Not All Time Is Created Equal
Am I saying one second today is not equal to one second tomorrow or in 1992?
No, but I am saying not all time is created equal when it involves your free time. The units of time are equal but the value of those distinct periods can be vastly different.
For instance, the holiday period has descended upon us, for better or worse
Would you rather experience the 50 year old cynicism about the holidays of our present lives or the (hopefully) holidays when you were four years old and Christmas was still a magical time. I would take December, 1972 all over again any time versus this year's. Of course, you can't turn back time nor should you spend too much time dwelling on the past.
What I'm saying is that the time in my future is not all worth the same to me and I'm guessing it's the same for you. Some of you may value summer over winter or days off during the week when your favorite activities are less crowded and your errands are easier to accomplish. With retirement in the not-too-far-off future I've been thinking about what times of the day/week/year mean the most to me.
Christmas in Key West was A-OK.
Not All Time is Created Equal - Swing Shift Work
If you're new here this can catch you up on the type of work I used to do.
Getting to FI from a Union Manufacturing job, part I (the good)
Basically I worked this crazy swing shift for about 10 years due to the fact it paid really well and I blew up my "career" well enough that I had to accept that type of work. Most of that time I worked a rotating 12 hour shift schedule of 4 days of work and 4 days off in perpetuity. For clarity, that means one week I would work 7 AM to 7 PM Monday through Thursday and have off Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Then I would work overnight Tuesday (really Monday night) through Friday (7PM to 7AM) and have Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off. A lot of my coworkers loved this because of all the time off and time they could devote to family and/or hobbies/personal pursuits. I'll admit that once you figure paid time off only having to show up at work about 165 days a year has a little bit of appeal. You spend less time commuting and you can go to the bank or grocery store on a Tuesday at 10 AM when the place is populated by blue haired retired people. Despite the appeal of that type of schedule for others, working this way taught me a lot about what I value in times of the week. I learned:
I don't give a shit about days off during the week. Sure, some weeks I had something like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off from work. Once I spent a day catching up on some needed rest I found I didn't do much useful with all of those days off. After all, being a social person, all of my peers who had normal jobs (almost all of them locally) were at work during those days/hours I had off. I realized that I didn't have enough solo interests to truly take advantage of all that free time.
You have to recognize this about yourself as you might be the exact opposite with plenty of what the kids call passion projects. I didn't have those so those week days off work were mostly just waiting for Mrs. Smidlap to get home from work around 5:30 PM. In essence, those were just disposable hours until evenings during the week. That's why I almost always accepted overtime during the week on my four days off.
The gold standard of free time is still Saturday and Sunday for me and us as a little family of two because stuff that I enjoy happens then. I love sport on television all year 'round (go ahead and judge, it's my life) and most of the good stuff happens on the weekend. The almost gold standard for me is evenings during the week and having Mrs. Smidlap around to eat and have some wine together. We missed so many of these during the swing shift days that I really appreciate it now.
As far as months or seasons go, I value spring and fall above all others. We like to travel while schools are in session. The prices are usually better and the spots we like to visit are less crowded and there are no kids around to offend my delicate sensibilities. Your situation might be different. Maybe you love summer break and Disney level stuff. To each his own, I say. You might be a big Christmas fanatic and those are your gold standard of days.
Spain.
The platinum standard for days is obviously vacation. The thing about now working normal Monday through Friday hours is not feeling the need to escape from the day to day grind. If my close friends lived within 30 minutes of here I might never care about travelling ever again, in fact. But that's not the case so most of our travel is centered around spending time with friends and family so that's where the high value applies for me. We're still trying to figure out exactly where we would most enjoy living once we stop working for money but a large part of it will involve what type of social circle we'll have and how available our favorite people will be. It's conundrum for sure.
Not All Time is Created Equal: Side Hustle Lessons
Since Mrs. Smidlap hasn't worked full time in almost two years she's been trying different combinations of part-time work. This my takeaway so far.
If you're going to give up your gold hours, only do it for a lot of money
There was one job right up the street at the wine store that seemed like a good fit at first. It didn't pay a lot but we didn't need a lot. The only downside was the work involved a lot of evenings and almost every Saturday for the whole day. Saturday is a much more valuable day than Monday through Friday. Evenings are more valuable in our lives than 8-4 or thereabouts. I sold my valuable gold hours years ago because the company paid me a lot of money for them. The juice has to be worth the squeeze after we worked all these years to put ourselves in a good position to turn down work that isn't just right, like Goldilocks. That hustle went away except on a fill-in basis.
Adjunct teaching has pretty easy overall hours for not too much money. It's clean and not physically demanding but demands some gold standard days/weeks. Like I said, we like to travel in Spring and Fall and this fall we had a mini retirement practice planned for two weeks in a mountain cabin. When the teaching assignment offer came up we cancelled the second week, which I now regret. I don't think that is something Mrs. Me will do again for the Spring semester. Once again, if you're selling your gold time it better be for lots of money, or at least more than you would charge for disposable hours/days/weeks.
The latest side hustle seems to be truly flexible so far. It's about the right number of hours but might not last forever. We'll see where this one goes. I've said it before, but this is why you put in all the hard work in the past and saved and invested well. It keeps you from needing to do something that isn't a good fit for your life.
I still have a bunch of time off between now and the end of the year and we'll not be travelling by plane anywhere. We'll see the in-laws across the state at Christmas and spend a couple of days in Boston visiting friends. We haven't been to Boston in 15 years so that should be fun. The rest of the time will be another attempt at feeling out a practice retirement at home. I'm looking forward to trying to figure out how to turn all the hours of the day/week/year into gold standard hours. We'll see how it goes. I'll going to keep working until I have it at least partly figured out.
What about your Smidlappers? What are your gold hours/weeks/seasons? Do you easily fill up free time with satisfying activities? I would love to know if that's the case while I sort it out.
It's not about the food. It's the company and memories. Not all time is created equal and time spent with friends is pure gold.