Keep on truckin' and Carpe diem

After a few days of sunshine, it is overcast with a bit of rain today. I am working remotely today as I have to get the car repaired so while in a cafe now, I will soon be working from the mechanic's. Almost 1000€ for the coming repairs and for those counting, that is currently about 3111 STEEM. Insane.

I have a terrible condition that calculates most of my spending in STEEM as it really hits home how much work I have to do on Steem to collect it. There are of course other benefits to both being on Steem and for engagement than just earning, but sometimes I wish I would have been able to buy some more along the way. This is always the way though, never enough.

Over the last lifetime, I don't consider myself having had a life filled with luck but at the same time, things could have got a hell of a lot worse than they did and I could have been in a much worse position. One of my colleagues said the other day at lunch something along the lines of;

at the end, you aren't going to wish you had worked a little more in your life.

I disagree. This position is only valid if there is enough padding that in the lead up to the end one is able to cover costs and not have to be oppressed by economic circumstances. There have been times in my life where I have enjoyed myself financially and then not too long later, had unexpected costs come that left me wishing, I had been a little more conservative with my finances. was the fancy dinner worth more than the later economic hardship?

The type of sentiment my colleague holds is a position of privilege as he is in a position where he will likely never need to worry about his financial capabilities and is already likely in the top 1% of earners in Finland. People hold similar thinking for exercise and things too.

"You won't care much about six-pack abs at 80".

No, you likely won't. However you will likely care if your quality of life is filled with health problems because rather than taking care of a young body, you partied and ended up creating a poorly conditioned middle aged body that only degrades faster from there. While I have never had a six-pack myself, I am quite positive that I wouldn't have have had many of the opportunities (especially socially influenced) if I wasn't in some kind of decent condition. I know that my stomach issues have had a profound effect on my life conditions and relationships. '

I think the thinking of, "you won't care when you are old" is part of the YOLO life as people have an availability bias of the present and the future is always uncertain. I see it from a probability perspective however where the probability that I will get a fair bit older than today means that I have to provide for those times, economically and physically.

Of course the future shouldn't be all consuming as the present moment is where life is lived but in all likelihood, the future becomes the present experience. I Carpe Diem (seize the day) not as a YOLO approach to life but a reminder that in the present moment is where opportunity lays to build the future. Each moment provides us a chance to change what our future experience will become and while we will never really know what could have been, statistically we are able to assume that if we don't look after ourselves, our future is going to be less good than it could be.

Many people talk of economic frustration and the impeding implosion of the global economy, increasing taxes, decreasing employment, automation, AI and all the other factors that are going to impact upon all aspects of our lives from our financial position, to our education, health and personal relationships yet, many do very little in preparation.

So, while some people have the privilege of not worrying about what the future holds, many of us are likely going to regret not having worked more in life, not having invested when we had the chance and, spending our time, energy and money frivolously.

For me at least, I know what it feels like to have bad health, I know what it feels like to struggle economically and, I know what it feels like to have both of those conditions together which makes it very difficult to get out of the rut as while one might want to work more, poor condition restricts opportunity. While health may be wealth, it only provides life resources when it is applied to earning to produce value that is exchangeable for goods and services.

While many of us are looking for work/life balance, we have to also consider the time of life line and make sure that the balance we find is able to maintain our existence at a suitable level of living standard. This is of course a challenge because the future is uncertain and we do not know what we are going to have to face, or what unexpected events will arrive on our doorstep to wipe out all that we have invested up until that point.

Now I am off to the mechanics to spend 3000+ Steem for 3 hours work which is, 7% of the holdings that have taken me nearly 2.5 years to collect. That is 204 posts of earnings. It is interesting to visualize the work I do in life relative terms.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]