Welcome

Life on a Shoestring

  • A pivot

    Who would have thought that so many things would change in so little time. 

    I am a commuter now. I travel to work two hours each way, twice each week, eight hours in total. Voluntarily. But I am getting ahead of myself.

    Earlier this year I got diagnosed with skin cancer. The good kind. Removable. Control the controllable and accept that what is outside my power was my aim. The execution not as smooth as the aim. Between the tears, the madness and the fear there was me trying to move through it all. Scared. It must be a symptom of something rather than a random result, a clue, a lesson to be learnt. Be it my body demanding rest or that things needed to change.

    Rest is such a foreign word. I am yet to get good at it. Perhaps that is what I have been missing all along in my life.

    Change is a little easier. I have gone down to four days and eventually changed jobs keeping my reduced week. The move helping in bringing the cashflow under control. Other elements of life are still unclear and further amendments and rewrites will be needed. With a shift to perspective somewhere along the way. I refuse to accept that this life is by default, but is up to us to design and execute. With whatever resources, time and money, that are available to use.

  • Welcome to my Life on a Shoestring

    “The Only Constant in Life is Change” Heraclitus

    It is early 2025 and I have just created a brand-new tracking spreadsheet, and it suggests I have a negative £100 to last me the remainder of the month. Of course, this is still a hypothetical spreadsheet … it assumes I would drop a day of work. I am also yet to compute the contribution from my hobby. But it feels disheartening. Given I have not spent excessively in the first few days this shows that reducing spending alone will not breach the deficit created by this one day of hope. As an aside all of the fixed costs have been accounted for.  

    Designing your life and making choices has many dimensions, it works until it does not, and then the trick is to somehow pivot without dropping everything else in the process. This is what I am trying to do. I have created a life that I dreamt of having, creative side businesses, career that I love, a home to call my own, independence, numerous voluntarily endeavours that fulfil my intrinsic need for contribution, a life partner and our joint adventures. It does not fit.  

    Whilst adding each layer I have failed to see the constraints it was putting on me, my time, and my health. Reduction of hours at work is a pivot I would like to try.

    I am choosing a Life on a Shoestring.