keep-alive

quick post to say i’m still here. i had hoped to be hiking a lot this summer, but i was offered an opportunity to help build a small house. it started off as a tiny house, but then the owner wanted 16’ ceilings and the contractor convinced the owner to berm it into a hill, which required a substantial foundation. it’s going to be completely off grid, super insulated, and ultra-tight as well as having a grey water system.

i always wanted to build my own house, but the place i have currently is such a fixer upper, i’ll have touched every stick of wood in it by the time i’m finished renovating it. plus, i really like the location. this small house build will give me the rest of what i was missing from the experience.

the build team is just three people, the contractor (who is supposedly retired), and then me and one other person doing the labor. needless to say, it’s a lot of work. i’m tired at the end of the day, but happy for it.

in the early retirement blog circles there is a concept of the “retirement police”. that’s the folks that look at a situation like this and declare that i’m a fraud and that i didn’t actually retire early. i wouldn’t have been able to entertain this opportunity were it not for my lack of employment. for me early retirement isn’t about not working. it’s about being free to do what i want to do, and i’ve always wanted to build a house.