Having decided roughly what I want to do with my life, this is me trying to figure out a way of actually getting there.
The Calculations
8 weeks to go! :D
It's been a weird 9 days. I've been fighting off a particularly obstinate cold bug, which hasn't left me with enough energy to do anything beyond read Little House on the Prairie, watch Gilmore Girls, and Think About Things.
When I'm sick I feel more vulnerable, and that has forced me to recognise that my plan of going part time with my current firm at the end of next year probably won't be possible. There's not much I can do about it, it's just politics, which I knew about before but which my healthy, optimistic brain decided to gloss over in favour of going 'yay, this would totally work, problem solved! :D'.
Going part time in my current role, based on my current salary, has been a major component in my medium term plan ever since the decision to move totally killed the old one, having to acknowledge how unlikely it is was a real blow and left me feeling pretty low. I was still sick, though, still with lots of time to think, and thinking led me to calculating, and calculating led me to the conclusion that, on paper at least, it might not be strictly necessary? If I got a part time job locally, it wouldn't pay anything like as much as what I could make where I currently am, but it might not need to. In fact, according to the calculations, it wouldn't need to. There wouldn't be much left over by the end of the month, granted, but if I spend the next 18 months focussing on building up a good savings pot, and I make sure to keep the spare bedroom in a state where I could take a lodger at a moment's notice in case of emergency, that could still be all right?
This is an exciting realisation, but also unaccountably terrifying. I don't know why, when getting out of the rat race was always the aim, but somehow seeing in black and white that it would be possible for me to quit the race and still live comfortably, in a place of my choosing, and not starve to death seems just wrong somehow. The idea that I could actually really just decide to leave a Good Job for something else and still be somehow okay has this sort of horrible, finite destroying-my-life-beyond-repair feeling to it, even though 1) I know it could be done, I'm looking at the numbers and other people seem to manage; 2) getting to that point has been my sole aim for the past 3 years, and 3) I work in the most impersonal industry in the world and if I make sure to leave in good standing, they would have no qualms about taking me back should I change my mind.
I think this is a good post, but also a getting-ahead-of-myself post, and an I-have-too-much-to-deal-with-to-be-focussing-on-this-right-now post. First I need to move. Then I need to figure out finances post-move. Then I need to get to February 2018 in one piece, and then I can finally worry about what happens next. But I'm going to leave this here as a reminder that I did do the calculations and the calculations said yes.



