What do you want to do with your life?

A lot of us here, as evidenced by PMs, conversations, hints and anecdotes are having… Let’s call them transitional or challenging circumstances.

So unlike Fuck Today–which is an amazing thread for getting shit off your chest–this thread is different (if not somewhat related).

There is one, and only one rule go this game:
The answers must be, on balance, positive.

Tell us, what you want to do with your life.

We could also call it What do you want to be when you grow up, but I think the Growing Up part might be a liiitle to challenging for me-----err, I mean some.

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I will get it started.

I’m gonna get a sailing license, and sail a boat to an island in the Pacific ocean. Not one too far away, just in the ocean.

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I want to transition and publish a few books. Not necessarily in that order.

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I am going to buy a small plot of land in some cheap part of the country, and plant a small forest of Oak trees and maples. I’ll never see them mature of course, but I’ve seen groves other people long gone have planted. And they are boss.

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Oh yeah, that reminds me :smile:
I’m going to write that damned book, even if it kills me (it may, I’m slow at outlines).

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I’m not transitional. I’m locked in, especially while my kid is in college.

I wanted to be an academic. It turns out that for liberal arts, the jobs and job quality (let alone pay) to make a living doesn’t exist unless you’re extremely good or lucky… at least not in the fields that I love.

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Sometimes it helps to get some words under way. It’s Good to have an idea where you’re going for those times when you don’t remember what to say but (for some of us any way) it can be a little too daunting or restricting to have too firm an outline.

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Oh god I dunno. I basically stumbled into sysadmin/tech support.
Can I just read here for ideas?
Possibly run my own game shop so I may have time to actually play a few of them?

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I want to want to do something. At least that’s my current best guess. It’s a great deal harder than it looks.

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(That’s half the fuckin’ reason I started this thread–i too need ideas! :smile:)

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I want to do a definitive test of whether or not money can buy happiness.

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Yeah,I just need to put in the time. I know the stories I want to tell, but… They all have gaps. I think I need to go and interview some of the subjects and record them. Hell, I could interview me.

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Mine’s pretty straightfoward!

I want to create a hybrid Valve/Mondragon cooperative company that uses ethical hiring to restrict assholery. Then I want to create campuses on site where in exchange for productive work people in groups as small as 42 can fork off from the main group and have control over 100% of their environment (local governance and rules, whether peanuts are allowed, how resources are distributed, if they have a huge gameroom etc.) that people can move between freely on a quarterly basis so nobody’s ever trapped by a decision and popular ideas quickly gather the most people.

Then I want to start taking over our supply chain and internally creating better versions of products utilizing the prototype loophole and only dealing with patents when we want to create an external product. Then I want to make our primary hiring focus refugees, orphans, and people in war-torn and difficult regions because a brain’s a brain and they’re just as productive as we are.

Then I want to franchise it out worldwide, like a Wal-Mart…but awesome and that you never have to leave.

So, basically: This, but a lot better …because it hasn’t been updated in forever and I suck at explaining things in text vs. in person.

FYI for the naysayers… I’ve been at this for years and have had plenty of good help and great devil’s advocates, so while I’d love more solutions all the basic problems have been addressed when it comes to our first few hundred million employees. :slightly_smiling:

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Living the dream, with a few Doug Firs and Oregon Ash for variety (W 18th, up Hawkins).

I want to perfect my enjoyment of watching trees grow.

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Oh: also, go muck diving in the Lembeh Strait…but that can wait until after everything’s on autopilot and I’m not important for anything else. It’ll be easy to relax then.

Oh.

So as part of participation, IP has a mechanical license (similar to mechanical licensing in art and music). And if your IP can’t escape the participants, you have created a fairly robust legal cover. Not perfect, but robust.

Huh.

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When I was in kindergarten and they asked what I wanted to be when I grew up I didn’t understand the question. So they said think of something you like to do so much that you’d like to do it everyday for the rest of your life and then think of something that does that and you can be that when you grow up.

So I said I’d like to be a fish.

But these days I’d like to be a supply side dealer for craft and jewellery supplies with a small retail side and showroom.

Tho I would still like to be a fish from time to time… if that’s still on the table.

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Yup. Basically everybody internal is ‘beta testing’ or ‘prototyping’, and aren’t a market and don’t own the products. Patent negotiation starts when external marketing begins (if ever), just like is frequently done with any other corporation. (varies depending on risk, product, and market)

Nothing’s perfect, and it can only be stretched so far, but it’s a pretty massive buffer. And the design involves having a subset of the population essentially treating the worlds laws as an RPG and min-maxing it (with the nice fuzzy people that we’re taking care of being the mind-hack that lets people like us exploit systems for more money because we need that)…so we can always use the same legal and political power corporations use for our benefit

There’s lots of layers and backup plans, but the general path is pretty straightforward. And I’ve suddenly got several local people who are helping out and plotting. :slightly_smiling:

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Help my kids get through college and grow up to be complete humans so far as I can help there.
Finish the book I’m going to write this year (you may be able to guess it’s hedgehog related).
Build a longer birding life list (still have to find one of those dang painted buntings).
Play more ukulele.
Get the Hell out of Texas.
Remain employed.
Figure out what to do with my life.

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