Today, I’m debuting a new series of posts, which will be randomly posted and of an at best uncertain number. I can sense you’re already excited and intrigued by this unexciting turn of events, Dear Reader. Hold your shorts, please. Posts in this series will cover things that I’m either looking forward to experiencing, or seeing how they’ll unfold, when I FIRE.
We’ll start out with a rather sleepy post.
Hey! I didn’t say “a post that’ll put you to sleep.” So, wake up! This post isn’t even three paragraphs long and you’re already nodding off?! C’mon now! You can make it at least one more paragraph a little further. I have faith in you.
OK. That’s better.
And with that, let’s begin.
Job #1
In the waye, waye back, when I was just a wee sprout out of law school, I got a job in no small part because I’d previously swallowed my pride and took a temp job at the same organization. Taking that temp job turned out to be a great idea because it not only floated me for a while, but led to the permanent position.
Although the job wasn’t my first full-time position—that distinction being accorded to a low-stress gig that I had between undergrad and law school—it was the first one that I felt was a “real” full-time job. A “proper” job. In part, this was because it was a job directly related to—and obtained in no small part because of—my law school training, which I’d just amassed crippling debt obtaining.
But also because of the pay. For one thing, I was a salary man, and not a wage earner. In my mind, salaries were for grown-ups. But, also, the salary, while “meh,” still was more than I’d ever earned before from a job. Even if I was just barely treading water, at least my head was above the waterline and not below it. Given that I’d by then come to the full realization of the enormous debt burden I’d taken on, that felt . . . relieving. Maybe even a little good.
General dynamics
The group I worked with generally was OK. I worked closely with, and was sort of supervised by, another lawyer. I’ll call her “Nubby” because I remember she had abnormally nubby fingers. She reported to the head of our group. I’ll call him “Hand Thrower” because he often, literally, threw up his hands in frustration. (Note to self: there seems to be an inadvertent pattern here involving hands). I regularly worked with el jefe, too.
There were two other people at Nubby’s level in the group, and a few people who held jobs at a lower level than mine. There also was a well-seasoned lady who worked in the group and was a bit of an outlier because she was half-soused much of the time and sort of, kind of, but not really at the same level as Hand Thrower. I’ll call her “Drunky.”
Among the things that made this job and workplace distinct were that Hand Thrower and Drunky didn’t get along. At. All. Aaawkward. At least for me, the new guy. It became apparent pretty quickly to me that the rest of the group was loyal to Hand Thrower and most definitely showed no allegiance to, nor enthusiasm for working with, Drunky. I took the cue. But being a Midwesterner through and through, I have a natural tendency to be nice (and expect the same from others). So, I never showed Drunky the only-thinly-veiled hostility that some of my colleagues did.
(I can’t get no) job satisfaction
While the Hand Thrower-Drunky Cold War didn’t appreciably affect my day-to-day life or job satisfaction, the other distinctive element of the workplace did. You see, Hand Thrower, Nubby, and two other colleagues at Nubby’s level were a tight clique. Tho I tried a bit, it quickly became apparent that I’d never be anything more than an interloper as to The Clique. That said, interloper status was a higher security level than that held by the rest of the group.
Members of the Clique would often end up in Hand Thrower’s office at the same time, inadvertently. Frequently, tho, within about 10 minutes of all of them being so assembled, one of them would close the office door. Why’d they do that?, I’d think. Are they talking about someone in the group? If yes, is that person me? Then I’d file through things I’d done, and interactions I’d had, in the previous days and weeks. Inevitably, I’d find no reason for me to think that I was the subject of discussion. But I could never be sure. And as I was only a Clique interloper, I knew I’d likely never know for sure.
But The Clique, their closed-door meetings, and their sometimes mean-spirited comments about others in our group (and not just Drunky), cast a shroud on the place that had the effect of causing me unwanted, even if unwarranted, nervousness.
I learned to live with all this, even if I didn’t like it, by compartmentalizing things and doing good work. I also hedged my bets by being on the lookout for any sign of displeasure with me or my work.
An off day
After I’d been working my group for probably eight months, Nubby took a day off. The day before she left, we discussed things that I was working on, and she provided some feedback and gave me some pretty standard instructions on handling things for her while she was away. I wasn’t her official out-of-office contact, but she had her voicemails forwarded to me in her absence so that I could field anything urgent as best I could. All fine and good as far as I was concerned.
On Nubby’s day off, a stakeholder with whom Nubby worked regularly (I’ll call him “Michigander,” because he was from Michigan) called and left a voicemail for Nubby. Michigander was a bit high-maintenance and demanding, but not altogether unpleasant. And he and Nubby seemed to have a great working relationship. After listening to Michigander’s voicemail it appeared that the matter wasn’t urgent, but that a call-back might be warranted, if for no other reason than to assure Michigander that we’d received his message and to get details on whatever request he had.
But, I dropped the ball and plum forgot to call Michigander back. The following day, Nubby came into my office cube. Nubby, who alternated between not off-putting-but-no-nonsense to generally pleasant, was upset that I’d not called Michigander back. Quite upset. More upset than I’d ever seen her. Certainly with me, for sure. Nubby’s reasoning basically amounted to a contention that my not calling Michigander back made it look like we were providing bad customer service and jeopardized Nubby’s good relationship with Michigander. Given that the voicemail didn’t elicit any sense of urgency, and that Nubby had a good relationship with Michigander and anyway called him back when she returned to the office, I had (and still have) every reason to believe that Nubby overreacted.
Shaken, and maybe stirred
But I was shaken. This was the first time that any superior of mine in a workplace setting had been upset with me, overreaction or not.
That night, for the first time in my life, I had trouble sleeping. That sucked.
I figured that the restless night was a one-off and the temporary result of my being rattled by the day’s events. But, The Clique. While I’d previously been pretty sure that I wasn’t the topic of discussion in their impromptu closed-door meetings, I now was less certain. So, I thereafter became even more concerned about what went on in those meetings. Would I be reprimanded? Put on performance review? Fired? No, I thought. After all, this was one minor incident. They wouldn’t possibly take any extreme measure for a minor and first offense. Or would they?
I had an equally fitful sleep the second night after my discussion with Nubby. Uh-oh. Is this now a thing?, I thought.
Turned out, yes. Yes, it was a thing. An unpleasant thing. A thing that I had to live with and ultimately adapt to. The end result has been that over the last few decades (yes, decades), while I almost never have problems falling asleep, I’ve enjoyed scant few nights of more than six or seven hours of uninterrupted sleep; usually far fewer hours of uninterrupted sleep. A typical night goes like this: (1) fall asleep at 11:00 p.m., (2) up at 3:00 a.m., (3) back to sleep at 4:00 a.m., (4) wake up for good at 7:00 a.m.
Jobbing on the sleep
But the origin event didn’t just trigger my sleeping issue. It begat something else, too. Something that I’d also never before experienced. Something more pernicious: a type of stress that was unique to work and since has been omnipresent for me. That stress has since usually been low level. But certain triggers can make it spike. Either way, “unique” and “omnipresent” were very carefully and specifically chosen words.
Surely, Dear Reader, you of rational mind might say to me, “You’ve made a career. And as you yourself have stated on this blog, you’ve set a solid enough course that you hope to FIRE at the end of this year. So, you’ve clearly reached a point of job expertise and financial stability such that you need not feel that stress.”
My rational brain understands that. My lizard brain tho? Different story.
I’ve consequently concluded that I need to step away from work, my most nettlesome stressor, even if temporarily (whatever “temporarily” means/turns out to mean, even it ultimately turns out to be “permanently”). This is my addition by subtraction approach.
Maybe the problem is too deep rooted at this point to fix. Or maybe it’s (also) fed from something far deeper than mere work-related stress—however unique that particular stress is to me—and so may be a far more complex challenge to resolve.
I got to move it, move it
But, the effects of my move to the Mountain West from the Midwest a few years ago give me hope. For many years before our move, I’d felt a latent unhappiness. I self-diagnosed the issue (which issue had nothing to do with stress, much less the type of stress I’ve discussed in this post) to be in large part related to what I considered the abysmal weather and endless flat terrain of the part of the Midwest that I lived in. I concluded that a move to the sunny, dry, mountainous Mountain West might just help address that issue in a positive way.
My diagnosis and prescription turned out to be absolutely spot on. Since the move, my day-to-day attitude has done a 180. The effects also showed me that I’m not unfixable. That’s something I’d wondered about before the move.
A while back, I wrote a post about my reasons for wanting to FIRE. Not mentioned in that post—tho I strongly considered including it—was my desire to rid myself of these subjective work stresses, and to fully embrace the fact that I and The Family are not dependent upon my job to stay afloat. Because, math.
I don’t think that this transformation will occur quickly. But I’m confident that it eventually will happen. And I think there’s still a chance it’ll happen relatively soon after FIREing. In any event, I’m anxious to start the experiment. And maybe, just maybe, finally get a full and blissful night of sleep.
And in the end . . .
Readers of a certain age and/or who are fans of ’80s alternative music may get the title of this blog post. Others, not so much. The line comes from the song “MLK,” by U2 (in this humble blogger’s opinion, one of the best songs on what he considers the band’s masterpiece album, The Unforgettable Fire). U2 being a band with three lifetimes. Lifetime one lasting from the band’s founding through the Rattle and Hum album. I’ll call this period “the golden years.” Lifetime two being the period of the Achtung Baby and Zooropa albums. This period, I’ll call “the shaky years.” And lifetime three being everything that’s followed. I’ll call this period “Oh-good-lord-please-please-stop! years.”
Interesting point about sleeplessness and simmering stress levels as ever-present as long as we’re working. I usually just think about FIRE in terms of getting my time and life back, but the stress and sleep part is huge too!
Yeah, after having continuously worked or been in school for several decades, reclaiming time and life is high on my agenda, too.
I had a high stress job because there were so many employees I was responsible for. The place was by nature a fire or explosion waiting to happen. It was, in fact very safe because we made that our first priority. But still, by nature it was a bomb waiting for a careless act. We were so highly regulated I actually worried I might go to jail because of any of a thousand things one of the hundreds of employees might do without my approval or knowledge. But I’m such a laid back guy that I rarely felt it, unless there was an actual fire or explosion. However when I decided to retire slightly early I noticed I felt almost unbearably light on my feet. I had carried that weight so long, decades, I thought it was natural to feel it on my shoulders. But now it is gone, and has been gone for five years since I left. There are still stressors in life, health worries, grown kid worries, spouse worries, what to do with the rest of my life worries, but they are like pebbles compared to the boulders I was carrying before. It is the oddest thing to have lived through. I have tried to describe it to others but I can’t quite find the words.
“I felt almost unbearably light on my feet. I had carried that weight so long, decades, I thought it was natural to feel it on my shoulders.” That is exquisitely stated, Steve. And I’m delighted to hear that you experienced such a dramatic change. Gives me more hope that I’ll experience the same.
Hey Steve and FIFTP, a really challenging part of work stress are those situations that slightly stressful, but not so stressful that you do something about it. Kind of like holding a glass in your hand. But if you keep holding that glass over an extended period of time, your arm starts to ache. Its not the weight of the glass that is the problem, its the period of time over which you need to carry it. After a while, the glass just feels like part of your body. Its only when you set that glass down that you realize how ‘heavy’ that burden was.
Keep up the good work in your blogs – both of you.
Thanks, Mr. C. That’s a great analogy. I’m hoping to FIRE at the end of this year, and am very much hoping to find that the glass I’ve been holding for a few decades has in fact been at least as heavy as I’ve thought.
And keep up the great work on your blog, too. I absolutely love it.