Living the Life of my Dreams

I usually journal a lot. In fact, I write over 500 pages per year. But now that I have this personal blog, I suppose I feel like journalling on here a lot. This will be excellent fodder for my autobiography in years-to-come. (Oh, how naive I was.)

This post is about the life of my dreams. I'm going to skip the backstory and head straight to where I am now. The life of my dreams is a simple one. I work in order to build wealth, not to pay the rent. I live well below my means. If I wanted, I could take a year off and travel the world. But I don't, because my job is satisfying, flexible, and I'm mastering a skill that I care about (10,000 hours.)

How I Spend My Money
I currently live the same way I did in college: I spend about $14,400 per year. That's a budget of $1200 per month. This is about 1/3 of my after tax income (yes, I have a rather low salary indeed.) I lease a car and drive it about 9000 miles per year (300 mile round trip to visit my girlfriend every two weeks: worth it.) I eat reasonably healthy. Mostly fresh foods, with an assortment of grains, meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts and lentils. I've been vegan and I've been paleo, now I just strive for "balance" between the two. I have a Roth IRA that I max out, I buy about 4 bitcoins per month, and I invest the rest in lending club.

Leisure
I walk to work. About 2 miles each way. I do this because I live in Florida and I enjoy the sunny walks, they help me clear my head. Sometimes I listen to music on my phone, but I mostly just enjoy the walk. I meditate and do yoga on an irregular basis. I have been meaning to hit up the local zen center for more formal training.

Cooking is a big leisure activity of mine. I also rock climb 3 days a week, which keeps my body very strong. On days when I'm not climbing or walking, I run between 2 and 4 miles because I enjoy runner's high. I have a PS3 on which I play a little bit of video games (all used games I get for a steal via Craigslist). I have a laptop with which I browse the internet and play a couple online games (Dota, League of Legends).

On the weekends I hang out with my girlfriend and we might go to a bar where I'll enjoy a single drink (combination of cheapness and dislike of alcohol) or we might treat ourselves to a rather frugal dinner or movie. During the day we usually go for a climb or explore nature. We're currently looking for people to hang out with.

Work
I work at a small start up with two senior developers (One front end, one backend.) They are both very intelligent and fun to work with. I get to commit a TON of code in an extremely fast paced environment, which is what I love. I get to wear shorts and sandals to work and get beer with the team on Fridays. There's no overtime as long as we get our work done. Couldn't be better.

In my spare time, I try to play around with python on Kaggle and Github. I read a lot of books/courses about software engineering and data mining. My goal is to eventually become involved with data analysis/machine learning startups, and to this end I'm considering doing the Georgia tech online MS Computer Science.

Problems
My main issue lies in being new to this town. I don't really know much about the music scene. It's summer so the town is very quiet. Hopefully when the school year comes I'll find more fun stuff to do on the weekends. Also, I really want to get involved with the local agriculture.