As many of you know, I have been experimenting with hospice volunteering since the spring of 2024. I also shifted to a part-time, 80% schedule at work right around the same time. I shared in an update post about how I was surprised that elements of my lifestyle design process didn’t take off immediately the way I thought they would. I had been working toward these goals for a long time at that point. Why weren’t things clicking? Looking back on that time, I don’t know why I was surprised, but it was another great reminder that lifestyle design can be a slow process.
For just a moment, allow me to take you back in time. In 2018, my dad made me a birdhouse as a Christmas present. At the time, he loved making birdhouses with cigar boxes and using old license plates for roofs. This one he made me had my old license plate from when I lived in Atlanta, Georgia, as the roof. Even though I received this gift in 2018, it wasn’t until early 2020 that I finally got around to putting up the birdhouse (perfect pandemic project, am I right?).
As stay-at-home orders continued to ravage the country and the globe, I anxiously awaited birds flocking to my new birdhouse that spring. I was slightly disappointed when not a single bird showed up. I figured perhaps it would just take the birds awhile to find the birdhouse. They’d come next year, for sure. Well, the next year came and went. Still, nothing. Not once did I noticed a single bird checking out my birdhouse!
I was about ready to give up, but in the summer of 2022, on Father’s Day to be exact, I finally noticed some bird action around the birdhouse. Using my binoculars, my trusted bird books, and the Merlin Bird ID app on my phone, I learned that it was a pair of house wrens that were finally perusing my birdhouse. It had been 4 years since I received the birdhouse and 2 years since I had put it up. Finally, the birds had come!
Sadly, no baby birds were produced that year. So naturally, I was really excited for the adult birds to try again in 2023. Alas, Spring and Summer 2023 came and went. No birds ever came. I was dumbfounded. But Mr. Dink refused to let me give up (plus, he had attached this birdhouse to our house with skill and precision, so he informed me it wasn’t going anywhere).
Well, much to my delight, 2024 was the magic year. Six years after receiving the birdhouse, babies were birthed. Not only did the house wrens come back to the birdhouse (I like to think it was the same pair, but I can’t know for sure), but they had 2 broods! A brood is the name for a group of baby birds that hatch at the same time, and I learned from my research that a pair of house wrens typically have 2 broods. It took what for me seemed like an eternity, but birds had finally made babies in my birdhouse. I was beyond thrilled, and I delighted all summer in spying on the birds and their babies while peering out my front door with my binoculars glued to the windows.
Ok, back to present time. Now that I am in the full swing of experimenting with how to live my best life now, I think of this tale of my birdhouse and the house wrens often. To make me feel better. Because let me tell you friends, this lifestyle design business has not been as easy as I thought. Sometimes, things take time. And when things you REALLY want to happen take a lot longer to come to fruition than you want them to, it can be really hard to keep your head up and your skin in the game.
As I shared in my update post to shifting to part-time work, when I first started taking Fridays off, I was a little surprised to find out that I had a hard time being productive on those days. And when I say productive, I mean using that extra day off to run experiments around my hospice volunteering journey and trying out different things on my Financial Freedom List, or FFL (my running list of things I want to do or try as I gain more and more financial freedom).
It was unsettling to me that after all this time daydreaming about how I would spend this extra time once I had it, it wasn’t coming all that naturally to me.
Maybe this fact that lifestyle design is a slow process should have been obvious? I’m a huge proponent of slow FI after all!
But for some reason, I still struggled. I thought that once we got clear on what we wanted, and then took the steps needed to get what we want (in my case, going down to an 80% work schedule and taking Fridays off), everything would fall into place. Things would take off. Boy, was I wrong.
Before we actually take action to start living our best lives, it’s all fairytale, all in our heads. We’re dreaming up how we want our lives to take on a different shape. But when we start experimenting and move closer toward our goals, then it comes time to take action and actually do the thing. The thing we’ve been dreaming about. The thing that maybe scares us the most, but feels most important. The thing we perhaps need in order to live out some purpose in our lives. And this, I’ve learned, is the hardest part. Not daydreaming, not coming up with the thing (or things) we need to live our best lives. But taking action. Actually showing up. Actually doing the thing that feels so scary but is ready to burst inside of us.
When I shared some of these feelings in my 80% update, that having Fridays off wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, Lisa from the blog Fiventurers commented that she could relate. And the more I’ve chatted with friends and family about these feelings, the more I’m realizing I’m not alone.
So what helped get me through?
I embraced the slow
After I shifted to an 80% work schedule with Fridays off and started working hospice volunteering into my schedule, things didn’t just click overnight. I struggled with how to structure my day off in a way that felt productive but also restful. And as I realized that things wouldn’t be all sunshine and rainbows immediately, I embraced the slow in order to maintain my sanity.
I realized that I didn’t need to feel rushed to fill those days. Even though it was something I wanted, there was no big rush. I could savor the experiment and really take my time figuring out how I wanted to spend that day. After all, if we’re in no rush to live our bus life, why would I need to rush this next phase of my lifestyle design? I realized that going down to part-time work was a huge step for me in and of itself, and I didn’t need to feel pressure to make the extra day I gained perfect.
There’s no need to rush lifestyle design, because good things can take time. Once I embraced the slow and let go of the rush, things did start to take shape in really wonderful ways. I was reminded that patience really is a virtue.
Specifically with my hospice journey, we could take it all the way back to the early days of creating my FFL. It all started with me just listening to my body, and recognizing when something lit me up. Anything that sparked my interest, that might be a way I would want to spend my time when work was optional, I would add to my list.
I first saw the ad for a hospice volunteer training 3 years ago now, in early 2022, on our local community email forum. It immediately sparked my interest, so it went onto my FFL. But it ended up staying on that list for quite awhile. That year and then the next year after that, I’d see the ad pop up, and I’d make up some excuse that it wasn’t the right time. But last year, in 2024, I couldn’t wait any longer. At that point, I had hit Flamingo FI (half my full FI number), and although I didn’t feel the need to go down to 80% at work, I knew I could at any time. It felt like the right time to say yes to hospice volunteering, so I went for it. The training itself lasted from February to April. Then, I had to wait for my paperwork to go through and my badge to be ready, a process that in a hospital in small-town Vermont took what felt like forever. It wasn’t until July, almost 6 months after I first started the training, that I was actually officially able to start volunteering in the hospital and the associated community care home.
From there, it was another learning curve. The main thing I wanted to do, that we were trained to do, was to be with and sit with people at end of life. But by early Fall, I realized that these opportunities were few and far between. Not only did they depend on people actually being at end of life, which we have no control over, it also had to be a request either from the patient or their families, and not everyone wants random people by their side when they are actively dying. Once again, I was reminded that things take time. We cannot rush. Patience is a virtue.
I had to embrace the slow. Even though they took years to come to my birdhouse, the house wrens brought me SO MUCH joy last summer. Just like how much hospice volunteering is bringing me joy now, even though that has been a slow process as well. Reflecting on how long it took me to get where I am, and holding onto the birdhouse metaphor, really helped with my mindset.
I was diligent
In addition to embracing the slow, I learned to be diligent. I knew I wanted to continue experimenting with hospice volunteering, but I didn’t want to just sit and wait for opportunities to come my way. I wanted to seek them, and to find them. And to do that, I had to be diligent.
I expressed this desire to the hospice volunteer coordinator, and because she knows about my faith background, she offered to put me in touch with the hospital chaplain. She told me that the chaplain has an email list that he sends to volunteers interested in visiting folks who might need some additional support. I met with him one-on-one and joined that email list, and decided that was something I could try on my Fridays off.
It was a bit nerve-wracking at first, just going into patients’ rooms unannounced. But by being diligent, getting out of my comfort zone, taking a chance, and going in on Friday mornings to try these visits, I stumbled onto a new path. Although I learned I didn’t love making these spontaneous visits, by going to the community care home on a regular basis, I found out about the daily activities provided for the residents. There’s an activity every day in the morning and in the afternoon. So one Friday morning, I showed up and asked the activities staff if they needed any help. The answer was a resounding YES. I had a blast, and so I kept going back. I slowly realized that I found it much more exciting and natural to help with the activity, and be around a group of residents, where my inner extrovert could shine. It was a great way for me to get to know the residents and create connections in a setting that was more comfortable for me.
From there, the snowball effect has been slow but wonderful. We now have a recurring monthly Friday morning activity with the whole hospice volunteer group, doing arts and crafts, and I’ve hooked up with a piano player on another Friday morning each month for an oldies sing-a-long.
As another example of how diligence can pay off, I showed up to the hospital church service led by the chaplain on a random Sunday, to visit the chaplain and see what the service he offered was like. I left that visit wishing I could help out more with the church service, so I sent a follow-up email offering to assist with anything he might need. A few weeks later, he ended up asking me to fill in for him one Sunday when he was away on vacation. With a whole bunch of nerves, I said yes, and it was one of the highlights of my volunteer experience so far.
I enjoyed the process
Now that I have gotten into a rhythm, a good routine with my hospice volunteering, I’m focusing on enjoying the process. I wrote about purpose in my previous blog post, specifically Jordan Grumet’s idea from his book The Purpose Code that finding purpose is about the process, not the outcome. If we think about that in terms of my hospice volunteering, I focus on the fact that I want to help people at or near end of life (process), not that I want to be a hospice volunteer (outcome). Can you tell the difference?
Has hospice volunteering been what I thought it would be? Absolutely not. And yet, it has still been great because I’ve enjoyed the process of doing. And besides, do things ever turn out exactly how we think they will? A major theme of my blog is to enjoy the journey to financial independence. I guess even I need a reminder of that sometimes! We can get so focused on what we want, what the end goal is, that we lose the joy in the every day.
But even though it can be a slow process, when things finally do start to take shape, and we start to live into our true passions – what lights us up – it can feel really good. By being diligent and embracing the slow, I’ve embarked on an incredible hospice volunteer journey that lights me up. I don’t know where it will lead, but I’m focusing on enjoying the journey and listening to my heart, my head, and my body along the way. This process has been a great reminder of how I want to treat any experiments I do on my FI journey. Trying things out, reflecting, and making adjustments as needed. All while being diligent, embracing the slow, and enjoying the process.
Once we get clear on what we want, we just want to get going already. But everything takes time. And there’s still so much more to come.
Closing thoughts
I started drafting this blog post quite awhile ago, and when I went to re-read it and work on it some more and bring it to its current state, the birdhouse story hit me slightly differently than when I first wrote it.
I think the birdhouse tale is actually a decent metaphor for our current times (I’m thinking about the current state of things in the US). I’m not going to lie, I’ve been having a really hard time grappling with all that is going on, as I’m sure many of you are as well. Things are moving so fast and changing all the time that it feels impossible to keep up. But that’s the fact of life, isn’t it? The only constant in life is change. Things change all the time, for better or for worse. Is it enough that all we can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other, figuring out what we can do every day to make the world a little better, and hold on to hope? Keep practicing gratitude, being good stewards of our communities, and looking for the birds in the birdhouses? Because after all, didn’t Emily Dickinson teach us that hope is the thing with feathers?
I’d love to hear how you’re doing on your FI journey. What experiments are you running currently? How are you holding onto hope? Are you embracing the slow or feeling the rush? Drop me a comment or email me at [email protected]