It’s been a fine vacation. We’re visiting a beautiful place and getting to spend time with good friends. I miss Luna the Big Dog™, but otherwise there aren’t a lot of pressing needs demanding my return home. On the other hand, I have no dread of returning. It will be fun to get back to the tasks of making the island place our forever home. That’s due to being retired, of course, but there’s more to it than that.
When I worked in tech, for a while I had kind of a niche practice consulting with companies that were failing. Many of them were publicly held — one failing company was just finishing their IPO! I quickly realized that every decision was evaluated not by how it might make the company stronger, or benefit the customers, or make better products, but by its likely effect on the stock price. That, in turn, was subject to the vagaries of the Keynesian beauty contest that is the stock market. It was frustrating and shallow, and took the fun out of trying to do great things.
Life has been a bit like that, too. Make a home improvement? Not just because it makes me happy, but “how will this affect the resale value of the home?“. Plan an activity for my children? “How will this improve their chances of getting into the right college?” Publish an essay or a short story? “Will this have a negative effect on my future marketability?”
I’m in a home that is a vacation every day, exactly where I want to live and with whom. My criteria for decision making center around “will it make us happier?“. The view from our front porch isn’t quite as nice as this one from the tentalow:
(though the back porch view rivals it), but I have yet to see a home anywhere that I’d trade for what I’ve got.
—2p