A Blogger Looks At 57

Earlier this week, I turned 57. I started this blogger looks at series when I was 40, then posted at 50 then 55 and decided last year that a lot can happen in year so I wrote one for 56 and plan to do this every year for the time being. And sure enough a lot happened over the last year.

Before starting to write today's post, I read the others and it was interesting to see writing about the same ideas all the way back to 2006 when I was 40. Same ideas mostly but they seem to have evolved which is interesting on a couple of levels. For example, I've always talked about health but that used to just be about exercise really other than saying "don't drink soda." That has evolved to talk frequently about diet. I did not understand how important diet was and I came to start learning about that six years ago. I was told I was prediabetic, found and started low carb that day and the results have been profound. I solved my own problem.

Last year mentioned a lot potentially happening in a year (above too) and that really was the case over the last 12 months. On April 18th, Joellyn and I hit the road for a 10 day road trip starting with a big hike near Amarillo, down to the national parks in southwest Texas and then southern New Mexico. We made it to Gallup, NM when I first got word of what became the Crooks Fire. It was tiny, we kept driving getting just short of Tucumcari, NM when I found out that the fire blew up and was a serious event. We turned around and drove back, 14 hours of driving all in that day. 

For anyone new, I am the fire chief where I live and we were about to become the center of the fire universe. This picture is taken on my property. 

This turned out to not be a life changing event. It could have been I suppose but either way, this was an ordeal. Walker was evacuated, we put in a lot of work doing structure protection/prep out ahead of the potential path it might go (if that sounds dangerous, it wasn't). A week and half after it started on a Friday I believe, it snowed and the danger went way way down.

In August we took a direct lightning strike on our internet satellite dish which fried most of the house.

We jerry rigged our electrical so that we could have power but the process of fixing our solar dragged on for a full three months and was very frustrating. We supposedly got caught up in the supply chain crunch trying to replace the inverter for our solar and had to write a pretty big check for that inverter not knowing if the insurance company would come through. Thankfully a few weeks later they did.

The final challenge since last April happened with my day job. One of the partners of the firm where I have been since 2004 was found to have done illegal trading and he was immediately terminated. The other partner also has a serious problem that could be described as collateral damage. It didn't take too long to realize that their problems were not my problems but the remaining non-partner advisors (including me) had to find a place to land which we did. We've signed the paperwork and are in the 9th inning of completing that process. There were a few days of "how serious is this" then a lot of work to complete the process which as I say is essentially done now. 

These three anecdotes all fall into different sorts of unpredictability, the type of unpredictability that call for resiliency and optionality which we talk about all the time here. I live in a place where wildfires happen. It's not like you can predict when one will happen but there is preparation that can be done in terms of mitigating your property to remove ground litter than can burn, some of our property is sparse without too much tree density but some spots not so much. I put in a lot of fireline around our property once it got going in case it actually made its way to our property which it did not. 

Has your house ever taken a direct lightning hit? You can't really prepare for that specific outcome, there are protective devices that can be added to your electrical but in researching those, we learned they work except for the times that they don't. Oops. Living below our means though would have allowed us to take the financial hit for that inverter if the insurance company hadn't come through.

Something bad happening at work is one we talk about all the time. I've known the guilty partner for almost 25 years. Anyone can make bad mistakes but that he'd do something illegal (in a civil sense) was a complete blindside. 

I've talked a lot about the need to figure ourselves out to make sure we are targeting the outcomes we actually want. The work episode helped me better understand how much value I place on simplicity. Years ago, maybe 2007, I said no to being a partner at my firm. The reasoning was very simple. The tasks of interacting with clients and navigating markets is fun for me (helping people and studying markets) versus the complexity of running an advisory shop, all the regulatory filings, compliance processes that have to be overseen and even mundane stuff like leases and utility bills doesn't sound fun to me at all. Those things are the antithesis of my idea of simplicity and what I want to do. Had I said yes back then and stayed with it, I have to assume that I too as a principle of the firm would have some sort problem along the lines of what the collaterally damaged.

My blogging evolved a lot over the last 12 months into a lot more of what I would call portfolio theory with the capital efficiency and return stacking stuff. There's a prudent way to do this and a way that I think will blow people up but a tie in to a long standing theme here is taking bits of process from various sources to create your own process. Capital efficiency and return stacking have been additive to my investing process but the influence has been incremental not transformative. Again, I think there will be people who use these ideas incorrectly and really damage themselves.

Your 50's are well past the age where things can start to go seriously wrong, health-wise. Our best chance for aging successfully is a couple of simple habits that we talk about al the time; dramatically reduce carbohydrate consumption and lift weights. Simple even if not easy. Lifting with the right intensity is a cardio workout but doing traditional cardio won't be efficient in building muscle mass. The body composition benefit of adding muscle is very important. I've been lifting forever and learned about the diet six years ago and am much healthier for it.

Being blunt about it, my wife and I eating essentially the same diet and both being very physically active are aging very slowly. Yes, some people will luck out on this front but as I have said, I've never wanted to bet that I would be one of them. Anything can happen to anyone at anytime regardless of what they do but when you take on good habits you are doing what you can to pursue the outcome that most people want which I assume is being able bodied for their entire life.   

For men (not sure about women), there is no reason that at 50 you can't be about as strong as you were when you were in your 20's. There's no reason you can't have essentially the same shape you had (assuming you were fit) in your 20's. We've talked countless times about the financial benefit of this and repeated for the 1000th time, many chronic maladies associated with middle age can potentially be reversed, you just have to make the changes. I get it, people come up with reasons why they "can't," I have people in my life who know they should make changes, sort of know what to do but don't do it. It's up to you to solve your own problem.

Over the last year, Walker Fire took a monumental step forward, we got a grant for Type 3 Wildfire Engine that will change the game for us on several levels. We just got it last week. We have most of the equipment but need to buy a little more. Here is a picture from the maiden voyage that our assistant chief and I took it on, and I filtered the hell out of the picture. 

I've talked many times about my Plan B for Incident Management work. A few years ago, I was on a path to try to be a logistics section chief but that has evolved into pursuing liaison officer. There are multiple tasks associated with this position including helping small departments like mine get through a threat from a large fire. I've gone through quite a few of those and so the chance to pay that back appeals to me and so I'm going to try to take an assignment this summer. The response from a couple of different Incident Management Teams to my doing this has been favorable so I am optimistic. I want to try it and I do think it is right to pay back all the help Walker Fire has received over the years. Note on the truck, graphics are due to be installed on April 13.  

Being able bodied to an old age, for my entire life is a high priority. I've been putting in the work for decades and so far, so good which maybe is one interesting aspect of this series of these blogger looks at posts. Thank you for reading this.