What does financial independence mean to me?

Financial independence means not having to work to be able to live however I want.

Work till you drop

For the longest time I have had a love/hate relationship with my work. I chose a career I liked, software engineering, studied for a long time to be able to do the job, then started working and fell out of love with the job. The hours were long, the pay wasn't good enough, bosses were exploitative, I still couldn't afford reasonable accommodation and expenses. Maybe my expectations of graduating and having a comfortable lifestyle ever after had been misplaced and I had made the biggest mistake of my life till that point. It felt like I would have to spend the next 40 years of my life struggling for the most part of my days. So I decided I wanted to quit and do some other type of work that did not require working such long hours, even if the pay was lower.

It is really difficult to judge a situation when you are living it for the first time. You don't really know what is normal versus not, what is acceptable vs unacceptable. So working long hours, like everyone else was doing, became the norm. Being tired, stressed, burnout was my new normal (although back then I didn't know the term "burnout"), same as when I was studying and doing these long study sessions with my mates. This was so not what I thought I had signed up for. My job was part of my identity, so it was hard to confront the reality that I might not like it.

Make time for yourself

With time I started to work less hours, to set other people's expectations and use my time at work wisely, so my managers and peers were happy with my output but I didn't have to work myself sick to be successful. I went from living for work to work to be able to enjoy life. At this point I met Mr. Sloth. I wanted to have time to do things other than work. He would tell me, repeatedly: you need a hobby. You need something you like to do besides being at the computer. So I took a sabbatical and tried a few things. Playing an instrument, studying some other subject, travelling. I liked those things, but they were not really my passion. I didn't see myself retiring and doing all of those for lengthy periods of time.

With time, we developed other hobbies and interests, walking in nature, go on weekend city adventures, gardening, legos, woodworking, sewing, exercising, DIY-ing. Suddenly, I had way too many things to do that were more interesting than work. We have hobbies together and hobbies independently. The amount of things we want to have time to do is ever growing.

This is why the term financial indepence now makes so much sense. Work until you have enough money that you can finance your hobbies/interests and you don't need to earn money to be able to keep going. Your investments work for you in the background and you can live the life you want without having to worry about making money. It doesn't necessarily mean retiring early, it means having time to dedicate to the things that matter to you and make you happy.