We just got back from a week of camping in Humboldt County. 3.5 hours north of San Francisco lies some of the most incredible Redwood forests I’ve ever visited. Cell service is sparse. The rivers are cool. And some of the trees are 1,200 years old. Walking through the shady forest floor amid ferns and clovers, I get the same feeling as when I walk through an old Roman ruin in Europe or Mexica pyramid in Latin America; except this forest isn’t a ruin. There’s no imagining what it must have looked like in its heyday. No, the old growth redwood forests of Northern California are exactly the same as they were millennia ago. Just to be there, it brings about a calming feeling, knowing that these trees have been here long before me, and will be there long after me (hopefully). Being in that forest, far away, camping, surrounded by family, it made me question if the ‘Boring Middle’ of FIRE really does exist.

This is where I am. Supposedly. Somewhere In the Boring Middle.

Having no cell service for a week was fantastic. Half the time I had no idea where my phone was. I kept a book near my side (currently reading this). I slept till 9am most days. I spent hours and hours on the bank of a lazy stretch of the Eel River, jumping into the clear cold water as needed to cool and drying off with a puzzle of Sudoku next to the gurgling sound of the water. My parents came with us on this trip. They hadn’t camped in some years, even though they were the ones who filled my childhood memories with tents and forests and lakes. Having them around and my kids, made me pause to try and soak in the moments on many occasions.

Without thinking about it till I got back on the road home, and alerts began parading through my phone as if I were in an airplane that had just landed: I had no idea what was going on in the world. How the stock market was doing. How my work was going. What my friends were doing. It was as if I’d been able to pause time and focus on the basics of life. Not worried about bills, consumerism, deadlines, bank accounts. I mean, this is nothing new, this feeling of returning to civilization. I’d felt it dozens, if not hundreds of times before in various degrees.

But this time felt different.

I will admit to you that, yes, I do indeed check the stock market daily, along with my net worth. I also check all transactions on all my bank and credit cards daily. As I inch my way to a magical number that, legend has it, will somehow make my life better, I can’t help but check on things. Maybe it’s the ease at which I can click on an app and within a few seconds have all the information right away. Just because something is easy to do doesn’t mean it should be done often. I think this trip reminded me of that. Reminded me that life is better when not checking your net worth daily, because your net worth really means nothing. My money, after all, is nothing more than fluctuating black numbers on a screen. I’ve never actually seen my money in its entirety in physical form. I just have to believe it’s there, right behind the cracked glass of my phone.

Another confession, it feels good to know I have this money saved up. The other day I was feeling a bit stressed out about work and retiring early, and just the future in general, and the thought of how much money I had popped into my mind (as it does on occasion) and instantly I felt better. I thought to myself, it doesn’t matter what happens at work, I can either keep on working and growing this thing beyond what need or quit or get fired. Either way I’m good. Everything will be okay.

I began to question why thinking about a certain value of money made me feel good. In a way it’s embarrassing to type it out. This a taboo thing after all. To get a secret joy from money just sitting there. It reminds me of Uncle Scrooge McDuck diving into his pool of money or counting his coin for the sake of it. As much as money is intangible and imaginary, the value of that sum of money is the result of discipline and sticking with the plan. It’s a result. A result I can see. A measurement of my dedication to planning. A sticky note left on my conscience that proclaims and reaffirms, ‘you are making the right choices in life’. And yeah, it feels good. Damn good.

Now, I won’t admit this to anyone but you readers and my wife, but it’s true that having a large sum of money makes me feel good. Maybe this is a symptom of the boring middle? This deriving pleasure from numbers on a screen. Maybe it’s the start of the end of the boring middle? Boring middle? Middle of what?

No, I’m starting to believe that there is no Boring Middle. There never was. It just doesn’t exist, not yet anyway. There can be no middle till you have reached the end, the conclusion, the closing of a book. Then you can look back and say, ah yes, there was that middle part. And when we do look back, certainly we don’t want to include the word ‘boring’.

If you are reading this and are somewhere between 1% and 99% to financial independence and say, this is just the Boring Middle part of my journey. It might mean that you are sleep walking through life. That the future has taken on a greater role than today. It means you are looking at your life from an imagined future point that does not exist. You imprison yourself to the future when you resign yourself to being in a boring middle of anything. Welcome. We are in the same delayed gratification chain gang, supposedly heading towards freedom, yet handcuffed to the future. What we can’t forget, is this very moment is the tip of the spear of our lives thrusting forward. If I were to die today and have the ability to look back over my life, would I call this time the middle? No way. This is just life. Possibly the end, possibly the beginning, or middle. But it’s not just the middle of a goal.

I’m not immune to having boring middle syndrome. Where my mind drifts to the imagined future and stays longer than it should. I’m a day dreamer, and FIRE is a great thing to day dream about. But there are times when I rediscover the joy of forgetting about FIRE and stock markets, like on my recent camping trip.

If I were to abandon my plans to retire early, and work a normal career and traditionally retire in my 60’s, would I call this period of my career the boring middle as I’m living it? Would I view my time as just trying to survive till I reached a certain title or retirement?

I don’t think so. I would just be speeding up my life towards old age if I put my head down and focused on the destination.

I’m part of a greater middle than solely a financial journey. I’m what they call middle aged. 40. I’m also a protected class now, as my HR wife likes to tell me from time to time.

I’m reminded now of a quote from the Knights Radiant. What’s the Knights Radiant, you may ask? Well, it’s a fictional order of Knights in Brandon Sanderson’s novels. But this is besides the point. This order of Knights have a saying that resonates deeply with me, and especially, my own journey to FIRE.

Here’s what the saying is:

“Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination.”

Journey Before Destination

Brandon Sanderson didn’t come up with this idea of the ‘journey before destination’ philosophy. Waldo Emerson, the 19th century essayist had a similar idea, and may have been the first to equate the journey as part of the destination. Robert Hastings has a wonderful poem about this very thing. The saying is so cliche that we sort of hear the spirit of the thing and think, yeah I’ve heard this before. I know where this is going. I know, I know, enjoy the trip.

But what if life is not a journey at all? What if our journey has no boring middle because boring middles only exist if the end is the point.

As Alan Watts says: “…we simply cheated ourselves a whole way down the line. We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end—the thing was to get to that end success or whatever it is or maybe heaven after you’re dead.”

Wait, Alan can say it better than I can write it:

So, yes. I proudly write this post from somewhere in the Boring Middle, if such a thing truly exists. Where I have enough money to do what I want but not enough to do it whenever I want. Where my kids are young and want to hang out with me and I can still run and keep up with them, be it jumping into a cold river in the middle of a forest or reading them a book at night. Where I happily stuff half my money away and secretly watch it behind a screen, while thinking of my poverty stricken ancestors and allowing the possibilities of that number to bring me joy. And where there’s still more life ahead of me than behind me to day dream about the future.

Yup, this is the Boring Middle I never want to end.

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