The Monday Read: Contentment?

Morning magic

I had to cover for one of our teachers this week. In one way that was a huge pain, as I had a bunch of work I was planning to do (including coaching sessions I had to reschedule), but it was also nice to teach again.

Seems I’m actually not bad at it, and I enjoyed being back in the classroom for a few days.

I am learning so much about myself, and what I want by being ‘retired’. Seems that work is not as bad as I thought it was, and stopping work is both less necessary and less important than I thought it was.

Next year is going to be fun 🙂

YouTube

Thank you for your support of the RetireJapan YouTube channel. I made a new screencast video: how to buy mutual funds on Rakuten Securities and a general video on 5 things you need to do to sort out your finances in Japan.

On the subject of YouTube, I’m hoping to get the channel certified, but you need a ridiculous amount of watch hours within a calendar year. If anyone is feeling particularly festive, I would be really grateful if you could load up some of our longer videos in a browser tab, then mute them and play them on repeat for a while…

The Forum

The Forum is doing well (24,772 posts so far). Here are the latest active threads:

This week’s books

I’m rereading Stephen King’s On Writing (SOO good) and I’m halfway through The Setup, by Dan Bilzerian. I have no idea who he is (which is funny, because every so often in the book someone will say how famous he is) and only got it because it had a foreword by David Goggins.

This week’s links

  1. Some good ones in here from Morgan Housel: A few stories I like
  2. Wish I had learned this 15 years ago (not just read, but learned): Over a period of 35 years, index fund investors earn 100 percent more money than those who buy actively managed funds
  3. I like to think RetireJapan is contributing: How to Weave the Artisan Web
  4. This rings true, but I’m not sure Twitter is quite there yet: Social Quitting
  5. Mister Money Mustache is back with a good reminder: The California Effect
  6. Speaking of MMM, he just launched a weekly ‘best of’ email series. Of course I subscribed immediately 😉
  7. AI is accelerating (did everyone see the new B-21 bomber is going to be able to fly without a pilot?): Is ChatGPT a ‘virus that has been released into the wild’?
  8. And of course it works in Japanese too: ChatGPT Works in Japanese, Too!
  9. This 30-minute documentary was really good: A Veteran’s Return from the Brink of Terrorism | Stranger at the Gate | The New Yorker Documentary

What do you think? Anything interesting in there?

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7 Responses

  1. ‘Seems that work is not as bad as I thought it was.’ – I’m sure this is a common feeling when work has ceased to be necessary. I certainly don’t stress about work any more now that I don’t have to worry if all my students quit!

    1. Yeah, choosing to do something rather than having to do it seems to make an enormous difference 😉

  2. You should check out who Dan Bilzerian is and how he ended up before taking any of his advice to heart.

    1. From what I have read so far I have no intention of taking any of his advice (apart from the ‘setup’ concept, I quite like that). It’s not really an advice book anyway.

      Not knowing anything about him makes it more interesting 😉

  4. Me will be retired end of next March!
    Mandatory, according to the city admin, once teachers are 65.
    But I’m not a teacher, just an underpaid, overworked ALT (31 years).
    Anyways, guess I’ll have to come up with some gig to support family etc.
    Good to see that you found your place.