Last year, a year before a retired from my career, I listed the schedule of a typical day. Looking back, it is interesting how organized my life was back then with practically every day looking the same.

Since it was/is an entertaining read, I have been thinking about doing a similar article so that I may enjoy reading about how I lived today a year from now. However, I’m finding it very difficult to describe a typical day. Instead I am going to list what I am going to take care of for the next few days. Perhaps this will give you and “my future self” an idea of what life looks like for a financially independent and semi-retired person—I call myself semi-retired because some of my activities happen to make money; it is sometimes hard to avoid when you’re producing value and I’m never one to say no to money 😉

• Friday, I am going to fill a duffle bag with hockey gear and ride my bike down to the rink to play a noon game with my old work buddies.
• Saturday, I am going sailing on the San Francisco bay for the first time with a skipper I found through sfsailing.com. My sailing plans are in the experimental stage, gradually committing more and more. For instance, now I have my own deck shoes AND a my own PFD.
• In that regard, I’m currently reading^H^H^H^Hcramming on the ASA Basic Keelboat text book — I figure this will make me incrementally more prepared. At least now I know the difference between being close-hauled and reaching. Also, I just finished another Pardey book.
• I need to complete a copy-editing review. I figure I should do this in the coming days, like within a week or so. I have no specific deadline.
• I might fix up an old Diamondback MTB I got on freecycle, so I can ride that to the hockey rink instead of my usual ride (Trek2100ZR). Since I finally got a MTB, maybe I can go riding in the surrounding hillside one of these days, like when the temperature drops below 90F, please?!
• Yesterday I finished another section on the ERE book. This project is moving again. It is much much harder to create a coherent complex work of writing than writing a single blog post or even writing a story or a sequence of a few ideas. Now I understand why so many blog->book projects are in the “1000 tips”-form, because that’s essentially what a blog is.
• I need to check back on my interns. I have not heard much from them lately.
• I bought a used billboard ad on eBay. Why? Because it’s essentially a seriously heavy duty tarp (three times thicker at the same price). I’m going to use it to cover my roof and cover it from the rain this year. No more running around every week with dicor fixing leaks this winter. The fun part of it is that if google satellite maps update during this period, you will be able to see us advertising Kleenex or poker games on our roof top to overflying planes and satellites 😀
• I need to decide which hakama to get for my shinkendo practice. This will cost me either $60 or $160. It’s almost like buying a new suit, the main question being, how much am I going to wear it? I had a long talk with sensei after training today. I could see myself teaching this—I always wanted to teach students that were really enthusiastic about learning. Too bad that’s students like that are so hard to find at the university level. I have started helping out in the intro class. Good thing, I’m not getting up early tomorrow.
• I got a salsa mix for making salsa out of our excess tomatoes. I need to do that. I probably need to improvise some canning tools. (I think I’m getting good at bodging solutions.)

  I guess working 9-5 is simple in comparison. The most interesting thing about this is that come Tuesday, I will have taken care of most of these things and my To-Do list will look very different. Soon things will start revolving around my upcoming trip to Europe and the Dojo Anniversary. So I wouldn’t exactly say that early retirement results in simply watching TV and playing video games(*). It is probably most accurate to say that early retirement and perhaps retirement in general will reveal who you truly are. The problem many people have is that they can not for the life of it tell the difference between who they are and what they do. Additionally, many can not tell the difference between what they want and what other people want either. ER will reveal this difference pretty fast though and this is something that scares the hell out of conformists.

  (*) One week more and we will reach our 1 year RV full-timing anniversary and I have yet to install my PS2 in the bedroom (there’s a TV in there). I suppose if I followed my own rules religiously, I should have gotten rid of it long ago.