Life Changes

I’ve been a fan of coun­try music as far back as I can remem­ber. When I was 4, the big song on the radio was Tim McGraw’s I Like It, I Love It song. I alleged­ly would sing that song to my day­care teach­ers to tell them I want­ed sec­onds of lunch. Just in case you were won­der­ing if I’ve been like that my whole life, the answer is yes. I was quite precocious.

My music tastes have expand­ed since preschool. I now lis­ten to any­thing from Enya to movie scores to alter­na­tive rock to some EDM. Coun­try music will still hold a spe­cial place in my heart though, no mat­ter how much it sounds like top 40.

Why the long-wind­ed intro to the post?

My life is spin­ning around and chang­ing so fast I can bare­ly catch my breath. The coun­try song Life Changes by Thomas Rhett pret­ty much per­fect­ly encom­pass­es my life right now.

“Ain’t it fun­ny how life changes
You wake up, ain’t noth­ing the same and life changes
You can’t stop it, just hop on the train and
You nev­er know what’s gonna happen
You make your plans and you hear god laughing
Life changes, and I would­n’t change it for the world, the world, oh no
And I would­n’t change it for the world, the world, oh no”

God is cer­tain­ly laugh­ing at my fee­ble attempts to make plans!

New Job

I’m thrilled to announce I have accept­ed a new posi­tion with a new com­pa­ny in the DMV area! This job search was real­ly inter­est­ing com­pared to the past hunts I’ve done. My mis­sion was­n’t to find the high­est pay­ing or most pres­ti­gious job this time around.

After the first week or so in my job in the DC area, I knew it was­n’t going to be a good fit for the long run. The title was the same as my pre­vi­ous posi­tion, but the job duties we actu­al­ly did were far dif­fer­ent than what I was used to. I gave it a bit to get me set­tled in the area and then pol­ished up the ol’ resume. I’ve fig­ured out I don’t like being a con­tract work­er or being depen­dent on a con­tract to have a job. This posi­tion is cur­rent­ly in a bridge con­tract and thus might just.….. end one day if it does­n’t get picked up for the next X years. That lack of sta­bil­i­ty is not cool.

I also fig­ured out I like a cor­po­rate envi­ron­ment. I like it when every­one in the com­pa­ny is work­ing towards one ulti­mate goal and not a bunch of dif­fer­ent teams with dif­fer­ent missions.

This new posi­tion is a bit of a pay cut upfront. I’ll still be hourly, which is a shame since I like being salaried, but the bright side of being hourly is get­ting OT pay. This new job offers OT at 1.5x my hourly rate, so that will help make up some of the short­fall. I nor­mal­ly don’t like to work over 40 hours a week, but I can pret­ty much guar­an­tee I’ll have weeks when OT is expect­ed. This new job has MUCH bet­ter ben­e­fits than the one I left so that’s some­thing to get excit­ed about as well.

There were many good rea­sons to leave this last job but I, of course, had to leave the best one for last.

New Partner

One of my goals for 2019 was to get back into the dat­ing world. For the first 3 months or so, I want­ed to focus on me and my hap­pi­ness. I also lived in my friends’ base­ment and did­n’t feel it was appro­pri­ate to date while liv­ing there. Then I moved to my awe­some new place in Capi­tol Hill with my awe­some new room­mate and no longer had that par­tic­u­lar excuse.

Then my friend Michelle came to vis­it and we had a great con­ver­sa­tion about dat­ing that made me real­ize I was ready to date again. I real­ly want­ed to take my time and ensure I had recov­ered from my last rela­tion­ship. I knew I was ready when the thought of learn­ing about some­one and their life did­n’t seem like a chore or a huge emo­tion­al burden.

Short­ly after that rev­e­la­tion, I had anoth­er. The pos­i­tive impres­sion I had of a guy at work was­n’t just “this is my cool cowork­er who has excel­lent tastes in nerd cul­ture” — it was feel­ings. I had a crush on my cowork­er! It turns out my radar for pick­ing up sig­nals was work­ing just fine because it turned out he liked me too. Always a mag­i­cal feel­ing when that hap­pens! I knew he would be a good part­ner for me when we could have a live­ly debate on who would win if they ever came face to face: Car­men Sandiego or Nan­cy Drew. (feel free to dis­cuss in the comments)

I’ve dat­ed a cowork­er in the past and I don’t think I can real­ly rec­om­mend it. There’s a rea­son there are so many say­ings like “don’t shit where you eat” and “don’t dip your pen in the com­pa­ny ink”. I don’t work direct­ly with him and feel con­fi­dent in our abil­i­ty to be civ­il if things went side­ways. I told him I thought he was worth the has­sle and he absolute­ly is (insert the gag­ging nois­es from my room­mate she makes when we get too ‘cou­ply’). (Side note from Erin: cou­ples are GROSS!)

Hav­ing this bud­ding rela­tion­ship in my back pock­et added a new ele­ment to my job search. I actu­al­ly had anoth­er offer from a com­pa­ny before get­ting the offer from my new com­pa­ny. I turned it down as I did­n’t think it would be a good fit. Accept­ing the first job that came along just because I was dat­ing a cowork­er would not have been a good deci­sion long term.

New Time

Late­ly, I’ve felt like I was burn­ing the can­dle at both ends try­ing to jug­gle hav­ing a social life, hob­bies, basic life main­te­nance things like laun­dry and meal prep, work, spend­ing time with my new part­ner, writ­ing for the blog and run­ning the podcast.

Some­thing had to give.

I took an inven­to­ry of all the things in my life that I was doing and took out the things I have to do — cook­ing, clean­ing, work­ing, etc. I was left with a list of things I’ve cho­sen to do. I’ve def­i­nite­ly been guilty of tak­ing on too many activ­i­ties in my life. Peo­ple ask me if I want to do some­thing and I cheer­ful­ly say sure! .….….only to real­ize lat­er I don’t have the time to devote to the project to have it be the best ver­sion it could be.

I start­ed the scal­ing down process at the end of last year when I real­ized I was so incred­i­bly stressed try­ing to do every­thing online. All the side hus­tles I start­ed were tak­ing up a lot of time and men­tal ener­gy I just did­n’t have. I also was­n’t enjoy­ing them near­ly as much as I enjoyed oth­er activ­i­ties that were falling by the way­side. It’s been almost 3 years since I last touched my expen­sive quilt­ing machine. I’ve also neglect­ed to play through some video games I bought in the past.

All of that is a long-wind­ed way of say­ing today’s episode of FIRE Drill is the last one I’ll be doing on a reg­u­lar basis. I have had some amaz­ing expe­ri­ences and met count­less peo­ple. I’ve learned, laughed, and grown as a per­son because of the pod­cast, but it’s time for me to move on and do things I enjoy for a more ful­filled life.

My week­ends are pre­cious time now that I am back work­ing a full-time job. I had to say no to many fun activ­i­ties in the past as we record­ed on Sat­ur­days. Since I have left the pod­cast, I’ve been able to go hik­ing with my room­mate, par­tic­i­pate in the DC Bike Ride (near­ly 20 miles of closed roads in down­town DC!), and play more video games. I’ve been able to beat Super Smash Bros Ulti­mate World Of Light and get start­ed on Mario Odyssey. Next month my favorite game of all time, Crash Team Rac­ing, is get­ting a remas­tered release on the Switch and I intend to play the bejee­bers out of it.

This week­end is Camp FI Mid-Atlantic and not only do I get to attend it with­out hav­ing to wor­ry about record­ing new episodes as sched­uled, I don’t have to wor­ry about find­ing cool sto­ries about side hus­tles or think­ing about the week­end in terms of cre­at­ing con­tent. I get to just.….. attend the week­end and have fun with old and new friends. The week­end after that, my boyfriend and I are going to go to Chesa­peake, VA to hang out with friends and explore the area. I would be so stressed out try­ing to make that hap­pen with the pod­cast still on my plate, if I could go at all.

I am thrilled J and I were able to accom­plish so much with the pod­cast. We record­ed over 150 episodes togeth­er, got over 1 mil­lion down­loads and changed count­less peo­ple’s lives with our con­tent. I am so glad she is going to keep run­ning the pod­cast after I leave. The com­mu­ni­ty cre­at­ed around the pod­cast is so great and sup­port­ive. I wish her all the luck mov­ing forward!

New Housing

Speak­ing of mov­ing.….…. the time for me to move again is rapid­ly approach­ing. You might remem­ber I recent­ly drove most of my crap belong­ings from the Mid­west to my new place in DC. Well.… with the new job and my new rela­tion­ship all being in North­ern Vir­ginia, it no longer makes much sense for me to stay in DC. The com­mute com­ing home could be quite hel­la­cious depend­ing on traf­fic and acci­dents that occur on any pos­si­ble route home.

I’ve also real­ized I don’t real­ly like not hav­ing access to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Con­gress. I fol­low pol­i­tics close­ly and while I might not con­tact my rep often, when I do, the issue is very seri­ous. I com­plete­ly under­stand why the colonists rebelled against the whole ‘tax­a­tion with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion’ thing. It’s not great.

It’s inter­est­ing that cost of liv­ing is not real­ly a fac­tor in me mov­ing. The finan­cial­ly opti­mal sce­nario would be to stay put, but I’m not real­ly liv­ing my life by finan­cial opti­miza­tion strate­gies anymore.

Instead, I’m liv­ing by delib­er­ate­ly spend­ing on things I enjoy and not spend­ing much on things I don’t. I had the plea­sure of attend­ing Ramit Sethi’s book tour last week and he touched upon this. His book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, is now 10 years old (holy cow!) so he updat­ed it in a sec­ond edi­tion. I did­n’t own the first edi­tion, so I’m hap­py I bought the new book and can read more on his con­cept of Mon­ey Dials. Basi­cal­ly, dial up the things you like, and dial down things you don’t like.

I am dial­ing up my hous­ing costs by mov­ing to an apart­ment with a room to sleep and a sep­a­rate room for activ­i­ties like quilt­ing and gam­ing. It could be a 2 bed­room or it could be a 1 bed­room with a den. I love liv­ing with my cur­rent room­mate, but I real­ly don’t like restrict­ing my pos­ses­sions to one sin­gle room. I learned this while liv­ing with my friend before I bought the Din­gle house, while I was liv­ing in the Din­gle House in a stu­dio apart­ment, and while I was liv­ing in a base­ment when I moved to DC. I am the best ver­sion of me when I can do things I enjoy and those things take space.

Now, this isn’t to say I’m going to go crazy and spend $3500 a month on a lux­u­ry unit. I’m still going to be respon­si­ble and try to lessen the hit to my spend­ing, but I have dras­ti­cal­ly changed the para­me­ters of my search this time around. I am grate­ful I can afford to live on my own in this crazy expen­sive place thanks to my deci­sions in the past. I’m not sure it would be pos­si­ble if I had a mas­sive car loan or tons of stu­dent debt hang­ing over my head.

Life Changes 

“Life changes, and I would­n’t change it for the world, the world, oh no
And I would­n’t change it for the world, the world, oh no”

Thomas Rhett and I have that in com­mon. I love this life and all its changes!

Thanks for read­ing! How is life going for you? Any big announcements?