Today, I am taking a mental health day. It’s the first time for me, taking a single day off for mental health and using sick time to do it rather than taking a longer vacation and calling it “mental health” tongue-in-cheek. But, although I have called my vacations “mental health” tongue-in-cheek before, I am taking today seriously and have spent a fair bit of time (the better part of the last 2-1/2 hours) making myself focus on that topic that has eluded me for years (and about which I have spoken on here before): What’s my passion?

Although I had decided on Monday that I needed a day off to recharge (it has been a very stressful few months at work, but I promised myself I wouldn’t think about work today), it was actually a meeting with my financial adviser yesterday that helped me clarify my goal for today. I had come up with a number of “generally good” things to do on a mental health day: stretching, meditating, listening to music, sitting on the front porch, spending time with loved ones, and above all, not thinking about work or commissions (I told you I’m taking this seriously), but I did not have a clear idea of the topic of meditation. But, as I discussed with my finanical adviser, I am in an unusual position for me: my debts are paid off, and my emergency savings will be rebuilt soon, and then—for the first time ever—I will have money coming in that I am not furiously socking away towards achieving financial independence. Don’t get me wrong—I’m ecstatic to finally be in this position—but it’s uncharted territory, and who better to ask about unplanned finances than a financial adviser? He gave me some good advice, and that was: I need to figure out my passion, what it is that’s worth saving for—and perhaps more importantly for someone so deeply entrenched in a saving mindset—something important enough that I’m willing to part with that hard-saved money.

As those who have read my blog before know, this is absolutely not my first time trying to tackle this question. Ever since 2020’s existential crisis on realizing I was not going to have the house I’d spent my adult life working towards, I’ve been wrestling with that question. The trouble is, every time I go to try to address it, I can’t pinpoint anything that is so exciting that I’m willing to puruse it with the fervor that I pursued the house. While circuit design can be fun sometimes, and writing can be fun sometimes, neither one is something I want to chain myself to until the day I die. I truly envy those people who do have such passions. It must be so wonderful to have that clear sense of focus without the distractions of other intersts intruding. And, as I realized today, trying to force myself to commit to a single thing, I inadvertently discovered that my “passion” is to be free to explore my interests as they arise, knowing that none of them is likely to be permanent. To do that—bringing this back to the original point my financial adviser was leading me to—I of course need to have the money to invest in the interest, but perhaps more importantly—given my history of working a lot and saving a lot—I also need to have time I can dedicate.

The good news is that with everything paid off, I hope to have my emergency savings built back up by August (maybe even June if I’m aggressive), and then I won’t need to continue to make the level of income I’m making now. Every time I have taken time off, the thing I have craved most is simply not having to get up and go to work. So, why not quit my day job and live off my savings?

Some interests, say, writing C# code, are essentially free to pursue: I already have a computer, the development environment is free, and all I have to do is start writing code. Writing stories is another such example. While there are tools to streamline the process or help organize thoughts, the fact is that Notepad or TextEdit is perfectly capable of doing the job, and if additional formatting is desired, there are free markdown editors or OpenOffice or Google tools that can be had free of charge.

However, many (I might argue most) interests do require some financial investment. While there is free (or low-cost) PCB design software, it’s not (in my experience) very good. And, even if I can design the board for free, it will still cost money to have it made and still more to put the parts on it and make it functional. Arts and crafts require drawing or painting materials and paper or canvas. Music usually requires an instrument. Astronomy requires a telescope. Rock-climbing requires safety gear and a travel budget. The list goes on. The point is, it would be unwise to quit my day job to have all the time in the world but be unable to afford to actually do anything but sit at home and watch YouTube.

So, there needs to be a balance. The extremes (no work, all play, but no money; or all work, no play, but plenty of money to do it) have not worked and are not likely to work. There is a happy middle in there somewhere, though. I am fortunate in that I’m not starving or barely scraping by—quite the contrary; I am grateful to be in a solid position financially—so I have a combination of time and earning potential to be able to do both. The question is, where do I draw that line?

The answer is, it’s complicated.

It’s complicated because there’s more than just how many hours I work and how much money I make in that time. I mean, it could technically be reduced to that, assuming I could convince my current employer to let me work exactly the number of hours I calculate I want/need to work. That is, however, unlikely, and it’s also overly simplistic because my work with my employer is not my only potential source of income. I can also consider writing part-time; going to work someplace locally, doing something like working retail at the hardware store, grocery store, or gas station; switching to gig work (e.g., designing circuits for hire rather than writing stories for hire); or maybe even finally getting my company off the ground (sheesh, next year will represent 10 years of filing for a company that has made less than $5000 in its entire existence…). Or, maybe a combination of all or some of those.

So, in good engineering / management fashion, let’s try to figure out where the hard limits are and start working from those. Obviously, I have to make enough money to continue to afford my monthly expenses, and the minimum number of hours per month that translates to depends on what type of work I’m doing. I can start off by looking at the minimum hourly rate I would need to make if I continued working full-time (2000 hours per year) but not in my current role. We’ll estimate that at $20 per hour. Based on that, that rules out doing any kind of minimum-wage work because I would have to work more hours than I already am. So, that leaves a part-time engineering job, writing (with caveats), and gig work.

I say writing has caveats because the amount I make depends on how much I charge per word, which in turn affects the availability of work. While my experiment of letting people pick their own price has been a little disappointing (most—but not all—people want to offer less than I was charging before), it has been enlightening in that I’ve seen that 1.25 cents per word seems to be the “sweet spot” for people. But, that means that to meet at least $20 per hour, I’d have to be coming up with 1600 words per hour (and that doesn’t include time spent discussing the project, doing revisions, and don’t even get me started on taxes, insurance, or padding to cover periods where there aren’t a lot of commissions available). In other words, I would be exchanging my current job for full-time (or more than full-time) work writing instead. That is… not what I had in mind when I thought about giving up my day job. If writing were truly my passion and I were more than happy to invest 10 to 16 hours per day doing it, that might be fine. But, as I mentioned, I only want to write some of the time, and that means that I need to be making more. Nevertheless, even if I charged 2 cents per word, it wouldn’t be enough to cover all the “ancillary costs” already mentioned (taxes, unproductive time, etc.), and I would be trading full-time engineering for full-time writing but at much lower income. While I could charge more, say, 5 cents per word, I expect that the number of writing projects would drop off precipitously. So, while writing full-time could be an option, writing part-time is likely not.

That brings me to gig work. An engineer for hire can usually command a higher rate than a writer for hire; however, there are caveats to it. I am already established as a writer with marketing channels I’m already using, and with a portfolio of over 200 stories, I’m a known entity. I would need to get marketing channels set up as an engineer, but I don’t have a whole lot to show on an engineering portfolio since almost all of my work has been at a company. While it’s not impossible to get that up and running, it does represent a higher risk and probably something that I ought to start setting up before leaving stable employment. The costs of commonly used development tools are also a factor since software licenses for, say, Altium, can be on the order of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per year. And, the “ancillary costs” associated with writing apply here, too. Still, I should be able to command a high enough salary to work part-time and still make ends meet.

Of course, if I’m going to do gig work for someone else, the alternative could be to go to work for myself and get my company off the ground. I did have fun with my business partner when we built our first product, and it might be fun to do something like that again. But, we have been trying off and on for years to come up with a product idea to get behind and have thus far come up empty-handed. While I will probably have to continue working full-time to fund development, this could be a path towards greater wealth if we can get off the ground.

And then, there’s the option of continuing to work at an established company on a part-time basis. The odds of being able to do that at my current company are admittedly low, but it might be an option at a new place.

Let’s not forget, either, that there’s the potential for a combination of these: maybe do writing and engineering gig work as it comes up while poking around at the “next big thing” for my own company? There are a lot of options available, and while financial security remains the most important consideration for me, there is a fair bit of leeway in there to explore. I’m finding myself caught in analysis paralysis.

Frankly, it is not surprising that this is where I find myself now. When I was much younger (circa 4th grade), I was very interested in astrology. Back then, I could tell you when each sign started and what its main characteristics were. While I still remembr the mnemonic (“Ram Bull Twins Crab Liverish. Scaly Scorpions Are Good Water Fish.”), I have to go through it to correlate which sign goes to what month, and aside from a very few, I couldn’t tell you what any of their characteristics are. Two that I can say, though, are Pisces and Aries. That’s because I’m one on the cusp of the other.

Throughout my life, I have felt the tug of both, but the stronger one has oscillated. When I was young, I was extremely Piscean: full of ideas but with absolutely no plan or interest in putting them into action. As I reached adulthood, Aries took over, and I focused squarely on the house, land, and the finances that would get me there. It’s now been almost 20 years under Aries’s influence, and to his credit, he’s gotten me onto land and into a house, and it is all paid off.

But, Aries is tired, and—despite the last 3 years being considerably more comfortable than the 4 spent in the camper—he’s still licking his wounds over not getting the house he wanted. And, Pisces has been growing impatient, having to sacrifice pursuing his passing fancies (and incurring the associated time and expense) so that Aries could follow this singular vision. Aries has run out of things to pursue, and Pisces wants to dabble. So, I think it is time that I assent to the changing of the guard. It is a strange experience to have spent my whole life moving in a direction and then running out of directions to move. But, hopefully in Pisces’s dabbling, Aries will find something new to pursue, and then we’ll charge off in that direction.

Regardless of what happens then, though, I need to focus on what comes next. My immediate goal is getting the savings fund saved up, but after that, I’m going to start having options open up, and I want to be prepared to make that choice when it arises.

Further confounding all of this is the complacency versus contentment discussion I keep having with myself. The barn is the prime example. It is not “nice”, and parts of it (the ones the animals cannot access) are not very safe. But, although it clearly shows its age, it’s still standing and affords shelter from the wind (albeit noisily) and rain (with a few leaks here and there, but there are plenty dry areas where the animals can get out of the rain). It is pretty well impossible to heat when it’s cold, but a deicer in each water trough works plenty fine to keep them from freezing. The animals don’t “like” it in there (unless there’s food, they don’t spend much more time in there than they have to), but they will go in there to eat or to get out of the sun. While I would like a nicer-looking barn with proper insulation, lighting, etc., I don’t think it’s worth it to spend that kind of money just for those things. And, because it’s not what I want it to be, I am also loath to spend money to make it look nicer or to reinforce the interior walls that aren’t currently serving any purpose. While I could spend the money to run electricity to the front of the barn (the non-animal side), the outlets I already have (with cords run to the front from the back but out of reach of the animals) have done well enough. It begs the question: am I lazy, or am I content to abide as it is? The accusing part of me tells me I’m just being lazy and that for not that much money, I could run another few circuits to the front of the barn for proper lighting and other things, but the other part of me queries why to spend any money (or get up on ladders—something I absolutely hate doing) if what I have is getting me by? Much of what I want falls into the same category: while I would like a proper, larger house (that isn’t a trailer house and that is more than 400 square feet), what I have is paid for and is doing “well enough” for me. Given this place cost $40k, is it worth another $40k to double the space? That tradeoff is one I’ve been having trouble making lately.

Then there are the things I “ought” to do but don’t feel particularly motivated to do. For instance, my dad has been telling me for years that I need to put up some shelter for the tractor and trailers. And, he’s right: leaving them out in the sun does make them break down faster than if they were shaded. But, the fact is that they’ve spent the last 7+ years under the sun already; would sheltering them now provide much benefit? And, in terms of cost, how much savings in reduced wear can I get, and how long will it take to amortize the cost of the structure in the first place? Given I just paid everything off last month, how long will it take to save up to buy the structure, or how long will it take to pay it off? And, what’s the worst that can happen if I don’t produce that shelter? I might have to replace the tractor sooner or perform additional maintenance on it that I wouldn’t have had to do if I’d kept it covered. But, I had planned to replace the tractor at some point with something bigger anyway. One could argue that I will get less for it if I sell it in poor condition than if I sell it in good condition, but again, it’s already been exposed for 7+ years. It seems unlikely to me that it continuing to maintain the status quo will have additional negative impact. Maybe I’m just not being creative enough in thinking through bad outcomes. Regardless, though, whether I should do it or not, I’m probably not going to until something compels me to think otherwise.

So, while I had hoped that the result of this entry would be a clear direction of, “oh, this is the thing I’m excited to pursue”, I find myself left with more questions. Perhaps a subsequent entry will address it further. At least, I do have the notion that working less and spending more time and money on things I’m interested in doing would be a good thing to strive for. And, putting money into a “hobby bucket” that might later be repurposed for barns or tractor sheds might not be a bad idea, either.