Friday 2 August 2019

reFIRE and a 2019 Half 1 review

A few months after returning to my industry, albeit in a different role in the pursuit of meaningful work, I’ve left the company and am back to FIRE.  Soon after joining it became very obvious that while there were some pieces of meaningful work (where I define work as something you do for purpose) the vast majority of what I was going to be doing was just a job (which I define as something you do because you need the money) and right now I don’t need a job.  The excellent tool over at Engaging Data clearly shows that provided history rhymes my biggest risk now isn’t running out of money but running out of life.

Is the risk running out of money or running out of life
Click to enlarge, Is the risk running out of money or running out of life

Reflecting on this I think a few themes are emerging...

Firstly, some people can learn by brainstorming or thinking while some people learn by trystorming or doing.  I now see that I learn the best when I can do the second.  So going forwards I need to always find ways of experimenting before going all in.

Secondly, I deliberately went back to a similar role that I had done a number of years previously which at the time I felt was the highest level of meaningful work I had ever experienced.  Living it again enabled me to see that the role, my industry and my own needs had changed beyond recognition and at some point, much like the boiled frog, my meaningful work / career had actually predominantly become just a job with me just not noticing.

Reflecting on this change... I originally pursued FIRE as back in 2007 I saw some changes starting to occur that made me think my job at the time would eventually be outsourced to a low cost country.  Faced with no job I came up with the choices of FIRE or retrain into a new career.  I took on FIRE.  Looking now at what had forced many of the changes to my industry, making me also now incompatible, it was largely driven by what I initially saw.  That is globalisation requiring extreme cost reduction and reduced quality achieved by investment reduction, partly achieved by outsourcing, while at the same time ramping expectations far faster than answers could be found.  So while the changes occurring didn’t directly take my job directly by the time I FIREd they certainly helped reduce the level of meaningful work.