead inside. If you felt once like you’re chasing something like that, please, please, fallback to physical training. That’s a safe alternative for anyone that doesn’t have an idea what to do with his life.

Okay, you may already be in peak physical condition or incapacitated. Then seek meaning in building communities and interacting with like minded people. Whatever you do, don’t pick activities just for the sake of doing something. It will lead to lack of consistency and thus no progress. It will make your mind more foggy.

Learning anything worthwhile can give you the sense of progress as well.

Again, just don’t chase the goal of being active. Let it materialize itself. If you really have absolutely nothing to do, go deeper into fields like mindfulness and meditation or see if the self-help community was for real. Bonus points if you pair up with an equally interested friend.

While we’re at it, spend quality time with quality people. Spend time with the close ones. You alienated yourself way too much while chasing FIRE, so it’s time to balance it out.

And don’t ever feel guilty about time spent on playing video games or watching movie series.

And after a year, if earning money was indeed the only activity that fulfills you, just keep at it! But don’t confuse it with having a job – you’ll consider yourself an idiot. Flip properties for the hell of it. Create a risk fund and risk it. Start a business for teh lulz!

I have a great idea already, but won’t share it publicly.

I’ll send it in a mail that you’ll receive in 7 years though. 🙂

Commentary

Have you taken some time to look at the nature while chilling out?

You were never capable of doing so, at least not until 2020.

When you had time to kill you distracted yourself with easy to digest material because you wanted to delay the gratification of enjoying life until you earned it. Now you did – you claimed that money is the ultimate point system in the game of life. You even claimed that you found a cheat code.

You did!

The reason you may have thoughts about being a failure etc. is because of your character. You always undervalued anything you did just because it was easy in hindsight.

It wasn’t easy. Nothing was easy. Pat yourself on the back for all the choices you made for a difference!

Now it’s the time to shine!

You postponed it way too much. Take it!

Don’t “give back”, it’s time to start receiving!

And don’t think about society, other people, or any expectations anyone or anything has from you. Do your thing and don’t be apologetic about it.

I understand that years of modeling, starting from the time you were most vulnerable, took their toll, but now it’s your turn.

Forget about what you wanted in the past and forget about the future. Do what you want now.

It may be hard to adapt thinking in present tense because you spent your twenties planning for eternity.

Just chillax… There shouldn’t be a “point” in every action. Not anymore.

I know that you know that life is ultimately meaningless and that there may not be a way to assign a point to it all. I get that. So if it’s meaningless anyway and you’re not taking your life anytime soon, have a blast. Spend some good time while alive and go all in in any endeavor you’re passionate about. There is literally nothing to lose.

You’re free. Free of your past, free of your future, and, most importantly, free of financial concerns.

You’re amazing.

Did you learn to believe in this?

I’ll use a future mail service to remind you to read this post in 7 years from now. I expect you to leave a comment about how you feel reading this!

And lastly, sorry if it feels like I’m assuming that you lost your mind. You know us, Monk… We’re preparing for the worst case scenario in advance, so hope I’m not offending the future version of myself by explaining things that should be assumed are true.

Hopefully you don’t need any of this, because you most probably kept your sanity and are able to take care of yourself.

Then, I hope it will serve as a good read and a nice insight into how you were thinking a few years ago.

Fist bump, brother!

Enjoy the rest of your life.

The Monk, 2020