Financial Independence Fake

I am a financial independence fake. A coward. Here I have been spouting off about my half retirement. Bragging about life changes and am moving on to an existence of purpose, identity, and connection. Yah, yah, yah! It’s all a hoax. All false bravado. I have learned to talk a good game but underneath all that confidence is something else.

Fear

I am petrified. Petrified because yesterday I gave notice to all the nursing homes telling them that I am leaving. In one months time, I will no longer be the attending of record. I am leaving behind a large part of my career in medicine. Leaving behind the shield of income in excess of my needs.

You would think I would be calm and proud. I am not. My words on the page may come across as certain but my emotions are a whorl.

I am afraid.

Reality

I am not a financial independence fake because I don’t understand the numbers. I have been over my finances time and time again. There is enough to live a relatively fatFIRE existence with money to spare. I should be able to keep sending my daughter to private school and taking winter vacations to tropical climates.

Nothing in reality has changed. Except everything has changed. This is the moment where theory becomes reality. Where mathematics meets proof of concept.

I was so confident when I was singing the praises of the math but not relying on it. Now that is going to change. I have to live by my own philosophy.

Theory vs Practice

Why am I afraid? I have no clue. It is illogical. The wall of fear exists no matter how I try to rationalize my way out of it. I have calculated and recalculated the numbers, and still will have an income with my hospice work. I have built in safety valves and created streams of cash flow. The plan should be bulletproof.

But my emotions are not. They leak like sieves onto the paper and muss up all my calculations. They harp on irrationality, improbability, and fear. The so called logical brain has been stunned into suspended animation. This is not the me that comes across so arrogantly on paper.

This transition is not the victory lap that you would expect. It’s more like stumbling towards the finish line.

The Irrational Brain

You can’t talk me out of feeling this way. You can’t line up the facts and persuasively get me to feel differently. This is how I feel. I don’t begrudge myself this panic. It is the fear of doing something big. Something audacious. Something scary.

For someone like me, the consummate producer, it is awfully hard to stop producing. Money at least.

I am a financial independence fake. I enter this space partly unwillingly. Kicking and screaming, but not quite running in the other direction.

Final Thoughts

I stand before you emotionally barren. A financial independence fake. My words heretofore are not false bravado. They are not lies. But it would be deceitful to say that this is easy. I could turn back and undo what I have done. I could call the nursing homes and tell them that I will start to see new patients again.

But I won’t.

I won’t let fear of the unknown get in the way of pursuing that which I really want, and I won’t stand bewildered at the wall of fear and just give up.

I will scale that wall. Whether the winds whip my back or the sun shines in my eyes.

And I will stand atop it.

Or fall back and start again.

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