When The Thrill is Gone
What happens When the Thrill is Gone?
I used to love art work. In fact, I loved it so much that I started a side hustle as an art mogul. It was easy to learn the business because I was enthralled with the product. Each new serigraph I purchased for the venture was like a little present to myself. Between buying and selling each piece, I got to enjoy the product before making a profit. This rocked! For the first few months, at least. But then something curious happened. I woke up one morning and thought to myself: the thrill is gone!
These gorgeous works of art became nothing but pieces of paper. Valuable pieces of paper, but pieces of paper none the less. On any given day, I might see four or five original paintings come in and go out. I no longer salivated as each new package arrived at my doorstep. I no longer had the urge to rip up the packaging and take a peak.
The thrill was gone because of familiarity. Part of the joy of any hobby is scarcity. There was no dearth of artwork in my life now. It lost it’s luster.
As I say to my children all the time:
May you never reach your dreams.
Better to make it 90% of the way. There is beauty in the process of striving.
The Road to Financial Independence
In the beginning, financial independence felt a lot like my art mogul side hustle. Investing became a shiny new toy. Each deposit into the Vanguard account came with a rush of pride and emotion. I devoured books on investing with an insatiable appetite. It was never enough.
I watched my net worth rise, and tracked my burgeoning investments on Personal Capital. I followed a slew of blogs and began to engage.
Beginning this blog was a natural progression of my deep dive into personal finances. I had all sorts of opinions on the financial information I was reading. I developed a voice, and confidence about what I was writing about.
Then, one morning, again I thought to myself: the thrill is gone. Not in talking or blogging about personal finance. Not in researching new or better way to avoid taxes and save. These things still interested me.
Worrying about my net worth though, meh.
When You’ve Climbed the Mountain
The recent downtick in the stock market held absolutely no emotion for me. I didn’t even sign into my Vanguard account to take a look. In fact, I rarely look at my investments these days. I’m happy with my asset allocation. I can rebalance as needed.
But like art work, these stocks, bonds, and cash have become just paper. My investments are on autopilot. Every month, a certain bit of cash is mobilized into a preset asset allocation.
The thrill is gone.
Who cares about tracking and monitoring? I no longer comb through my budget. I can tell at the end of every month that we have money left over, even after depositing thousands into our investment account.
My energies are now free to pursue other interests.
Reading, writing, making friends.
Family, children, exercise.
Conquering the world?
I am not concerned about the current market either. I think I checked once just to see how it affected my portfolio. But I l do keep a budget and track my various income & expenses because it keeps me motivated, well it does right now anyway. I am also hoping it may help others if I share, that is how I got serious about reaching FI .
I struggle whether to share financials/budgets on the blog. Can be instructive though.
“May you never reach your dreams. Better to make it 90% of the way. There is beauty in the process of striving.”
You are right on. I have found that the best part of being FI is doing different projects every 6 months or a year, and then trying something else. I too am an art lover and the thrill of that has not gone. But it isn’t as much of a burning desire as it once was. I am really impressed that you actually became an art mogul. I’m envious! Except I supposed it turns that love into a job. Hmm.
Be careful what you wish for…I don’t buy much art anymore.
I still get excited by every new 2 million & its possibilities, so the thrill is not gone for me, yet… 🙂
Hey Ty. I think you figured out how not to attenuate joy. Share your secrets please😀!
I make this same sort of comment to my medical students. “Choose a field where you love the good aspects and can put up with the bad. Oh, and realize that no matter how exciting something seems right now it will end up feeling like a job regardless of your current adrenaline rush.”
This is human nature. We adjust to our new normal. That’s what makes marriage tough when loving becomes a choice instead of an insatiable desire for the other person. (I am fortunate to be married to a saint and have a great marriage for the last 9 years.)
Good post! I do tend to enjoy the philosophical aspect of things!
Wow what a poignant post as you pretty much mirror my stage in life right now. I used to love tracking net worth quite closely (pretty much bi-monthly to coincide with my paycheck) using Personal capital as a major tool. I would also read tons of articles (from Flipboard, etc.) about net worth benchmarks by age but even that grew tiring after constantly outperforming every benchmark. The initial thrill of “winning the game” was gone. Good investing is boring. Set it and forget it, autopilot so to speak. I still check net worth but mainly to make sure still going in the right direction and that no asset class is going out of whack.
You and I are in the exact same place!