Mikes Thoughts

retired this and that

Lately I’ve been paying attention to the YouTube algorithm after watching a few videos from seniors living their lives in the United States. Living on social security. Finding their ways to make their lives not heaven but not hell either. It’s also not a purgatory. A thing between that has maybe has a bit of both. Some things I know I would have experienced if I would have stayed. The feeling of just not having enough. Not because I would need a new car or a phone. The other things I took for granted when I worked in California. The going when I wished to go. The trips on Amtrak then north and south. Flying to Seattle and Vancouver mostly to walk there. Finding the moments to spend on dinner for my daughter and I. We did some nice dinners and weekends away too.

What I realized watching the vloggers is people do not want shiny new and big things. One eloquent senior only wants a vacation a year. Not a car. Not new clothes. This really struck me. It’s not wanting big things that are shiny and scratch free. It’s wanting a thing one had before. The vacation with family for a week. The feeling that a dinner out can be done on the week after social security clears. I know all those feelings.

I also know in many ways I’m fortunate. I managed to leave that reality a decade ago. Not because I made my fortune in a startup or crypto. I had my challenges then. In debt past my eyeballs. A car from the divorce that was slowly becoming not usable. A family disintegrating. A series of not stellar consulting gigs that ended at the worst moments. I paid off the things though and figured out credit cards aren’t healthy for me. I bought a slightly used car that was the best thing done. I had a job finally I turned into full time.

And I knew I had to go. I could not just live in California or elsewhere in America. I wanted something. Something over there that would let me have another life. And I did it. Now instead of watching the YouTube channels and mumbling a “me too” I think more people should try a change and not say me too. Take a risk. Spin some dial.

There are other worlds that will take you. You can have something different than a me too moment. Not that life in Cambodia is perfect. The same money the content creator sees coming and going stays longer here. I can have a wife here. Do things with the money. Find a life.

I’ve never believed retirement is about settling. Saying something like,

That’s my lot in life and I’m stuck with it

It’s not. No one is stuck unless they make it so. Richard Bach once said,

Argue for your limitations and sure enough they’re yours.

Why do that? Here’s the manifesto.

My manifesto

It’s really simple. Don’t settle. Find your way to not ever accept what you don’t want. There comes a point and time when you can say time for a change. It’s not marshaling strength for the unknown. It’s believing in yourself. When I left a decade ago I had no idea where I’d end up. I did things I had wanted since forever. Found this world balanced on an Edge that let me define not settling. It became this slow movement in Asia. This time to take in the things. Even a global pandemic only meant I changed. I decided I needed another route to not settle. So I took a different path. It all turned up to be back here. In Cambodia. But really it’s not this place. It’s finding The Place. There are legions of places to go where it’s not settling. I could tell you a place and a way but it really has to be your place and your way. The real thing about this manifesto is that you are in control. There’s no right time to decide. It’s the time you choose. Why live a life of desperation borrowing a little from Thoreau. Why not invent your statement. I will say it’s not about cars and homes and land and fancy doodads. None of those appealed to me. I had done them all. Did I find happiness? Feel I had reached my zenith? Wrote the closing chapters of my manifesto? No. I just lost them all. Really though I gained. Gained in having nothing. Because nothing is always easier than something. It costs less. It carries no expectations. It just is. I found this out when I told my ex wife she could have it all. I wanted none of the things. Not shares. Not parts. And then I ran away.

Truly she became the loser in it. Those things she valued became these chains around her neck. I figure now it was not about winning or losing. It was about going. Finding that yes I could. I could go with no real plan. No goal. Maybe life in Southeast Asia is best spent with none of those things.

That’s the prime directive of the manifesto. Just go. You can believe in yourself. Trust the little voice within. Find your next. And then your next after next. Like a person told me once find the best final act in life you can. Then do it.

flash forward to today

I did not finish this so a few more thoughts on things today. I figure in scheme of things I found this thing with my wife that has given me some happiness. It took long enough. There’s no guarantee on it. No recipe but having a Khmer woman is probably the very best thing some American expat needed. I’ve called her my last woman. But in reality she’s been best.

I wander over for the morning and coffee. Always feel like my best life happened once I left America. It took this much planning and that much desire for enjoyment and change. Then my wife came along.

Take a look at your needs. Does America really make it a nice retirement life? It’s easier than you think to change.