Maybe I should just retire, and figure out what to do while travelling the world. That would likely give more inspiration for ideas than spending almost all my energy on 9-5 job.
Bingo.
On the run-up to retirement I spent a lot of time writing a list of things I might want to do once work was off the table. When I quit my job, I checked off a few things (mostly small house projects) but otherwise ignored the list and just kicked back. Eventually I stumbled into a website idea that captured my attention and poured a lot of energy into it, and I've found it highly rewarding. The thing is, that website idea was absolutely nowhere on my pre-retirement list. In fact, it's likely I never would have thought of it had I continued to devote the vast majority of my mental energy to work.
Long story short -- stop trying to script your future and focus on making the most of the opportunities you're given. You'll figure it out.
For me the same as Tyler9000. I became fi some 19 years ago. And have never been in a situation like your subject title. I like sailing but for several (ere) reasons I now do not want a sailing boat of my own. Recently I talk about sailing with other people. Result: two years ago I sailed a 45 ft beautiful Beneteau as first Mate for some weeks in the Meditairean Sea, from Sicily to Majorca. Last two years I voluntary instructed dinghi sailing during summer months on several lakes in the Netherlands, fee lodging and dining. And this month I am asked to train and help the owner to prepare and sail a trimaran situated in the Pacific Ocean. As (Jacob and) Tyler describe: lets good fate do the work.
It can sometimes take me almost 2 hours to make breakfast when I am rough camping. So, if you challenged yourself to reduce your spending even further after retirement by making more use of your available vigor/time, you can create an almost infinite regress of projects. For instance, maybe your plan for tomorrow afternoon is to read on the beach, but you want some flip-flops to wear on the beach, so today you can go around and gather scrap plastic to braid and sew into flip-flops to wear tomorrow, so you don't have to spend $2 buying them. Then maybe you don't have the right kind of needle for the task, so then you will have to figure out how to make on of those, so then you have to fix your bicycle so that you can go to the library to use the computer there for research, and you have to gather enough berries and hand grind enough feed corn to feed yourself the kilocalories necessary to operate your bicycle, and ...now you are not even going to make it to the beach on time because you are so busy!!!
The issue is never that there's nothing to do but that there's no internal motivation to do any of the things.
Boredom serves to generate this motivation. See this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKPwKFigF8U
One of the keypoints of the video is that distractions (such as watching the video) or engaging in social media in general can trap you in a state of pseudo-boredom which while boring is not boring enough to actually make the required changes and find the internal motivation.
I would say this is something I sometimes struggle with at least when I am busy. After a long day at work if I sit down to watch some videos when I get home before getting stuff done chances are stuff isn't getting done.
Well, even hunter-gatherer societies spend a good deal of time engaged in social distractions. The smart-phone screen is just the latest recreation of the campfire. IMO, the worst aspect of this isn't that it keeps people from being more productive (work-ethic not being a huge issue for me), but rather that you can't actually share food or have sex with any of the other people gathered around the "fire." My DS30, who supervises a much younger crew at his place of employment, informed me that exchanging naked pics via snapchat is now part of the required sexual mating habits of American teenagers. I came of age at the raw edge of the 70s, when people still rode bicycles wearing nothing but blue jean cut-offs, so I am totally irked and icked when men "just" or "mostly just" want to chat with me.
I don't know if it's quite required, but it's definitely expected to probably happen. Then again this isn't that new, before photographs people wealthy enough to afford it got lewd paintings of their spouses/lovers. After photographs which were cheaper lewd photographs were more common than lewd paintings. Then the polaroid happened making it cheaper yet again and taking out the middle man making it more common once again. Then digital happened making it cheaper again and finally the internet allowing us to share these photos even easier and over a distance making both the cost and effort of doing so almost non existent.
Of course this is just in reference to the financial cost, not social cost. Which I suspect is probably lower than ever too. With the advent of online dating and more communication happening digitally a larger portion of relationships have moved to the digital and sex/sexuality are inevitably a part of this.
I would say there is a difference though as I have noticed my ability to focus without distraction has definitely gotten worse.
Homemade porn has always existed, but IMO the combination of the internet and the AIDS epidemic has really altered sexual behavior in the almost 40 years I have been intermittently out there. I mean, I might just be some combination of grouchy and old-fashioned, but if/when it gets to the point where I am pretty much required to indicate that I am seeking a "bull" in order to engage in the normative behavior of my youth, I am inclined towards simply retiring from the field altogether.
OTOH, I think book groups and/or intellectual salons moving online is great, except for the lack of snacks.
Folks who can accomplish FIRE are 'big goal' oriented, meaning big projects give us purpose/a reason to get of bed, so this is definitely common in this crowd once we've finished the FIRE project. While I'm looking forward to achieving FI, it'll be imperative to find my next big goal/project once I'm there. I'd +1 your idea for just retiring and letting come what may come.
Thanks for replies! I think a website project could be a cool new project. That would be more chill programming that what I normally do. I love programming, but working as one gives lots of stress and frustration... I made a website a couple of years back, helping people to choose which country to live in (or visit) based on personal preferences. Took it down recently though, since I was not sure if I was allowed to publish the data from all the sources I used.
