What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Simple living, extreme early retirement, becoming and being wealthy, wisdom, praxis, personal growth,...
Jason

Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by Jason »

fiby41 wrote:
Wed Jul 03, 2019 1:40 pm
Buy the one-time Hare Krishna membership
Does this cover reincarnation?

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fiby41
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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by fiby41 »

chenda wrote:
Wed Jul 03, 2019 5:11 pm
@fiby41 - are you involved with Hare Krishna ?
I used to volunteer and would like to think that have made good connections.
Jason wrote:
Thu Jul 04, 2019 6:33 am
Does this cover reincarnation?
:lol:

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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by chenda »

@unemployable - It's family ties not money which would discourage me.

@fiby41 Cool sounds good

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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by BookLoverL »

I'd try and make the world a better place. But not on anyone else's terms. I'd do it on my terms, getting up when I wanted to and such. This might include things like encouraging local community spirit, doing things that will benefit for the environment, creating cool things which will make people happy, etc.

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Seppia
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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by Seppia »

Sorry for the fairly standard response, but I would probably start by visiting our beautiful planet first.

I am a very anthropologically curious person, and I love to see how other people / cultures think, act, relate and build their cities / communities.
Plus I absolutely adore Mother Nature in its purest forms (I love to hike, scuba dive, and the only TV I watch except for NBA basketball is documentaries).

I would only do safe places though, so no Afghanistan or anything like that.

My other desire would be to be useful to humanity.
This could come in many forms, from serving meals to my town’s homeless shelter to helping missions in impoverished countries.
I always discuss with my sister (who has done some pretty significant missionary time in Africa and SE Asia), and one of the sources of frustration to me is that, if I died today, the world would not suffer one single bit except for people mourning my passing.

A very good friend of mine who’s a teacher (and hence has three months vacation during summertime) has found a system that I’d probably try replicate.
He used to go to Colombia and teach poor kids in the countryside for free (volunteering) for a couple months, then used the third month for travel.

I think this mix of egoism/altruism would work for me.

I would keep my base camp in the small apartment in my hometown that I recently bought.

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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by Frita »

Where I live now is super popular and desirable June to September and Christmas-to end of ski season so traveling during that time is a double-edged sword. If I didn’t have a kid in school, I would stick around during those months and travel for extended blocks at other times. I prefer shoulder season travel, less crowds but good weather conditions.

Originally, my plan was to teach in Guatemala (volunteer) several months per year. I will have to find a different school as my old contact seems to have some behaviors that do not work for me.

I’d do what strikes me, balancing learning/creativity/helping others/wasting little/outdoor active lifestyle, and adjust from there. If I was not married to DH, I would prefer a condo over a house and would sell a vehicle and do more global backpacking. If something turned out not to be a long-term activity or one I cared to repeat, I’d more on to the next thing to try.

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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by jacob »


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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by Ego »

@jacob, what a great article.

"He moved free of backstory. He wasn’t anyone’s son, or anyone’s friend from a fancy school, or anyone’s anything. “I was more able to be me. I was just able to be… more… I was going to say ‘more normal’, but it’s not more normal, it’s just more.” He’s stayed in Australia for the past two decades, letting life go about what he calls its “organic progression”."

I believe this is why being independent (free of backstory) must come before interdependence (organic progression).

So, to answer the 'what would you do' question, I've never had no ties. The closest I've come is when I was in my early twenties and first arrived in California. Since then I have been consistently adding a wide variety of novel experiences to the compost pile of my life while avoiding and removing anything that might harm the organisms that enrich the mixture. If I were to find myself today with no ties, commitments or obligation, I would do the same.

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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by IlliniDave »

CS wrote:
Wed Jul 03, 2019 9:15 am
- I'd love to find someone to go on all these adventures with - or even adventures in the USA (more the super slow travel kind) but that is hard. Dating is tricky enough, but finding someone similarly introverted (I would not make, nor be happy with a super extrovert), FI and wanting (some) new experiences is a pretty specific target set of behaviors. Truthfully, I haven't been trying, but that would be the ideal partner.
Thanks to the vagaries of the universe I've spent a lot of time contemplating this topic over the last two weeks, more than is the norm. Although I'm okay as a soloist, I'm probably more cavalier about accepting it than is strictly true. For some of us it really is like trying to thread a needle by sputtering candlelight. The Midwest has been a big stumbling block for me. My journey leads back, or at least though, there, and it seems no one who isn't there now wants to go there (the main reason I've largely quit dating here in the Southeast--it's pointless given the nearness of my transition), and most potentially compatible people there now are ultimately looking to leave.

Then add to that my peculiar shade of introversion and interest in an eclectic collection of eccentric, impossible things like paddling around on a part-time basis to explore/fish each of 1,100 wilderness lakes (and that's just the US side, the real gems are among the 900 or so on the Canadian side, ha). It's hard getting around the fact that the odds of encountering a perfect lock/key fit seem best gauged as absurdly remote.

Once I thought I found one, but eventually her heart called her away from the Midwest. And of all the things I've set up as possibilities for my future, spending the short/intermediate-term centered at a specific spot in the Midwest is pretty close to nonnegotiable. There's some interesting ideas in this thread about living free of backstory that I need to take some time to think about, although for me I think it's too late.

That probably sounds like it's meant to be discouraging, but it's more of a, "I truly hear you on that one." All of my confidants disagree with me on this, but I believe that "not trying", or at least not trying too hard, is the best way to go. I think getting up every day and making it the best day you can while maintaining as much openness as possible is enough so that for most of us things will ultimately turn out well.

Jason

Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by Jason »

IlliniDave wrote:
Tue Jul 09, 2019 6:29 am
Once I thought I found one, but eventually her heart called her away from the Midwest.
Jesus Dick Butkus Christ. This is like tapping a Miller keg filled with man tears.

That is one lonely feeling causing sentence.

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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by IlliniDave »

Jason wrote:
Tue Jul 09, 2019 7:13 am
Jesus Dick Butkus Christ. This is like tapping a Miller keg filled with man tears.

That is one lonely feeling causing sentence.
Haha, maybe, but it was objectively accurate. :lol: I'm going to remember the Miller keg quip. Excellent.

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Lemur
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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by Lemur »

Great read here.

Jason

Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by Jason »

One of the themes of my therapy is the Kierkegaard quote (and I paraphrase because its been translated) "The highest purpose in life is the will to be oneself." This article seemed to be one expression of that idea. I have thought of false narratives. I had never thought of "no narratives." That's a tough one.

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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

IlliniDave wrote: paddling around on a part-time basis to explore/fish each of 1,100 wilderness lakes (and that's just the US side, the real gems are among the 900 or so on the Canadian side, ha). It's hard getting around the fact that the odds of encountering a perfect lock/key fit seem best gauged as absurdly remote.
True, but maybe if you hit the Canadian ones too?

Image

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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by IlliniDave »

@7wb5, haha, I've been to probably two dozen of the lakes on the Canadian side, and I musta been using the wrong lure--nothing like that swimming in those waters best as I can tell. But I'll keep an eye out in two years when I make my next international jaunt.

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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by Peanut »

Jason wrote:
Tue Jul 09, 2019 2:12 pm
One of the themes of my therapy is the Kierkegaard quote (and I paraphrase because its been translated) "The highest purpose in life is the will to be oneself." This article seemed to be one expression of that idea. I have thought of false narratives. I had never thought of "no narratives." That's a tough one.
I always liked Dolly Parton's version: "Find out who you are and do it on purpose."

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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by Peanut »

On the OP topic, I liked what someone posted here about listing all the things you've ever enjoyed doing or think you might enjoy. I had never done that and it made me think back to my childhood, especially about hobbies that I stopped due to circumstance rather than desire. In April I started a musical one of these again and am so glad for it.

Jason

Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by Jason »

Peanut wrote:
Tue Jul 09, 2019 8:50 pm
I always liked Dolly Parton's version: "Find out who you are and do it on purpose."
"The Best Little Existential Whorehouse in Texas."

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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Peanut wrote: listing all the things you've ever enjoyed doing or think you might enjoy.
I think that was from a book by Barbara Sher, "It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now." She recommends that you forget about all the things that started to concern you in puberty and then resulted in consequences/responsibilities/crisis through mid-life, and focus more on what you liked when you were 10 years old.

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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by IlliniDave »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Jul 10, 2019 8:00 am
She recommends that you forget about all the things that started to concern you in puberty and then resulted in consequences/responsibilities/crisis through mid-life, and focus more on what you liked when you were 10 years old.
That's actually profound in it's way, and sort of describes what's happened to me by accident.

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