patrick.net

1) no, I have not.
2) not many. Yes
3) if the new normal keeps me from being free, yes.

1) Yes
2) Somewhat. I'm always setting new goals.
3) Hopefully no. But time will tell.

Most of us are too busy day to day (work/ family / recreation) to take stock of where they are and more importantly where they are going. As much as my path is clear, who knows what is around the next bend?

DhammaStep says

Up until this point, have you lived a life you considered to be satisfactory?

What is considered satisfactory? Is it finances? Happiness? Family?

In my case I've personally had a satisfactory life so far. 2 of my own healthy kids, successful and attractive wife, and the ability to take in my nephew. Which brings up the meaning satisfactory. My wife's family is pure garbage. Dumpster fire. I have to deal with it daily and it affects my wife and myself a great deal. I have negative views about the situation we're in, not about the nephew himself. But I think you'd be better off asking on a scale of 1-10 of satisfaction.

I'm at 8 at the moment. Don't ask me in winter because it will be a 4. Though working out some plans to get out to Montana for a snowboarding trip. If this Covid shit keeps going on and on and on and on...... it will still be 4, vacation or not. I need sunlight. It's not about the cold for me. I like snow.

I’m pleased with how I lived so far.
I wish I had traveled more, but I plan to do that from now on.
I lived in a fun area and did fun things.
Talking to my father a few years ago he said to me “You’ve had an interesting life.”
I regret worrying about things that I probably shouldn’t have.
I wish I had spent more time with my parents, but I spent time with them in their final years fortunately.
I wish I had maintained close contact with my old friends, people drift apart.
There is a project that I wanted to do, which I can now do, but I don’t know if I want to expend the energy or just travel and have fun.
Overall I have been pretty lucky.

My life was unconventional, interesting to me, and largely “worked”……until it didn’t.
Most people have a fatal flaw that is waiting in the wings to fuck shit up for them.
It is extremely valuable to try to understand yourself well enough to identify your most pronounced weaknesses.

“Character is Fate”, which I attribute to Wendell Berry, is more profound the further down the path I go.

Yes. I wish I had more anal sex though.

I feel very fortunate. I have a great wife, kids, friends, community and a rewarding job. The immediate family is healthy and we are able to live in coastal SoCal in a house that I can totally afford and get to surf every week. I've travelled the world pretty extensively, partied in my youth and don't feel like I have missed out on anything. I have hobbies and a wide range of interests.

While my life is beyond satisfactory and I am more secure now financially/professionally than ever before, I realize that I need to do more to give back to those who are less fortunate (beyond the sky high taxes I already pay to live in California). So I need to up my game in terms of volunteering or getting more involved in local politics/community to try and fix the many things wrong with California.

Porkchop,
You were smart not having excessive anal sex
You could be shitting your pants at random moments
;)

DhammaStep says

Up until this point, have you lived a life you considered to be satisfactory?

Did you achieve personal goals? Could you have done more?

If the traditional way of life is on its deathbed, will you lose opportunities you hoped for in the future?

Yes, it turned out better than I expected, so far.

Many personal goals achieved.

Everyone could always have done more.

Great quote I just ran across:

"Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly." - Marcus Aurelius

Deep dive on cocaine and hookers pending before answering these ponderous questions. Only problem is, hookers terrify the shit out of me and have no idea how to go about it even if I could, and the few times I tried cocaine in misguided youth, it was a non-starter and I don't have the vaguest interest in it.

Face it, I'm a Caligulan failure. Trying to be Hunter isn't in the cards. Does this make me a Dharma fuck up? Should I torture myself with this failure of potential?

Allen Saunders: Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.

Up until this point, have you lived a life you considered to be satisfactory?

Yes. The last 12 years have been heavenly since I quit my W2 to pursue real estate full-time. Now, I get to do whatever the hell I want to do at whatever time I want on my own terms.

Did you achieve personal goals? Could you have done more?

- Yes, they have turned out better than I initially thought. Yes, I could do more, and I’m in the process of doing that.

If the traditional way of life is on its deathbed, will you lose opportunities you hoped for in the future?

- No. Once I cleaned up all the partnership stuff I created in the last decade…hopefully by next year, I’m ready to go at anytime from this earth. My mission has been accomplished. I’ve built multi-generational wealth. Family is taken care of. At this point, the longer I live, I more charity work/donations I would do. Life is great.

If I cloned myself a thousand times and randomly placed the clones around the country, I would find a few in the gutter, a handful in prison, a couple on various baleful lists, and some in universities, executive suites and high government positions of privilege.

So, the exercise of attempting to control the past and future do seem a bit moot in the Zen stochastic scheme of things from the perspective of a single cipher. I've been in the lower percentiles of fate in the past, and am probably in at least the upper five or so percentile now, so the wheel of fortune varies.

Clearly, with all the unanticipated wars going on, I could quickly wind up back in the shit barrel without notice.

clambo says

Porkchop,
You were smart not having excessive anal sex
You could be shitting your pants at random moments
;)

I do that anyway. Besides, the pressure it puts on your prostate, that submission to authority, and the excitement of getting anal herpes or HIV? tantalizing

There are many people in San Francisco who would seriously agree with those motives.

They tend to die young from the results.

porkchopexpress says

I do that anyway. Besides, the pressure it puts on your prostate, that submission to authority, and the excitement of getting anal herpes or HIV? tantalizing

I respect people's choices. If they mind their own business, do no harm to others, it's none of my fricken business about the sorts of choices they choose.

That said, anyone who's had a digital prostate exam knows it's an abomination of nature.

I would say I’ve done ok. In a lot of ways I have been a huge success, especially starting from where I did. I’ve built a solid and lucrative career, packed with many job skills, some of which are pretty darned rare. I could lose my job but it’s doubtful that I would stay unemployed very long. I’ve built some wealth. Nothing fancy, but I’m up most of a million, have 20 years on a pension that should pay out someday. And most importantly, I married extremely well. She’s a huge asset, works and makes great money, and gave me three absolutely great and beautiful kids. I’m proud of them all. I guess my main “giving back” has been volunteer work with kids. Mostly coaching baseball, but also some stuff at my church. It’s been a good run, but I feel paranoid that it could all be taken away by the winds of ill fortune and the tyranny of evil men with wicked plans.
That’s why I’m so obsessed with this Covid Plandemic. I think it’s a once in a century black swan with the potential for untold havoc and misery.

I feel the same way.

Nothing that you planned for can be counted on any more.

Some more grist for the mill herewith:
I was going to get rich doing a project in my mid twenties, of course things didn’t go as planned though no fault of mine.
I went back to working for the man, which I disliked, but I decided that I could control my spending and investing.
Since 1982 I did that, ever more aggressively until recently. In 1992 I stopped working for the man.
I sometimes had other business plans succeed, then fall through. All through it, I kept investing.
I gradually stopped worrying if something was going to be a profitable use of time, or not, or if people were going to flake on me.
Unexpected events caused me to change my life, I just “went with the flow”.
I told people that I am like a jellyfish; I’m swimming but actually I’m completely at the mercy of currents which take me where they do.
Now I just want to travel and have some adventures like I did in my summers growing up.

Yeah, more cosmic irony that you could work all your life, save, invest prudently, and then just have these wars and political forces sweep everything away again while holding you at the tip of a biologic gun. The illusion of achievable security is wiped away again.

Money could collapse. It seems to be the current strategy. The few liquid oligarchs are trying to steal by design what other people have built their whole lives. What we know for sure is the politicians in charge have absolutely no intention to work for the public trust or the public good. They are scrambling like the monkeys with their hands stuck in the jar somehow believing they can take off with the goods and leave the burning cities and populations behind.

Rumor is the European pension funds for police, military and civil service are mostly broke, but the people don't know it yet. Supposedly, the 'Great Reset' is part of the Globalist plan to keep them down on the farm before they find out. Populations can't demand their non-existent benefits if they are conveniently dead. One observer said Macron tried to embezzle a billion into a Cayman Islands account, the transfers were caught, and the money re-patriated. You think you are going to hear about any prosecution? Just like here, nada.

Life is a journey , Not a destination.

I had a stepmother, who was manipulative, n was poor for about 10 years when I was young. After that experience, everything is so much better comparatively.

Gotta deal with wife's pms n later menopause. Rest of the life is ok.

There's a saying and I'm paraphrasing but it's along the lines of... you spend your youth chasing money so that in age you can spend your money chasing youth