It's the Moopy and Mopey Show

Hi Moopy:

I have much to say. Be warned!

First of all I want to apologize. Once AGAIN I mistook you talking about your fears to be more than it was. I thought you were getting cold feet and you wanted to boot the whole "plan" and totally start all over again with some other scheme (a scheme that looked frighteningly like the scheme everybody else has in their rulebooks and involved us staying in NJ).

So, I was trying to debate you point by point on why we shouldn't boot our plan, when in reality you were just sharing your fears. Sounds like a familiar situation huh? An unnamed husband giving advice and solutions when he should just shut the hell up and say "I hear what you're saying" every few minutes? :)

So I apologize for that.

But I really feel strongly about many of the things we are hashing through. Frankly I don't even have a strong view on what we do per se. I think I'm more concerned about being too absolutist in our thinking or being held back by our fears or other external things (like comparisonitis, "it's what you do", feeling out of the loop, we're in a cage of our own making and the door is open and right there--we just need to walk through it, etc. All of these euphemisms we use to describe why other people are deeply unhappywith life when frankly life is pretty good across theboard).

Also, my views mainly hinge on the argument that just because we think there's a chance (and honestly I think it's a really small chance, but I digress) we might not be happy with doing something "outlandish" (like quitting our jobs and travelling and having other amazing life experiences), it DOESN'T MEAN WE SHOULDN'T STILL DO THESE THINGS. If we want the experiences we should just go TAKE them (take what you want...isn't that what Moopy says?) and let the f*cking chips fall where they may.

Who's to say we won't be unhappy with doing the"traditional" thing? (I bet the odds of us being unhappy there are a lot greater than being unhappy choosing the untraditional thing--and keep in mind you can choose to go back and forth between universes too...more on that critical point later.) Granted if we choose the "traditional" road, we won't have the discomfort that comes with being outside the herd. We'll be a bit nutty and not have kids or whatever but we'll still be inside the the herd enough to avoid too much "discomfort". But isn't that just being "half a B------"? I'd rather go "zero B------" at least for a while and do some really really cool stuff and THEN we can go back to living inside the herd again later if we so choose.

I also think you should watch out for having too much of an "either/or" mindset. I really feel strongly about this. Our plans and schemes don't have to be all of one thing all the time (in the herd forever or OUT of the herd forever?). Our lives will have many phases and they can be whatever we want. Why do we NEVER have to go back to work once we quit? Who wrote that rule? And in addition to thinking of being non-either/or in a temporal sense (we quit for a while then work for a while, repeat as desired), we can think non-either/or in a current sense: maybe we work part time or even full time and live a diversified happy life someplace WITHOUT going in and out of the labor force. Or you can add permutations on top of that too (one of us lives in phases of work/quit/work/quit, the other works part time, repeat and switch roles as desired).

You see what I mean about throwing out the rules? Who wrote these rules about how you're supposed to work and live, and who says they have to apply to us (or anybody for that matter)? It is not arrogant or flippant to utter that--it is the truth. I truly believe that.

As an aside, the only time one makes a one-way decision in terms of being in or out of the herd is whether or not to have kids. Once you have 'em, you're stuck with some degree of herd life no matter how you slice it. But we've already solved for that variable, thus yet another door is sitting there right in front of us, wide open.

As for the money issue, I think there are many things we should hash out; both of us have issue we need to sort out together and severally. I think we both should re-read Your Money or Your Life and get our arms around the "Making a Dying" concept again as well as many of the other concepts in that book. I don't mean that in a condescending way, I really think we should once again put our minds into that book and its universe of thinking and roll it over a few times and make sure what kind of goals and dreams we really want.

This email is already too long but there are several talking points remaining!! :) I think we should put these down on our list of things to talk about overthe coming days/months/years:

* The "Budget" issue
* Our "Number" and why I'm beginning to think it doesn't matter all that much
* More review of the Waterfall/Reservoir method
* What we REALLY want to do with our lives
* How important it is to be careful when we "compare" ourselves to others--not just in standard of living and things we have/buy/do but in the broader sense of being in our out of the "herd"
* Any other talking points that Moopy wishes to discuss

Moopy, I know this is a work in progress, but I also know we are going to do some cool stuff together.

Love,
Mopey