After what felt a brutal winter by California standards, warm weather has finally arrived in the Bay Area. And with that, the year is nearly half over. Where has the time gone? My youngest is nearly six years old. My oldest is finishing third grade. I will be turning 40 this year. My wife is on the upward trend in her career. We are still working towards early retirement, though it feels as though the future is hazier in regards to what will occur. A thick fog has descended upon my mind. A fog of uncertainty. A fog that has changed things.

health

These last few months have been some of the most stressful in recent memory. More so because of an unexplainable health issue with my right leg–one day at the end of January it suddenly became difficult to bend my knee and my thigh muscle became stiff, sometimes spasming. Causing me to limp and struggling to walk normally. Even unable to run. At first I thought I might have unknowingly injured myself doing some running around with the kids, but after it lingered and I couldn’t connect it to an incident, I felt compelled to go to the doctor. My anxiety has been sky high since. I made the unfortunate choice to google symptoms of “stiff muscles/leg”, boy, what a mistake that was. There are some serious things associated with stiff muscles.

After visits with my regular doctor, a neurologist and multiple MRI’s, the cause is still unknown. I still have some more tests to under go in the next few weeks. But it appears as if it isn’t serious, and possibly anxiety related, at least at the moment. And it’s gotten better in the last month. I can walk around normally. Even run again. But the thigh stiffness still comes and goes, luckily not as intense or as regular as before.

One thing about my struggle to move about normally that I didn’t expect was a sense of embarrassment. I see people limping around all the time. I don’t see them as weak or incapable. I think maybe they had an injury, especially when I see a young person limping. In other words, I think nothing of someone who limps, it might as well be someone with a different shade of hair than me.

But when it became me as the person limping and struggling to get about, I couldn’t help but feel weak or incompetent or old and inadequate. For my entire life I’ve been blessed to be naturally athletic. Able to recover quickly. Able to have great balance and climb up and down things like a little monkey. Running. Cycling. Hiking. Spartan Races. Building. Sure I’ve injured myself from time to time, but never without explanation. To have to tell people who I work with that I don’t know what’s wrong with me, why I can’t move my right leg without struggle, I started to dread having to walk around my work. And walking around my work is a huge part of my job.

I’d see a set of stairs and want to avoid them as much as possible. If I were walking in a group, I’d feign an excuse to be the last one up so I don’t hold anyone up–or so that nobody will see my slow struggle to climb the stairs and comment. I was grateful my project was at a a later stage and had no real ladders I needed to climb or rebar to walk over.

My daughters started playing softball in January. A great struggle has been my inability to truly practice with them or help out during pre game warm up like the rest of the other dads. I’ve avoided hanging around while they warmed up because of my leg. I can play catch, but moving around quickly or fetching balls was a real struggle, and to be honest with myself, I was embarrassed to be moving around with a huge limp. I think my avoidance was not drawing the topic of conversation to my leg or limp. Not having an answer for why I limp is super stressful. My mind starts to dwell and worry over all kinds of scary scenarios and avoiding the thought is probably why I tried to hide as much as possible my condition.

Luckily my walking has gotten better. I can now speed walk around the job and quickly go up stairs like a normal person. But I see the act of doing it much differently. It’s no longer just like breathing. It’s no longer done without thinking. I’m grateful for every step I take that isn’t a struggle.

work

Another stressor is my work.

I was transferred to take over a troubled project back in early February. I felt very angry about being placed on this troubled job after spending so much time perfecting and planning my previous project for success. At first, I became resentful of the previous leadership (who’d been fired) and at those who were still there and watched everything bad happen. I know this was a bad mindset and I’ve since been able to change my attitude and see the glass half full. I’m starting to see that the people on the project, the ones I’m working with, weren’t the problem. It takes a strength to have to deal with a series of problems that I didn’t create and not throw my hands up and point the finger at other people.

There’s something aggravating about fixing other peoples mistakes, especially when they aren’t there to give the history on a situation. Right now I’m left with a bunch of angry subcontractors who only tell me their side of the story, and I can’t defend my company’s previous position because that person who made the decisions was fired.

It’s making me a better person dealing with this sort of problem. To be accountable for other’s actions is uncomfortable to say the least. And I believe its in discomfort that makes a person grow.

But with better weather it feels as if things are improving. I’ve worked hard to turn the problem job around and it feels as if I’ve made an impact. I’ve been able to change the things in our control, and with my mobility improving, I’ve started to pay attention again to the future.

For a while there this year I didn’t give a fuck about FIRE. At least in the sense of retiring early and traveling. Having a decent amount money saved up gave me comfort that I needed during the difficult times when I wondered if I would be able to carry on working if my health condition deteriorated. I was so thankful I’d been saving and investing for the last couple of years.

fog of war

The term The Fog of War comes from war saturated 19th century Europe. It emphasizes how during those 19th century military campaigns, communication with central command became muddled or non existent. The location of where an enemy might be or the size of the enemy’s forces were even harder to gauge. And luck became one of the biggest factors of success. Essentially, once engagement with an enemy occurred, generals were left to their own devices. The best laid plans go out the window. Even into World War 2, the fog of war was a real hindrance to operations. Eisenhower has a great quote on this inability to plan in war time: “Plans are worthless but planning is everything.”

To my own personal war, with all of this health and work stress I’d stopped looking forward. My future became enveloped in a thick bank of fog. A fog of war in my mind. What I thought was the plan suddenly looked uncertain, wrong even.

Considering that I might have a serious health condition made me rethink how I viewed my future. If I even had a long future, or one that might look vastly different than what I’d envisioned for myself. I feel as though my dreams might be been stolen from me. For so long my future seemed bright and full of better things. It was a sort of fuel that kept me motivated to have a high savings rate and push through difficult times at work. Knowing that there was something better up ahead. Knowing that I was making headway toward a goal.

With no future, or one covered up in a hazy fog, I started to sort things out in my mind that really mattered to me. Things like being able to simply walk normal without a limp. Things like running if I wanted to. Things like being alive. What a joy it is to just walk. And though I practice gratitude on a regular basis, it never hit home till recently what a true wealth mobility is. No amount of money in a bank account can replace not being able to run around with my kids. This boiling down to what mattered had nothing to do with money or stock markets or travel.

This rethinking has me even grateful and happy for work and my career. My work, as stressful and difficult as it was, I was able to take my mind off my leg by throwing myself into busyness. And for great health insurance.

What if this health issue happened right after I quit work for early retirement? This or any other major health issue? Health coverage is essential in factoring in retirement spending (but we all knew that, right?). How I wish America could have national health care like other western democracies. As of this writing, for Covered California plans, I’m looking at around $2000 a month basic coverage with an $8,200 out of pocket max deductible a year if I want health insurance inside the United States for my family of four. Which would put me in around $30k if I needed more than check ups. Or ~$850k saved up at a 4% withdrawal rate! An insane amount of money needed solely for health coverage. More than my mortgage, property tax, and home insurance combined. This is one of the reasons why traveling outside of the United States has appealed to me for early retirement, as health coverage plans are a third of this price for international travel.

As things have improved for me at the moment, I’ve been able to peak at the future. The fog lifts from time to time to reveal a changed landscape. A distant horizon. Then it settles back thick into my mind like a summer morning in San Francisco and I’m lost again. But it’s enough so that I can day dream here and there about what might be if my health can improve all the way. I’m still not out of the woods yet. I might not ever be (are any of us ever really out of the woods?). But I’ve stopped caring so much about FIRE. I’m focused much more on now. I’d never considered the case that the future could be worse than the present. For me, the future has always been a bright shiny city on a hill that held so much for me. But what if the future was instead a bleak hellscape? And I was ignoring the beautiful oasis around me because I was dutifully marching forward with blinders on?

The thing is this exact moment could be the happiest we ever are. We won’t ever know it till we have time to look back upon it. It’s near impossible to gauge the present moment without the context of time and events in which to judge to by. But accepting the present, simply being with it, not judging it, has been rewarding in its own way.

Not looking forward is liberating, if only liberating as a change in how I operate. My spending habits have changed. I spend more. I eat out more. My discipline has waned in the eating department. I’m still sober. But I see ‘holding off’ for future rewards in a different light. To go back to the last part of the Eisenhower quote I harkened to earlier on, “…planning is everything.” So I continue to save. Continue to buy VTSAX. Continue to fund a high yield savings account. And yes, continue to blog and write of my plans, because strangely, writing about FIRE is part of my FIRE plan and strategy. As sporadic as it may be these days.

With this newfound fog of mine, if I can’t see what I’m delaying gratification for: why delay it? I’m not endorsing going spend crazy or taking a foolhardy YOLO approach. But I’m not sure I subscribe to blindly putting all my faith in a better future anymore either and waiting to have the majority of my fun in some fantastical future.

Just like in investing, diversification of gratification needs to be considered in my case. Spending money, both now and later, will probably lead to a steadier and better ride through life. Because we don’t know what’s around the corner and should never put all our eggs into one basket.

What I’ve gone through so far this year has changed how I view things. It’s changed my relationship with FIRE and money and work.

How?

I’m still not sure yet. The fog has not yet lifted. Early retirement is still the goal. Though what kind of early retirement lays ahead is not truly up to me. It depends on the landscape I find myself in after this long wander through the dense fog thats worked its way into my life.