Week #29- The review of the year so far and what is ahead in 2022

For those people that know me, it will come as no surprise that I have quite a regimented and formal system of reflecting on how things are going. This begins with my daily journaling and reflection that I complete every day before I do anything else. Layered on that are weekly reviews where I pull together the things from the week that I am truly grateful for, the quarterly reviews against the milestones that I set at the start of the year and a good old yearly review at the end of December ready for the challenges of the new year.

At the start of this year, we mapped out all the milestones that we wanted to hit in the first 3 quarters of our early retirement journey. We knew that with such a massive, life-changing plan that we needed to keep ourselves on track if we were to have any chance of making it work. We purposely didn’t map out the final quarter as we really didn’t know where we would realistically be up to by then.

We have just come to the end of the third quarter and not only need to review our progress to date, but also come up with a plan for the remainder of the year so we have something to work towards. We though that it would be useful to bring you along for the ride to let you see how we are trying to work things out.

To keep things simple, we group our thoughts into 4 main areas of focus- careers and life, relationships, health and personal growth.

Career and life

• We have resigned and brought our careers to a successful close with a clear end point and separation at the start of the summer holidays. We have left on good terms with good people and we are very clear in the contacts that we want to maintain in the future.

• We have sold our house and moved out. Our possessions that are not with us in the campervan are in storage awaiting our house purchase in the Dales to complete.

• We have implemented our budget plan for early retirement and are living the reality of those plans.

Things to do:

• We need to complete our house purchase in the Dales.

• We need to further research and explore additional income streams that we may want to exploit such as tutoring, Air BnB, exam marking and agency work for the future.

• We also need to ensure that we are tax efficient over the next few years and we engage an accountant to look after the details of any additional income that we generate.

Relationships

• We are happy with how we have transitioned into early retired life and the positive effect this has had on our relationship. We are both enjoying more time together and having fun on our adventures.

• We have worked hard to ensure that wherever possible we spend as much time in the present as possible, rather than dwelling on the past or dreaming of the future. The definition of life is now- if we do not focus on that present moment, life will just pass us by.

• I am happy with the care package that we have put in place for my mother and she is happy with those arrangements too. I am acutely aware that we will have to continue to monitor the appropriateness of these arrangements over time.

• I am maintaining my daily contact with Mum and we are ensuring that we keep in regular contact with the people that we love.

• We have built systems to make sure that we maintain regular contact with the people that we value in our lives. Just like our possessions, we have minimised this to only those people that we love and bring value to our lives.

Health

• I continue to work hard on my relationship with alcohol. I successfully completed dry January, I do decide when to drink or not, and would love to give up drinking entirely…however I enjoy a drink and it genuinely brings me joy to sit down at the end of the day and have a beer. The mental battle continues- I know that a life of no alcohol will be good for my ongoing health, but I need to be happy too.

• I completed my course of grief counselling which I truly valued. It provided me with the space and the skills to move on with my life after the death of Dad and Mark.

• I have continued my morning Headspace meditation practice and I am now well into my second year of consistent morning meditations. The practice brings me great joy…even though I still find it really difficult to do!

• We have maintained our daily movement goals consistently since retiring and enjoy building it into our lives.

• I have not done as many traditional workouts on the road as I had envisaged, but I need to reframe my perspective on why I need to workout. When in the mountains, it would be stupid to do a traditional workout in a carpark by the van when I have the most natural gym in the world contained within the mountains. My philosophy of Crossfit- constantly varied activity needs to be revisited. I naturally have constantly varied activity when out on our adventures- I do not need a Crossfit workout to supplement that activity.

• I have enjoyed experimenting with intermittent fasting- simply reducing my eating and digesting hours to let the body work more naturally as it  evolved to do. I have tried to limit my eating window to 10 hours and I have had no ill effects. I simply try not to eat before 10am and after 8pm.

Things to do:

• I need to incorporate more mobility work into my movement goals. As I get older, I get more inflexible (if that is even possible?)- daily mobility work is an investment in my future.

• Continue to develop more primal movement practices in my daily life to enhance my long term health- this may include breath work, posture developments and a general rewilding of my movement.

Personal development

• We have embraced the minimalist philosophy of less is more and generally de cluttered our lives. The process of moving house into storage was a great opportunity for this and we have enjoyed the process of making our lives more simple.

• I continue my morning routine from my working days as it brings me a consistent start to the day and I enjoy the personal reflection time. Jackie also has continued her very consistent start to each day!!!

• We are consciously trying to read more and we are enjoying this particular focus escaping daily life and social media.

• We have launched our blog and it continues to grow as expected over it’s first 6 months.

• We have been brave and put our lack of skills and discomfort out there by launching an Early Retirement Wanderlust YouTube channel. It is so out of our comfort zone it is beyond belief- but life is about learning and experiencing new things. If we can only have a small impact on helping others in a similar situation to ourselves then that is good outcome.

• We have had to learn quickly about filming and editing, as well as being on camera. Being a beginner at something new is a very humbling experience.

Things to do:

• Continue to develop our YouTube channel and the skills and knowledge that are required to do that. Evaluate the growth of this blog and enhance accordingly.

So that’s it for another week. We hope that you have enjoyed this insight into our plans for early retirement. There is no blueprint to follow or guidebook to read…we are just going with what feels right for us at this moment in time.

We are currently heading north through France for our ferry crossing back to the UK. It is going to be a strange world that we descend into with the Queens funeral on Monday. We have been a little distanced from the whole National feeling by being away- that will definitely change on Monday.

Have a great week,

Richard & Jackie