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Originally Posted by Scuba
I'm interested to hear how you think the qualitative adjustment could have been planned better.
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Thanks Scuba, it's a good question. We spent a lot of time working over the numbers, of course, but spent less time talking about the reality of me quitting my job. DW was 100% supportive of the whole enterprise, but we found there were some unstated expectations on both sides.
- With 2 kids at home, though barely, there is still a lot of house stuff to be done and we didn't communicate as well as we might have about division of labor on that front ... IMO DW rightly was looking for more help at home and I started out wrongly thinking that every day was Saturday for a few months anyway ... that took some discussions about what could be delegated effectively and what could not.
- I had ideas about doing more stuff together with DW with my free time, but of course she had a very full schedule w/o my help ... this has worked out fine in the end; we do a lot together and a lot apart and just needed to find a balance point.
- I do think there was some adjustment to me sitting in the kitchen trading on my laptop while DW did what she usually does in the mornings with getting people out the door to school ... solved that by converting the guest room to an office, so I have someplace to 'go' and do my thing.
- Also, we had to set up a plan to transfer $ on a schedule from the accounts I manage (investing, taxes) to those managed by DW (checking, local/emergency savings) to prevent the feeling that I needed to be asked for money (we both felt odd about doing that/having to ask, etc.) - so this has helped.
- A few other odds and ends about time and schedule, but those would have been good conversations to have up front, tbh.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scuba
I have also been wondering about my ability to exercise 3 or 4 hours a day when now I'm lucky to get in one hour.
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- I had visions of doing 3-4 hour bike rides daily, etc. but it hasn't worked out that way for several reasons ... most of my training partners still work normal hours, so that limits their time, and I really didn't want to spend 15 hours a week training alone, so I don't do that.
- Also, working on making new group of friends who are retired/flexible schedule led to other activities, which has taken time away from what I otherwise might be doing.
- Finally, on the training/competing/racing front, I am alot less interested in trying to be as competitive/fast as possible that I was even a few yrs ago .. probably some mellowing and just overall staleness after 20 yrs of competitive endurance athletics of one form or another, and that has also led to much less desire to just go out and thrash myself all the time.
Overall, on the exercise front, it's been nice to have time to do things as and when I want to as opposed to a schedule imposed by work or other time constraints.
YMMV of course, but these were mine.