Discipline to achieve freedom

I've had couple long days at work, because apparently this time – the transition through September to October – is a busy one, because of Hullut Päivät, in other words, Buy Bunch of Consumables days. And we deliver add catalogues of those. It's not that out of the ordinary though, still the same ol' same stuff: sort mail, deliver mail.

It seems to me that there's a trend to hate on "shitty jobs" – maybe for a reason, since being tied to a job you don't enjoy isn't a good life. Freedom is the magic sauce everyone wants. However, what people might not realize is that if you want freedom to not need to do things you don't want to, you need financial independence, and to achieve that, unless you are from a wealthy family that lays everything ready for you, you need to change your spending habits. You need discipline.

If you say you don't care about money, well, I guess it explains why you haven't achieved the freedom to do anything you want, because you spend it on things you don't need, but want. I do care a fair bit about money, increasingly so because I've worked long hours for it. Strangely this seems to make no difference to some, because the default is to spend it on something that is guaranteed to depreciate in value.

Nowadays when I have the rare occasion of buying some consumable, I try to ask "do I need it or just want it?" Not everything goes one or the other category though: smartphone I could do without, I suppose, but it provides me enough utility day to day that it is a worthy purchase, especially when getting it used for half the price of a new one just after a year of its release – that's how I got mine.

I definitely don't like the mailman job that much that I'd do it long-term, but it's definitely not the worst either. I get lots of exercise in without even thinking about it. Many of us do it for free, or even pay for gym membership. I get payed for it. Well, I have responsibilities and not exactly gym equipment on my use (I do have an e-bike though, which is fun to ride), but you get the point. The sorting part is actually the tedious one, but it is a pretty good concentration exercise, if we keep looking for the silver lining. Reading books feels quite easy after dragging my sight over hundreds of names and streets from the lists to spot so that stuff will go where it should. When I read some books they actually have something to say, instead of being cold data of letters of which purpose is to just help organize stuff. How nice.

Many people might not like their jobs, but the question is: how many are changing their spending habits, building discipline and putting needs over wants in order to escape it? Freedom doesn't come for free, but it must be achieved with even more work than is put it in a simple job. But I guess people won't go the extra mile to do that since the job already all they can tolerate.

Say you don't like money. You don't like jobs so you don't earn any income. To survive without money you probably would have to hunt and raise food by yourself. Are you ready to go that far in avoidance of jobs, to learn all the necessary skills associated with such lifestyle? Thought so, it takes a shit ton of discipline and work to do that, especially from most of us who are used to urbanized lifestyle.

My eyes are a bit heavy at the moment even though I do get enough sleep in – another discipline I've had to prioritize in order to manage with the occasional 12 hour day – but what keeps me going is knowing that coupled with disciplined spending habits, I save a great deal of disposable income that I can invest for the future.

There are many things I'd like to do even right now, but instead I'm building the discipline of creation, since I believe it is a valuable skill that can pay back in the future. Well, it actually pays back surprisingly quickly, in 7 days to be exact. Usually it takes years to start getting anything back from creative endeavors.

It feels a bit of a rat race at times, or squirrel wheel as we say in Finnish – which is the idiom I actually prefer, because I am not in any kind of race with others, trying to outconsume them.

It'll not last forever though, since tomorrow is Friday and in a month it is November (Thailand trip) and January is just after three months – the time when I can retire from my short career as a mailman and start my studies for massage therapist.

Pictures on this post I took yesterday after getting home from work and tediously getting my camera from my backpack after pulling over my bicycle upon weeing something "I just had to shoot" with the new toy I got recently: Nikkor 55-200mm lens, coupled with Nikon D5200.