Sold the Roadbike
Day 93 | $50,944 paid | $39,773 till freedom
I just sold my roadbike that I bought in October 2010 when I got my licence suspended. I paid $1200 for it on Craigslist--it's full carbon fiber, and my reasoning at the time was that if it was going to be my main ride for three months, I wasn't going to ride anything heavy.
I sold it today for $900. The transaction was seamless. The guy showed up in his truck, lifted up the bike, said, "Holy $*%#! This is so light!" He then proceeded to sit on it, say, "Hell yeah, I'm taking this!", hand me a wad of cash out of his pocket, and ride away down the driveway. Another satisfied customer.
To recap:
Donations
I went through my house on Sunday night and got rid of some stuff. If stuff isn't going to make me happy, I reasoned, then I might as well get rid of it. I have it all in my garage waiting to go to goodwill. It includes the following:
- Two USB memory keys
- Six pairs of jeans, total value $450 (4 Lucky, 1 A&F, 1 Gap)
- Shirts
- Books
- BMW M3 collector's model
- Nissan 350z collector's model
- Bookshelf
- Floor lamp
- Chair
Everything is in awesome condition. And since this is the holiday season and I'm not going to be donating any money to any charities, I might as well donate some stuff.
I'm still scratching my head on exactly how to get the bookshelf and floor lamp to goodwill without the Murano.
Black Friday / Cyber Monday
I found a pretty awesome quote on Gawker about Black Friday/Cyber Monday that I'd like to share:
"Why does Cyber Monday get a pass? It doesn't produce the vivid—and, yeah, highly-enjoyable!—riot videos of Black Friday. And we're in a tech bubble, so anything "cyber" must be good. But whatever lessons about the economy and American consumerism pundits see in Friday's Walmart stampedes can be drawn from Monday's office workers clicking down, deeper into debt, on a day arbitrarily chosen by corporations as Spend Your Money on Slightly-Cheaper Useless Shit Day. The pundits are probably all too busy snapping up hot deals on Amazon to write about it."
What Is It All About?
I had a hard time finding motivation at work on Monday morning. I was in a serious post-break funk, and I was still wrapping my head around the theory of hedonistic adaptation and the interview with down-to-earth millionaire Derek Sivers. I just could not find the motivation to work. I kept wondering...if more stuff is not going to improve my baseline level of happiness--not that there's anything wrong with it--then why am I going to back-to-back meetings and answering emails in a cubicle for 60 hours a week? Is this work meaningful to me? If I don't really need a lot of money, then is this what I was meant to do? Is this a good use of the limited time I have left on earth? And if stuff won't make me happier, then what in the world will? What are we all doing? What were we put on earth for? What's the point?
The final question of the HBS admissions interview was "Why you?" I thought about it for a few seconds, then told the interviewer that people were put on earth to make each other happy, and that the best way that I could make others happy was to start my own business.
I still believe the first part--I still believe that the fundamental reason for this journey that we all find ourselves on is to bring happiness into our friends' lives. I'm not sure I agree with the second part anymore...maybe I do...I don't know...