Tag: life

Best purchase ever

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What is the best purchase you have ever made?
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I try to not get too attached to items and keep them replaceable.

I grew up in an environment when we couldn’t really own anything expensive. One day, my parents brought home beautiful fake adidas pants with three stripes (I think it was abidas or something like that). I went out with it and a kid pushed me down during play (probably on purpose) so my pants got torn. I learned by that mistake and the next fancy thing (a sweather) my parents brought, I didn’t wear at all. Then there was a birthday party and I wanted to put it on, and it was already too small. I outgrew it. So that didn’t work either.

Later in life, I had a chance to experience shopping stuff I need and want, I need and don’t want, I want but don’t need, and even stuff I neither wanted or needed. I it was around my mid-30s when I established some stable principles and conclusions about purchases.

  • The satisfaction you get from a new car and from a new book is not too far out but the car is far more expensive
  • Storage space is a limiting factor for the things you want but don’t need. Space management requires a good sense of minimalism. Once you learn how to throw away things, you get attached to items even less and no longer buy as much as before
  • You can’t be cheap on stuff you’ll use for work, and some of the hardware that frequently fails, I keep fallbacks. I have multiple backup glasses, some kept at specific locations, multiple headphones, countless chargers, cables, connectors, a battery that can recharge my computer and so on.

So with this philosophy, the items I buy are replaceable. Even my book collection is fluid, with a constant outflow of books that get donated.

If I can nominate one item that was life changing and at the same time inexpensive and easily replaceable, that’s my Apple Watch. It keeps me walking.

What would you do if you won the lottery?

~ Veselin ~ 12 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What would you do if you won the lottery?
View all responses

A fellow blogger Dr. Victor Bodo wrote about the types of happiness. He identified 4 types of happiness by origin – coming from pleasure, from purpose, from spirituality, and one from following a wise path. Lottery winnings can greatly impact the first type of happiness. However, I don’t think they can make me younger, smarter, healthier, wiser, or more connected to the family and community, leaving the 3 other types of happiness unchanged or at risk.

I once met a lottery winner while standing in line for bread. Those who have lived in communism know that shortages were common, and waiting in long lines for basic stuff was a daily chore. In my case, it was bread. An old man stood in front of me, loudly sharing the story of his life. Years ago, he had won the national lottery, with the prize being a large apartment. Winning didn’t spare him from aging—or from standing in line like everyone else.

So, in case I won the lottery, I think I’d rather invest the winnings and live a normal life than surrender to a life of luxury and riches. I might get myself an electric car 🙂

Last year I blogged that I think money can’t make you happier beyond a certain limit. I still believe it.

Do you remember life before the internet?

~ Veselin ~ 22 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Do you remember life before the internet?

I do, I’m old enough. The birthday of the Internet is officially 1983. I was 3 years old in 1982, a first-year kindergarten kid. My parents lived outside of Sofia because of permit issues – socialism regulated who lived where and they didn’t have permission to stay in Sofia. We lived in a rented bungalow in a village nearby that had running water but no bathroom. I was banned from visiting the toilet because my parents were afraid I’d fall in. We had flowers, trees, and a manual water pump. I remember that I ate the dandelions. The puddles had frogs. We were told touching the frogs would cause warts, so the interaction was with sticks and stones (no frogs were harmed). We had a small hill that was good for sleds in the winter. A train line was not far, and we had to walk by the tracks to reach the kindergarten.

The Web was invented in 1994, birthing a prototype of the modern Internet and many supergiant services. I was already hooked to computers by 1994. We had 8-bit computers at school, and I studied programming with Basic (ignore the first paragraph on that post). We also had computer clubs where kids could watch how other kids played, which was almost as good as playing yourself. Smoking was permitted inside so you could cut the thick gray air like cheese. I spent my summers around the chess bridge club in Stara Zagora which had 20-ish XT and 80286 computers.

Both milestones I associate with the freedom to roam around and having lots of free time away from my parents. Sofia and Stara Zagora had fewer cars, and it was considered safe to let your kid play on the street with other kids without supervision. I was allowed to go to school by myself from 1st grade when I was 6, a right my kids are deprived of by law. Culturally, we got our highs from books, VHS videos, and audio cassettes. The influencers existed but spoke from the TV, rather than social media.

I’d say, life was simpler and not necessarily better or worse. I like my hot water and inside toilet, the Macbook Air, and the WIFI but playing football every day was also great. And can we get rid of the cars? That was such a civilisation-level mistake.

What sacrifices have you made in life?

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What sacrifices have you made in life?

I’ve made plenty of choices where I wanted two things incompatible with one another and chose one. I don’t feel like any of that was a sacrifice, I treat it as a choice.

For example, I returned to the university in my late 20s way outside of the ordinary university age because I realized I had too many gaps in my coding & engineering skills. In the following years, I combined full-time office work (with flexible hours, thanks to my former boss) with a relatively demanding education. It’d be common to leave home before 7am for a morning lecture, drive to work, work for 6-7 hours, and then go to the university for an evening session. But although physically exhausting, it felt great and I had a purpose. It was worth the effort.

I’m trying to not look at the loss after a bad choice with too much emotion when possible. The reason is primarily work. When deploying a new change, there’s always a risk that I overlooked something and caused major harm. You need to be willing to do these things despite the possible negative outcome, otherwise you won’t ever move. Many if not all of the beautiful things in life are hidden behind a wall of risk – choosing a career path, falling in love, having kids, investing. So many things can go wrong at every step. This is not a reason to stay home and not make any steps. Once things go wrong, revert (if possible), identify what’s affected, write a plan, execute, learn, and move on. This is an oversimplification taken from the software world but I believe in it.

So no sacrifices for me. Choices.

A risk to regret

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.

I’ve noticed that the two most common sources of regret for my last 20-30 years of experience are:

  • Missed opportunities
  • Coulda/Woulda/Shoulda thinking when a disaster strikes and I didn’t see it coming

The risks taken that paid off – what would I regret? For example, when taking my first mortgage, it felt like a great risk. The payment was a significant portion of my salary at the time, the period was long, and the apartment we bought was not great but we couldn’t afford anything better. The interest rate was high, and the seller had some non-disclosed debt and some people wanted their money back. It ended up fine, we renovated the property over the years and resolved the issues. Turned it into a home.

When I take a risk that doesn’t pay off, I also seem to not regret it if it was a deliberate informed choice taken without influence. I stopped insuring my previous car for theft and accidents. It got stolen. The saved premiums for 3 or 4 years didn’t cover the loss of value. Did I have regrets? I didn’t. I made a choice based on the amount of time I lost each year to deal with things like paint damage and vandalism. Covering the cost myself would’ve been cheaper and quicker than going through the insurer and the police on every occurrence. The same happened with previous vehicles, none of which were stolen. It didn’t pay off last time but I felt zero regret because it felt like it was an expected, although unlikely result of my math.

Most of the time when I felt regret, I didn’t see the negative outcome coming at all even if there were obvious signs in retrospect. For example, I played basketball. A second later I was on the ground with a dislocated knee. I didn’t see it coming. Lots of coulda/woulda/shoulda followed. However, the outcome was predictable, and the risk was taken when I agreed to play with unfamiliar clumsy kids. I blogged about bias, assumptions, and intuition, a couple of times this year.