Jim Tigwell, over at Concept Crucible published a blog about what he would do if money were no object. He talks about why that was hard for him to consider, and why it's relevant at all. He mentions that, once you have done away with all of the things that you do because you have to do them to live, the things that you would choose to do are your big and outrageous dreams. If you don't ever think about the crazy things you would do with all the spare time and money in the world, you don't have any sense of what it is you really want to be doing. Once you have answered that question, you can then work towards it in a more everyday way than winning the lottery or becoming immediately independently wealthy.
This of course got me thinking about what I would do, and I, like Jim, found it a very hard question to answer, though probably for a different reason. The reason that I found it hard to answer is because I would want to do ALL THE THINGS. Everything. Systematically.
I agree with what Jim said on creating things; I am also a creator, so I would write despite incompetence, I would make bad art and play great music poorly, I would make inane videos and sing constantly, and I would get better at all of those things. But rest assured, before I was done getting any good at any one of them, I would decide that now is the time to learn French. Before I was halfway fluent I would decide it's the time to go on a walkabout and spend a month walking a trail alone. (Since that one is hard to bail on in the middle, I would probably finish that one.) After that I would become obsessed with yoga for a while and then realize that I had forgotten all about my passion for knitting, and start doing that again. Then maybe I would start working my way through my veritable library of a to-read pile. Or I might learn to joust. After that: Who knows? Maybe I would take hang gliding lessons. Or visit Mozambique or Bangladesh or Ireland or Antarctica. Maybe then I would enroll in a dozen University classes just because they sounded neat.
Anyway, the point I am getting at is that there is a big part of me that just wants to absorb every experience imaginable and learn any skill that I can get someone to teach me. I just never feel like I have the time or the resources. So maybe I should just find a way to do all of these things, one at a time, at a more reasonable rate than I would if I had all the money and time in the world. A part of me also wonders what it says about me as a person that I would flit from one thing to another indefinitely, if given the opportunity, but that is a bit of pensivity for another day.
I'll end my little babble here on the same note that Jim ended his: Think about it. What would you do? ...Well, maybe you should work on that.
It is what it is.
