If you consume enough FIRE content, you’ll soon enough realize that most blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels can be slotted into a small list of categories.
Slot machine
First are the nuts-and-boltsers. These generally cover what you actually need to do to reach FIRE. Maxing out retirement account annual contributions. How to open up a taxable brokerage account. Roth conversion ladders. In short, practical stuff.
That’s not my blog. I’m a dolt at explaining stuff in a so-easy-even-a-three-year-old-could-do-it way.
Then there are the cleveristas. Their authors drop unconventional but smack-you-in-the-face-obvious-and-useful cleverness on the regular. Ideas maybe just one degree from “normal,” but that have outsized benefits. Or 180 degrees from “normal” but on hearing them make one think, “how in the world is that not the norm?!”
That’s not my blog. You want terrible puns? I’m your guy. You want life-changing contrarian and easy-to-implement ideas? Hmmm, not so much.
Third are the interviewers. Interviews of FIRE community/investing folks, behavioral science experts, and others who can rain down knowledge.
That’s not my blog. I’ve never interviewed a single living soul for these pages.
I like all that content. But my blog falls into yet another category: the my-storyians. Some are hugely entertaining. Mine? Others? Not so much.
Work, a round
I’ve recently thought about this because the lemme-tell-you-my-story content isn’t just interesting because of the one-off stories told on those platforms, but also because the reader/listener/watcher gets to see how the content creator changes over time. Sometimes changing in unexpected ways.
To wit: my relationship to work. When I FIREd, I expected I’d work again. Likely in a part-time and/or entrepreneurial capacity. Doing exactly what . . . I hadn’t the foggiest clue. But working along the lines of what I did during my full-time career in the legal industry—just at an eye-wateringly high rate and/or only in the subareas I really loved while working—wasn’t out of the question.
Things have evolved much differently than I could’ve imagined.
First, I took a (part-time) job far earlier than I figgered I would. In mid-2022. Mostly cuz 2022 was a lousy investing year and that was my first year being FIREd. My lizard brain didn’t care that our numbers said, “don’t worry, it’ll all work out.” No, it was all sortsa agitated and ornery. And said, “Hey! Do something!” And so, I took a lowish-paying part-time job and did an increasing level of gig work.
I also did some way-more-lucrative contract work. And not just any work. Rather, work that I mostly enjoyed while working full time. To my surprise, when all was said and done, I found that I didn’t like the work so much. More to the point, I found that the lawyers made the work a drag. To be sure, they’d done just that during my full-time career. But in those days, that was both a constant and a given. Needing to work, I had to mentally isolate the work, which I liked, from having to endure the tiresome lawyers, which I didn’t. Doing that was easy, if for no other reason than that it was necessary.
When I did the contract work in 2022, I couldn’t separate the two elements—the good work and the tiresome lawyers. I didn’t then have to endure the lawyers. Cuz I didn’t have to do the work in the first place. Put another way, avoid the work which, I mean, I liked but didn’t lllooovvve, and I avoid working with the tiresome lawyers, which I unequivocally disliked.
This might not seem like a big deal, but for me it was revelatory. But for living the experience, I dunno that I’d have come to this realization. At least not then.
In 2023, I reluctantly agreed to again do more legal industry contract work. My parameters were even narrower than in 2022. Work that I liked even more, and fewer hours per week.
After the gig ended, I came to the same conclusion as I did in 2022: the lawyers sucked all the enjoyment out of doing the work. Another revelation for me. I began thinking that I really might be done with that work for good.
In 2024, another legal-industry contract gig was put on my radar. My instinct was to say “no.” That was a change from the previous two years, when I was instinctively neutral on the matter. I nevertheless agreed to hear more. Cuz I planned to quote a ridiculously high rate that’d all but certainly would be met with a swift “no,” but that if it didn’t might minimize any consternation I felt at dealing with lawyers.
The person needing the work done ultimately flaked out on me, so the opportunity never became live. I made no effort to reconnect. Here’s where the lived experience over time—my evolution—comes into play. I didn’t just not want to do whatever work this person had in mind or to put up with the lawyers. I didn’t ever want to do the work or put up with the lawyers.
A sense of peace and calm washed over me upon this realization. It made me think that I was well and truly done with the work.
But I admit to having felt a twinge of sadness. Sadness at realizing that a chapter of my life—a decades-long, well-paying chapter that I gave so much to was well and truly over.
2025 is the first year since I FIREd in which I haven’t been offered legal-industry contract work. That feels odd. But I’m not sad. Cuz that peace that I experienced in 2024 since had sunk deep into my marrow.
Problems solving
On the other hand, there’s my part-time work. I hoped that I’d like it. But I certainly couldn’t know if I would. Even if I didn’t, I could leave at any point. I mean, this ain’t a career for me. But I’m sticking around there cuz I like most things about it. The people and socialization. The facility and proximity to home. The schedule and the flexibility.
On the other hand, the job’s soothe-my-lizard-brain benefits have mostly been obviated. Our investments more than recovered.
Surely, we’re in for another bear market tho. A bigly one if you ask me. Probly Maybe my lizard brain will kick right back into 2022 mode. But unless and until that happens, I find myself in a paradoxical situation: I like the legal-industry contract work money, but I’m not interested in the work. And I like my part-time work, but the money isn’t a factor in wanting to keep the job.
In short, the part-time job solves for problems not at all involving money. No way I coulda predicted this situation when I FIREd.
And in the end . . .
Dear Reader, you may be thinking to yourself, “well, if this dummy likes his job so much, why don’t he go full time?” Well, like I mentioned, I like my schedule. Bur also the hours. Mid-days and in the aggregate less than 20 hours/week. Anything more than that and I’m likely to get all tuckered out.
“My-storyians.” Nice phrase. I never really thought about how you categorized FIRE blogs but you are absolutely right. And all of my favorite FIRE content is the My-storyian type. Because they are all unique and everchanging
Yep, once I got all I could out of nuts and boltsers, and gobs of benefits from the cleveristas, I settled on the my-storians (and, to an extent, the interviewers, which basically is a variation of the my-storians).