So, snapshot time.
It’s 22:32 EST on a Wednesday. I just brewed a cortado, on my Silvano Evo. The bean is imported from Italy. Grind is fine, using a surprisingly good quality Kitchen Aid grinder. Steamed milk from grass-fed cows.
I’m in my Prussian blue fleece robe. The dog is outside. It’s in the rural part of southwest Ohio, just outside of Cincinnati, near the Kentucky border.
The sky matches my robe. The wind is starting to come in warm again. The air is starting to smell sweet for summer, so all the windows are open.
I had a slight hangover most of the day because I had one too many beers last night, and ended up eating a mountain of food and sleeping most of the day after work. Then woke up, and it’s 2200. So, I figure, “why not brew some coffee?”.
Working remotely is weird, but it’s got its perks. Especially if you’re damned good at what you do. I’m on my fifth year of remote work, but on my fourth year at my current gig. Honestly, I don’t see how I could ever go back to going into the office full time.
The suits. The dry cleaning bills. The stress. The noise. The distractions. The endless little costs –both time and money that eat up every moment of free time and energy you have. Your time, your focus, and your money go quite a bit further working from home if you stay disciplined.
The real issue with working only in the office was also, much of the time, that it was soulless, inauthentic, and a political minefield full of ugly people playing a weird social game, in the hopes of building a career elevator made out of nepotism to move up in their careers.
Now granted, working in the office had its perks. Charismatic and attractive people everywhere, polished marble floors everywhere, and endless trips to other buildings to attend meetings I usually didn’t care about offset by a quarter mile walk through dusty grey cubicles where the up and comings exchange that time in their life for a living. We’ve all worked in those cubicles and it has some nostalgia.
The only real problem with working from home is sometimes popping into someone’s office to discuss an issue face to face is the best way to move a problem towards a solution, and you can’t do that as easily working remotely even with video conferencing tools.
There’s just no coming back from where I’m at right now. If I had to start over with the kinds of jobs I had as an early-20s-something I don’t know that I could do it. Just like when I was an early-20s-something I didn’t know I could do what I do now. Hell, I don’t know if I can be convinced to put on a tie everyday anymore, and I like wearing ties because I own a nice collection of ties I haven’t used in 5 years.
The reason for the scrollback is that I turn 40 in two months.
If I had a super healthy lifestyle, the SSA life expectancy calculator says I can expect to live until I’m 82. That doesn’t take lifestlye into account at all though. At my height, weight, generation, alcohol habits, driving habits, blood pressure disposition, family history, smoking habits all considered — my life expectancy is 64.2 years. So this is really the 2/3 point. That’s before consideration of what all the screen time is going to do me.
They say you don’t get old until you live old. But I can’t live like a young guy anymore if I want to live very long. I’ll need to make some lifestyle shifts. At this point in my life I’ve always worked quite a bit harder than I’ve ever seen anyone else work, and it paid off some, but, it comes at a cost of time and family.
In the meantime, in my royal star-aligned robe, drinking my royal coffee, I’ve let the dog in because it’s lightly raining and the rain is warm, and the air is sweet.
The next year I think is going to be spent getting ready for Pensacola. I’ve spent too much time in Ohio, and I’m worried if I stay much longer than that I’ll become dependent on the place and not ever be able to leave. That, and I crave the ocean.