What to do with my life? Maybe think about who I admire and why
This is part 2 of my lil poem about why I crave and admire brainy people - here's part 1 with some tips on which existing brainy-business ish gangs to join in Ericeira & Lisbon.
Startup founders who create slaves out of thin air
Who else gets prainfcked pretty long, but I still admire them? Startup founders. Without them, no lady ever would be able to enjoy her safe office job. Even any mega safe corporate job was once born because someone liked to do the startup thing at some point. So thanks a million guys for creating slaves out of thin air, putting food in our mouths, while accepting to get prainfcked on the way. The streeeeeess levels, my lord. Not for meai.
But making a lot of money with an exit is so rare, no? Can’t bother to look up the stats. But as a girl, I have a feeling if they/I would do the calc, they could have made kinda the same money with an IT job napping during meetings while getting less prainfcked. Startups, I guess, are rather about big big impact if you’re really into that. I have a small-minded brain in that way - I care about health, people, food and sports. Sun yes, mountains, ocean dips, dog cuddles, full real love, yep, that’s about it.
FLEX for a bit, but just a bit
So to aim to FLEX hardd eventually as a startup founder is probably a bit, let’s say, naive in a good admirable way. To FLEX is another official erijoy-term: FLEX = Fancy life enjoyment xtreme
Why would I admire a FLEXer? Firstly, cause I want to take Ubers whenever and eat in restaurants whatever. Secondly, my hardware pings me here and there: you are just a girl and we want eventually a comfortable fancy life to feed our babays with joy. So the FLEXers do open my heart for a few seconds when they show off their vila. They do, don't they? But if they overdo the FLEXing thingything, in reality, they do exactly 1 thing: make it crystal clear they have some issues. Which I don’t admire but instead which any good coach would love to optimise away.
Thing is, not a single serious optimiser would stay in their magical fantasy world, but instead face reality and recognise the joy ROI on that vila is, in fact, not that high. Pretty likely negative, cause now they have 111 more things to fix (and get stressed cause no time anymore to fix me and my mood swings with appropriate food). My optimal fantasy answer to FLEX would be to aim for 2 small houses next to each other which focus on minimising the fixing part and maximising the “love, I actually do crave to hang out with you, can I sneak into your bed tonight?”-part.
Then FIRE forever
There is one desirable minor issue though that FLEXers should aim for to add to their repertoire: get addicted to a FIRE calculator. Humans who want to become FIRE (financial independent retire early) usually have exactly that 1 minor issue: their obsessive focus to reach that 1 number to finally be free.
If you have a suspicion, try to casually drop “a million is nothing these days, aye”. This will make them reveal themselves with joy cause they’re obsessed about the variables in the FIRE game and when they’ll finally make it. Most of them turn at least once to magic (aka try stock picking to beat ETFs in their return) to reach that number faster. Even though people who don’t believe in magic ROI have known for ages that .. don’t.
Then after reaching FIRE, they usually swap to even more minor obsession issues, like how to optimise for health .. and if they’re xtremely smart, then also how to optimise for maximum peak gang life (just to reach optimal hardware health not because of feelings). Lucky you FIRE guys, we have a wannabe coach in town, named erijoy girl who is specialised in helping with your 2 new obsessions, no proper coach needed.
I must admit, I do like, admire (aka have ?feelings? for) the FIRE species. I will teach my kids how to get FIREd asap - I’ve heard it’s surprisingly simple maths. The 1 calc everyone should learn in school, aye. So that they can say to me “FOFF mum” (the cute doggo version of fckoff), and I have no way to ever pressure them into naming 1 thing they wanna become when grown up. If I try, I’m sure they instead send me that public life strategy doc of the new rich.
Me, I sadly missed this early maths education, so I have no other option these days, but hack my way into more fun workish games besides FIRE .. maybe in the future someone still has hope in me and will invite me for a FIRE calc session in the cute Erilibrary. And force me to hand in that paper at 1pm, sharp. 3h sounds doable for a basic maths test, no?
PS: once I get FIREd I will 100% pay a coach to coach me 1x month - such a good investment to prevent issues before they awake from the bottom of my heart. No joke.
Timeless writers who can coach me on what to do with a trillion
Thing is, these FIRE people did engage their analytical parts of their brains for quite a bit. So if they kinda gamed peak health and peak gang life but their brains crave more optimisation aka enjoyment, they may keep analysing in a lazy way without any actions: they write.
Don’t get me wrong, I do admire writers. I even admit it, just a nice combo of words already does create ?feelings? in me. So I do have ?feelings? for not just 1 but several writers. Those who defend everyday distractions from their minds, and instead write timeless pieces about the few key questions in life. Like what to do in Ericeira to get the hottest boyfriend or what to do in Ericeira when I made 1 trillion dollars with erijoy.
Third space owners and especially coliving owners
But if you made all the FIRE money, come on, don’t just write, risk something in the real world with it, no? What’s the coolest real world thing you could do? By now, you know my 1 true love are colivings, so I think that’s the coolest. You wonder what it feels like to fall for one? You know this very very rare !feeling! that you cannot believe what a wonderful thing someone has created? I have that when I discover a new fancy coliving/third space. No way this is actually existing. Like I wanna go there n o w :D I can still re-feel it in my viscera how discovering Sende made me feel. But then they were booked out and I sadly had to come to that coliving in Ericeira.
My third space issue is so bad, that for roadtrips I just search obsessively for them on Google Maps and then the roadtrip evolves around sneaking into that little piece of potential paradise. If a beach or castle pops up on the way, fine.
I see Ericeira btw as the closest to “forever coliving paradise” as there currently is. The beautiful sneaky part about this village is, depending on your mood, you can justify to your hometown friends why you live in Ericeira in 2 ways. (1) You wanna make coliving utopia happening in a village with cacao, coaches & chakras at Vizinha. Or (2) pretend you are not a barefoot hippie at all, but instead say your everyday life is also just working from home, doing your laundry and complaining about the horrendous house prices.
Those who can fix me and my stuff
Before I go mega mad to elaborratte on the last 3 xtremely admirable workish games - let’s ground ourselves even more in the present. People who fix something with their hands: wow. The more essential the fix, the more I admire them. So in my eyes you are a superstar, if you can fix my MacBook, dishwasher, washing machine, broken lamp, shirt with a hole, pair of shoes, bracelet, wetsuit or surfboard.
I do have a bunch of piano builders, osteopaths & carpenters in my life, and yes, they usually value that they fix something with their hands. But the dose guys, the dose. Many of them would like to do hands-on stuff not all the time. They may fantasise about “having impact politically” or open up their dream third space. I also kinda have in mind for long, if the admiration for fixers becomes too much, I’ll start a dosed side hustle as a dishwasher fixer, hehe :)
Btw, many hands-on persons can also live happy Ericeira life. If anyone is ever offending you “ya you can live in Ericeira cause you have a remote job” - no. It’s not like only laptop people can live in Eri. We are just the “new version of corporate people” who used to build houses around big companies. Now, laptop people build houses around the sea and need all these non-laptop people, aka superstars, to fix them and their stuff.
FIRE kids being naive
So now, we’re getting to the 🌶️ ones. Once upon a time, we were all kids and we all imagined our own fantasy worlds without any limitations, didn’t we? So why on eriearth would you not switch your fantasy skills back on if you can do anything and everything because money is out of the equation? You really that naive to think not 1 of your wild childhood fantasies is possible by now?
I remember when being a kid that when I met my friends in my street, we wrote down each 4 playing ideas on little pieces of papers, then shuffled them all. Then picked one and we played that next. That is why I created a JIRAish board for all FIRE kids in Ericeira to find each other, shuffle their ideas and play together the next thing.
And come on - who would play padel these days to have proper fun? Be a bit more creative, no? How about making a fancy Bridgerton-style dance ball in the Mafra castle happening to make your wifey happy? Or ring at 3 doors and try to sell a pet insurance with da bois? Why not use your agency to have some proper adventures with da gang? What I want to bring across: I admire, envy, you hard if you are FIRE and allow yourself to play like a kid again to feel almost maximum joy. Especially if you play the games I wanna play, but can’t .. cause slave.
Indie hackers who do optimal minimalistic work
Almost maximum joy cause maxxing out on playing .. does someone ever say “thank you from the bottom of my heart” for playing all day every day? No. But I’d say that is an essential ingredient for maximum joy. Soooo technically money is out of the equation, but you just want the thank-you-part from work back a bit .. how would the work components optimally look like?
optimal work = solving your own problem + getting deep thank-you’s (from people you know personally) + tinkering aka hacking aka playing with to0o0ls + creating something beautiful your style + no alarm clock + 1 meeting per week + remote + part-time
There are people who do the indie hack thing, even when money is still in the equation, just to reach that potentially optimal state of work. You could argue it’s a minimalistic version of the typical job. Those ones just try to remove the painful stuff like: the boss, fixed work times, meetings, alarm clocks, meaningless problems, investor stress and managing people stress. Especially now with AI, I have a feeling this equation just became easier to achieve. I at least have a spark of hope that also some indie hacker girls will emerge soonish.
And sorry to be that German, but in a way, if you haven’t tried to become an indie hacker yet, I feel like you haven’t dared to remove these pains from your life. And I just admire people who face their pains and try, are brave and take risks. It is what it is.
Vibe puzzlers .. wtf .. she better gets some help
But are indie hackers really living the maximum optimised form of work? Here the good ol’ “but I miss the coffee machine shit chat being a remote solopreneur” comes into play.
What you in reality miss is having fake-adventures solving meaningless problems with your colleagues which are kinda annoying-ok-ish. Optimised version of that craving: having real-life adventures solving your own problems with ya gang strolling through a misty beautiful fishing village. But only in sprints. Don’t drop the FIRE prios for more than 2 weeks: nap on the beach whenever you want & almost be annoyed of cuddling your loved ones too much.
The one person who is for sure not a minimalistic indie hacker in the world, is Elon Musk, I guess. But he puzzles!! He puzzles a ton of companies together to “make humanity a multi-planetary species, so that humans ask better questions” - IF int(true) that his core motivation is indeed curiousity, who knows.
He just didn’t get to the minimalistic version of puzzling known as vibe puzzling yet. So he sacrifices simple joys for keeping so many complex companies running. But who on eriearth says you have to own complex companies and puzzle 24/7 to make life better? What would the small business owner say if you present them this extended version of the OG vibe puzzling business plan:
“Love, look, we see a vibe puzzle piece in your business and I have here a lovely stack of 10K lying around. It believes in magic so it just doesn’t stop making more money by itself out of thin air. To stop this madness, I would love to use the 10K and tweak your business in a way that it solves my problem. Can I try to make that happen with ma FIRE kids gang in 2 weeks, sharp? Sounds like a fun game to us. I’ll pay you 1K as a thank-you, so that our problem is solved systematically for us (and others).
Furthermore, we would then love to enjoy our brains writing a timeless piece about the incentives and puzzle pieces that turned out to be needed to solve our problem longterm. We then put it on our LinkedIn to FLEX harddd so that other villages feel jealous and see no other option but to copy us and hack together their puzzle pieces. And also kinda nice of us, to let our high school friendz know how damn cool we are. Means worst case for you, you get some marketing. Deal?”
So here’s my first baddish vibe puzzle 😂 How can we twist 1 existing supermarket in Eri so we are not lured into buying health-hazardous stuff all the time?
If you only understand banannana now, do not worry. Based on that public business plan I’ll make up 3 baddish vibe puzzles per year. So according to plain calc, you will be able to erijoy 3 x 55 years = 169 more until I stop trying. So the bananananana hopefully turns into an (h)ahahahaha on the way.
Maybea .. maximum joy = a lazy sunny nappy Eri life at the core + optimal minimalistic work with a sprinkle of impact = spikes of non-fake real life adventures with da gang + highly egoistically solving my own problems in my direct environment + don’t found companies + put it on my LinkedIn what I vibe puzzled together
When I read these combo of words, I feel .. optimal (and you feel .. idk girl, aren't you a bit delulu?) While indie hackers aim to do optimal minimalistic work owning a mini business - vibe puzzlers aim to do optimal minimalistic work that creates a pinch of impact in an existing business. Puzzling together the right incentives - cause fun, cause money out of the equation, cause egoistically solving their own problem, but don't want to own a company to solve it. And end up managing people, bah.
O problema is that normies, slaves, anyone more left than FIRE kids, they care exactly 0 about vibe puzzling. Cause who would if you haven't yet maxxed out on money and getting the hottest girlfriend? I’m only here because I have a bloomy fantasy and I need cravings to slave harder. I would admire this species to Mars and back - but I’ve never seen a vibe puzzler out in the wild :’(
The real wolves are small business owners who let ppl slave minimalistically
However, who on eriearth are the real heroes here? Established small business owners who let people work part-time and remotely. You take on the stress of managing a real business, but let your people play risky games on the side even if they’re not yet FIRE. You make my personal barbell strategy possível = minimum slaving + maximum risky workish games
While writing this, I felt so much admiration and gratitude, that I see no other option but start a sidechick-charity for those heroes. So here we are. I will stalk every lil positive thing about you and write you one big long letter why you are amazing and send it to you. I also send all the hidden gems your way, to work for you whenever I come across one (curious, reliable, top-notch agency, good taste & heart).
Do you also see that basic bitch trying to swim up to the right?
In case you didn’t catch it yet, but I am trying to cheat my way onto the right side of that admiration graph. Reality is, I’m just a basic bitch who slaves as a whatever marketing girl.
But at least I know what I wanna work on next: I wanna be a vibe puzzler, indie hacker & FIRE kid <3333 Based on these ambitions, should I call my mum rather now or rather later today to tell her which uni degree I obviously need for my next career steps?
Well, we can see some desperate attempts that could indicate she’ll make it without another uni degree: on a sunny Saturday in June 2024, she said no to padel in the morning and instead hacked together some to0ols to give birth to erijoy. Then played padel.
Next, she started to puzzle around with a bunch of private chefs. Tried harder by adding a sprinkle of bone broth and deo onto them to reach the magic number of 20 puzzle pieces. Now she pops up out of nowhere with a playground for FIRE kids?? Very cute of her. But sounds more like a salad maker to me than a professional vibe puzzler, no?
The case for a future magical hacky, playful and puzzly Ericeira
But we didn’t need all this yapping, did we? Any serious optimiser will do the calc and come to the result that Ericeira is more optimal to fulfil the unchangeable human hardware needs with nature around, random encounters, air quality etc. pp than Lisbon .. or any city, really? If only Ericeira would make the effort to meet the No. 1 human hardware need: there are people around, who admire (have feelings for) you and who you admire (have feelings for).
I think, let Eri have a couple of deep breaths, and when we open our eyes again in 5 years, I believe we’ll magically awake to an Ericeira with a lot of indie hackers, fire players and vibe puzzlers around who open their ♥️ and connect. Cause the most curious ones optimise it all. Disprove me and show me that you can’t have it all - until then, I believe in magic.
