Balancing in 2022

It’s been too long. Nothing significant has happened to me, but it feels like my insides are in a sort of turmoil. I think I’m having a mid-life crisis. Maybe to be more accurate, I’m having a 2/3rds life crisis. My mom passed away at 57, and my dad at 68, both from a one-two combination of tumors and cancer (brain and breast for my mom, and lung and colon for my dad). Using them to set my expectations, I’m guessing my life expectancy is probably in my early 60s. I’m 40 right now, so that means I’ve only got two full decades left. It seems so long and so short all at once. Twenty years is a long time, but considering how fast time can go when you stop paying attention, I’m afraid I’ll blink and be 60 at which point I’ll be on borrowed time.

How is my 2/3rds life crisis manifesting itself? I’ve spent money somewhat frivolously. Curiously, I haven’t bought a pricy sports car or a motor home or anything like that, but what my spending lacks in magnitude it makes up for in redundancy. For example, I bought a mountain bike at the beginning of the year, specifically a Siskiu T8. I then felt compelled to upgrade the front suspension for reasons I’m not quite sure. The best reasoning I can concoct is that the bike wouldn’t feel like mine until I changed or upgraded something on it to my liking.

A few weeks ago, I decided to purchase another mountain bike. When I was first deciding which bike to purchase, my two final choices were either the T8 or a Motobecane HAL Boost Expert from Bikes Direct. I opted for the T8 because it had 4 piston brakes as opposed to the HAL’s two pistons. The T8 also had modern geometry. When I was considering the T8, my thought process was that I could buy it and upgrade the brakes, but I was concerned doing so would require more technical ability than I have. That said, Bikes Direct put that Boost Expert on sale for $500 off. I couldn’t resist. My T8 had 27.5” wheels, and I was curious as to what a 29er would be like. With inflation driving prices up every month, if I didn’t take advantage of that deal now, I might not ever get another one. I bought the second bike, and some upgraded brakes along with a bleed kid, and I was surprisingly able to make the upgrade. I’ve been riding it on the mountain bike trails around my town, and enjoying it immensely.

I also bought a rifle, a Springfield Armory Saint to be specific. I just bought the base model, not the Saint Victor. I’m definitely pro 2A, but I’ve never been a firearms enthusiast. Like my bikes, I think fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) was the primary driver. With all the civil unrest we’ve seen over the past few years and with talk of banning semi-automatic assault rifles, if I was ever going to get one, now was the time to do it. Then I discovered the deals one could get by buying “kits,” or “ghost guns” as they’re sometimes called.

If you’re unfamiliar with “ghost guns,” I’ll explain them as succinctly as I can. Rifles, or any guns for that matter, aren’t much more than metal tubes, springs, and milled pieces of aluminum. They could be self manufactured by anyone with vocational training in machining very cheaply and easily. When you buy the parts of a rifle online, the items like the barrel, the handguard, the trigger, and the stock are all shipped directly to your house. After all, they could be used to replace those parts on a rifle one already owns. However, all those parts are useless without a lower receiver. The lower receiver is the part that connects everything and houses (most of) the inner mechanical components. It’s not much more than a milled piece of aluminum, but that’s the part that is serialized, and when you purchase one online, it’s shipped to an FFL dealer, where you can pick it up after passing a background check. Then, you take the receiver home and assemble it with the other parts you purchased.

Anyway, if you’re willing to learn how to assemble a rifle, you can get a super capable rifle for 100s of dollars less than buying a similar one already assembled. Again, the ability to purchase such guns and assemble them may also be prohibited in the near future, so I bought some receivers and a kit along with a punch set to do the assembly. My Saint has a drop in handguard, and I wanted one with a free float hand guard to better attach a flashlight. After all, my main reason for buying a rifle was for home defense, and it wouldn’t do me much good if my home is invaded at night, and I don’t have a light attached.

I made my purchase from a company called Palmetto State Arms, and as I checked the website over and over again, I found deal after deal, which made me second guess my previous decisions. I bought an AR 15 pistol kit to keep (locked up) at my office in case of an emergency. Well, I bought the kit to assemble, then keep at my office. I just bought another rifle kit that was on this ridiculous sale. All told, it would be like getting a $1k rifle half off just for assembling it. It has this really slick furniture with which I’m enamored. I don’t know how PSA makes money, but it’s doing the Lord’s work. Of course, I also had to purchase ammo, so I bought 1,000 rounds of 62 grain M855, only to discover that such ammo is permitted at indoor ranges, so I bought another 1000 rounds of 55 grain M193. No more AR kits at least for a while. I have one more lower receiver I can use in a build, but I’ll save that for an unspecified date in the future, I think. Now, I’m going to prioritize ammo and range fees. I will say that having a rifle next to my bed has allowed me to sleep incredibly soundly

All this vicarious spending is uncharacteristic of me. Perhaps the most significant virtue or wisdom my parents imparted to me was how to save and manage money. That’s what I did rather aggressively up until this year. However, as I realize that my time on this side of eternity isn’t unlimited, I feel compelled to behave in a manner the me of yesteryear would call reckless. It’s just…when your young, you have all these ambitions that you’re going to do one day. Before you know it, you wake up in the middle of your life and as you reflect on your youth, you realize you didn’t pursue any of them. Maybe you got married and had kids, and your financial commitment to them got in the way. Maybe your career didn’t take off and that stopped you. Maybe a health issue came up or whatever. As for me, I don’t really have any of those excuses. I never got married or had kids, and knee and shoulder arthritis notwithstanding, I’m in mostly good health. I just never did it because I was always trying to establish a degree of financial security. Of course, the more security I was able to establish, the higher my standard became.

I don’t want to do that any more. I don’t want wait until the very end of my life to start living. That said, I’ve definitely been too indulgent this year, so effective immediately, I’m recalibrating that balance. I’m not sure what that’ll look like, but I at least know either side’s limits.

Last updated November 18, 2022