What’s Up Wednesday

What I’m Reading

What I’m Contemplating

What I’m Playing

  • Ninety-nine – We have three people here at Keuka Lake right now, and this is the game to play with three.

What I’m Drinking

We had guests in town last weekend that were eager to try local breweries around Keuka Lake. I’ve, ahem, “had them all” so I zeroed in on a pint at each location instead of sampling.

  • Tried the beer Hopyard IPA at Steuben Brewing Company on July 21 2017. Gave it a rating of 3.5. Better than average IPA.
  • Tried the beer Coconut Brown Ale at Finger Lakes Beer Company on July 22 2017. Gave it a rating of 3.75.
  • Tried the beer Bee Side at The Brewery of Broken Dreams on July 22 2017. Gave it a rating of 4. Sweet and strong

Wednesday What’s Up

How I Get My News

  • I’ve put myself on a fairly significant news diet a month or two ago, even turning off my NY Times daily emails. I’m down to just two emails that I get, one in the morning and one at night. I generally don’t check Google News anymore, and I haven’t watched TV news in many years.
    • Axios AM – If I keep just one feed, this will be it. I love the bullet-style organization and the bold “why it matters” and “be smart” calls to action.
    • NextDraft – Unlike Axios, this isn’t coming from a think-tank group of analysts but rather the mind of Dave Pell. The humor that accompanies this afternoon email helps keep things a bit lighter. Warning: strong liberal bent.

What I’m Prepping For

What I’m Playing

What I’m Reading

  • Academ’s Fury (Codex Alera, #2) – Almost perfect light fantasy and great for a summer read. Looking forward to the rest of the series, though I’m taking a break to finish the Unhewn Throne series.
  • The Cubs Way – How can I not like this book, right? But here’s the thing: this is just a great book on organizational development and leadership and even raises my level of admiration for the team and its leadership in 2016.
  • Chapter Detection/Table of Contents Tutorial – Because I mostly read my books on my iPad and iPhone, I end up doing a lot of conversion from Amazon formats to EPUB. Some books just don’t look right when converted, so I’ve gotten smarter about cleaning them up (thanks Jim) and have even started using the Sigil tool for deeper fixing.

What I’m Listening To

  • 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow – I did not like how this new collection started, but the middle half is exceptionally good. Not Pet Sounds good, but better I think than Smile. Needs a few more listens.

What I’m Contemplating

  • Money, financial independence, and how to make the numbers work! Follow on research after my letter to Jacob and Matthew.
    • Portfolio Success Rates: Where to Draw the Line – This is the place to go if you want to see the research and math behind the “4%” or “25x” equation for preparing for financial independence. One great thing about being FI early: you have more time to adjust other variables (like spending, income from side hustles) when portfolio returns aren’t awesome.
    • The Milestones of FI – I’m a spectrum thinker, not a binary thinker and this is a great characterization of how you might think of different stages along an FI journey.

The $5,000 decision to get rid of my past

Ben Kuchera:

The games weren’t bringing me joy; they were just ghosts trapped inside jewel cases. The collection was a weight I was dragging from house to house, and opening a bin only to find boxed NES games always felt like metal poured into my gut. These games made me picture a young woman wanting to hug me when I was hurting, then deciding not to. The games were bottles of expensive, and then cheap, scotch in the garbage, double-bagged so the neighbors wouldn’t see how bad it was getting.

I never got this extreme with my board game collecting, but I can relate to the relief he feels after escaping the trap of collecting and completionism. It took downsizing and a transition through an apartment to let go of stuff, lots of stuff, including over 100 boardgames.