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

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7Wannabe5
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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:

It is an interesting premise. I tried to follow the program outlined in her book, but found that there were two levels of difficulty. The first problem is that you will never again be as physically healthy as you were at age 10. It is the year of your life in which you are least likely to die. So, some of the things you liked to do when you were 10, such as performing flips on the monkey bars are less possible in your 50s, and some of the things you liked to when you were 10, such as walk to the candy store and buy a big bag of assorted sweets to eat while you read from your stack of library books, are more likely to result in immediate poor outcome, especially if combined with attempt at monkey bars flips.

The second problem with this strategy is that even if you are fully cognizant of the great life-energy expense inherent in the drives that arrived with puberty, if you are somebody who has the appearance of being post-puberty, yet not quite at death's door, and you behave as though you are a happy, healthy 10 year old immersed in creative, curious exploration of personal interests, then other humans will likely behave as though you are signaling "sexy", because you will be like a mature tree running with fresh sap.

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C40
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Re: What would you do with your life if you were FI and had no ties with anybody?

Post by C40 »

I'm posting this without reading all the replies. My message here is heavily tied to my own considerations on the question. I have friends and family but no ties that require me to be or stay in any certain place or do any certain thing, so probably within the scope of your question.

One strategy is to narrow down the question. It's too broad. When you/we ask "what should I do with my life", the first level is to consider/decide and apply our own values to the question. For some 23 year old people, adventure and discovery is very important and that leads them to wanting to travel and what-not. For others - including some 23 year olds, starting a family and maybe not going to hell are very important, so they do entirely different things. The reason to first ask about what part of your life you want to change is because - while working or not - it's very easy to keep busy on many different things and in the end not get around to the important part. So, make sure to emphasize it.

------------

Aside from that, if simply constructing an overall life, some of the big questions may be (and some of these are coming to mind because they are things I've been contemplating)

  • If live in one place - Where? (plus various sub-questions)
  • If live in once place - What type of home?
  • If want more money - how? If a Job - the same as your career? Something else? What?
  • If want more money - how? Hobbies? Make up some work?
  • How to actually spend your time - hobbies, routines, focus, etc.
  • Relationships (love, friends, acquaintances) - various questions like what you want, how to find those people and foster relationships, etc.
  • Body/fitness - various questions about food, exercise, etc. which would end up having a big impact - for example, if one wants to bicycle a ton, living in a big city is usually horrible for it, and living in a more rural area that also has good roads (or good trails very nearby) can make an incredible difference.

    You could probably add 20+ other questions to this. The thing is to add the questions that matter. The questions could end up being radically different for different people.

    ----------------

    When I quit work, I immediately started on what some consider an adventurous type of travel/life. On one hand, that has been a lot of fun. On the other hand, because I don't see myself doing that for much of my life, I also feel like it has been a distraction and detour from building the life I want.

    I suppose, to answer your actual question about what I would do: I don't really know. Right now I'm thinking I'd love to have:
    - Some land. Room for growing things or doing projects out there
    - A small home
    - A garage and workshop
    - A city/town with 'enough' interesting people. Either my property being inside it, or nearby enough. Some close friends. Lots of friendly acquaintances that result in easy socializing and opportunities for hobby and work stuff.
    - The above all set up so that I feel comfortable leaving for 6+ months at a time. Possibly including 1+ other people living on the property (but not so close that I have to interact with them all the time) that would want to handle the living things and property maintenance while I'm gone.
    - Ways to travel that are efficient, fun, and comfortable enough for what I want at the moment.(Would like to experiment more with travel on motorcycle and bicycle)

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

Post by CS »

@7WB5
Well, at ten years old all I wanted to do was to lie in bed and read. And now, forty years later I'm doing that - but now also writing. So the physicality is not an issue. :lol:

@jacob
That article was amazing. When I was kid I would cry when it was time to COME HOME from camp. I think it was for this reason.

Now that my parents are getting older I feel like I'll never escape. Talking to my stepmom, she gave me a firm 'you have to live your own life' (love her). She's right.
IlliniDave wrote:
Tue Jul 09, 2019 6:29 am
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.
The irony I'm now finding is that with climate change and earthquakes, the midwest is not such a bad place to be. It might yet be more popular.
IlliniDave wrote:
Tue Jul 09, 2019 6:29 am
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.
It might feel too late because you are still enmeshed in your job. It colors everything. Judging that might be easier once you are free of it.
This is related, but I'm not sure how:
I found a refreshing quote that I needed to hear recently "Very successful people say no to nearly everything." This advice floats around in many places, from the The War of Art, to posts on Barking up the Wrong Tree (SO recommend that blog if you want cliff notes on interesting stuff and links to books with the longer, better read). I want to say No to much of my backstory and its demands. I want the courage to get rid of facebook frankly. I might delete the current account and make a new one that only has the friends and not twelve years of postings on it. And use it only as a phone book.
IlliniDave wrote:
Tue Jul 09, 2019 6:29 am
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.
That is great advice.

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

Post by CS »

C40 wrote:
Thu Jul 11, 2019 10:25 am
- The above all set up so that I feel comfortable leaving for 6+ months at a time. Possibly including 1+ other people living on the property (but not so close that I have to interact with them all the time) that would want to handle the living things and property maintenance while I'm gone.
Yes, this. I've been thinking about buying a duplex somewhere and letting a family member stay in the other side in exchange for caretaking duties.

IlliniDave
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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,

Yes, clearly you have to take that 10-year-old (I envisioned myself as 8) and in my case modify him to fit into my older-than-dirt physical trappings. So I've tried to rekindle some of that openness and curiosity I had as a kid and use it to refuel the engine. And I feel that it ties somehow to the beginner's mind idea from Zen Buddhism. Not sure I'll signal "sexy" at any point going forward, but I might achieve 'charming eccentric' someday if I keep at it. :D

IlliniDave
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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, I've never thought the Midwest was bad myself, I only left because the best job opportunity I found out of college was in Boston. That I never made it back (at least not yet) was mostly an accident. I hope you are right and maybe some will yet remain by the time I arrive next year :lol: . I do have the hedge of owning a small cabin in NE Minnesota at the head of one of the larger watersheds on the planet, but otherwise haven't thought much about climate aside from deciding I want a heated attached garage and a full basement (I belabored that in my journal so will spare everyone here).

Re "too late": I'll have to think about that, but the first thought that comes to mind is that I don't feel like my job has much to do with it. Maybe you are on to something I missed though. Similar to you apparently, it is family that draws me back to the Midwest. My mom passed last year. Some things feel like forever, but if you're like me someday you might wind up wishing forever lasted a bit longer. However I think your stepmom is right. My dad turned 80 last month and increasingly needs help with the day-to-day, which is my current burning platform (sorry for the lame corporate jargon). I've also got grown children (and grandchildren) that live in the middle part of the country so being centrally located helps there. Living free of backstory is something I can only carry so far because of the people who in many ways are that backstory. I've been fortunate to avoid too much personal misfortune, so maybe I'm a more happy to keep ties to the past than a guy deserves to be. At the same time, the thought of getting to start over with a blank page. Sigh ... :)

I like the way you put that about FB--although I do "play along" sometimes, it really is like my phone book.

The travel I envision is generally a lot less than 6 mos, more like 2-4 weeks typically, but some of it will be completely off-grid meaning once I'm gone I'm gone until I get back. So I've stewed about the "what to do about when I'm away" problem quite a lot and for quite a while myself. I don't have a solution yet. My first post-career stop will be locating to an area where I still have a lot of family, so if I get close enough to one of them maybe I can get them to at least check on the place occasionally. It's also going to cost me a good bit of money in the sense I've revised the criteria for a home there to include a much better neighborhood than I priced in to begin with. I guess I could also swallow a little of my introversion and love of solitude and get to know the neighbors as well, that way there's at least people around all the time who have some small reason to look out for me.

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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 »

I don't buy into the 'just be yourself' school of thought. Here's why:
Humans are not static. Right from the moment you walk out of the door, every novel experience is having an impression and the usual one's are reinforcing existing thought patterns.
Are you not being authentic when you use baby talk with a child but dog Latin in a formal setting? The fact is different circumstances warrant different ways of interacting with the environment. Neither of which make you any less of yourself.
Telling someone to be yourself is trying to force uniformity across time.

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 11:15 am
Haha, maybe, but it was objectively accurate.
I saw this and thought of you. Out there in the prairie, as lonely as a pair of small sized men's sweatpants on a Walmart shelf. Hang in there. Apparently its never too late to find love from a decent, mid-Western woman. Even one with her own place and set of wheels.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nation ... story.html

IlliniDave
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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:
Fri Jul 12, 2019 9:04 am
... Even one with her own place and set of wheels.
Now you're talking!

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

Post by CS »

@IlliniDave
The facebook phonebook is not actually my idea, but something I saw Jacob say a while back. Makes perfect sense to me. It can be a positive experience, but often the negative ones outweigh them. Also, the angry politics are only going to get worse and I'm somewhat worn out from them. My mind cannot stop thinking ahead to the horrors we have coming with all the climate refugees coming. Seeing those played out of facebook? No thanks. I feel like if I'm lucky I have fifteen more top notch years to be productive. I selfishly want to spend that time in flow.

I had a house that I left intermittently empty for close to three years. My mom would check out it occasionally (monthly) but nothing untoward happened except huge snowfall that let drifts pile up over the flashing on the chimney. Even then it was only minimal water damage. I had the mail going to a PO Box, which mostly worked except for those stupid weekly community papers. I also had two independent sources of heat in the house just by chance (gas stove with thermostat in the 'great room' in addition to the furnace, whose starter would fry every three years like clockwork.) The biggest risk was losing the house insurance if the company determined it was empty.

2-4 weeks away from a residence should not be a problem.


chenda
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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 »

fiby41 wrote:
Thu Jul 04, 2019 7:03 am
I used to volunteer and would like to think that have made good connections.
:lol:
I saw this excellent you tube documentary about Hare Krishna. Swamiji arrives in New York as a penniless 70 year old in 1965, and starts a massive religions movement which goes global. You couldn't make it up.

https://youtu.be/zMfsz9hJz18

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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 »

Ya chenda, age as was discussed in Jason's journal viewtopic.php?p=217098#p217098 must've been part of the wow-factor.
1 He could have been FI in his material life- had inherited a house and ran a pharmacy.
2 He had no ties with anybody after he was initiated as a sannyāsi and so had to relocate to give up family life.

The discussion in the recent permis thread rekindled thought along the lines of 'how mainstream should a movement get before it is not considered a cult?'

Sorry for derailing into comparative religion but listing reasons for popularity of Prabhupāda's ISKCON 50 years ago as compared to 2 other contemporaries (vis-à-vis Transcendental Meditation of Maharshi Mahesh Yogi; and Jiddu Krishnamurti):

3 Translations:

After the Bhagavadgītā (700 verses) the next authoritative text in ISKCON's cannon is the ŚrīmadBhāgavatam (~18,000 verses.) It is one of the 18 major Purāṇa. Prabhupāda had completed 10 of the 12 cantos with original Sanskrit text, its IAST transliteration, word-for-word meaning, then translation and purport for each and every verse before setting foot on the ship.
Doing so wouldn't have been possible if he had financial or other constrains on his time.

4 Economics:

He studied economics, Sanskrit and English at uni. He had to supplement the uni education with the (sic) nectarian grammar of Pāṇini. But he set the priority straight- all donations would first go to printing books and ensuring there are no supply-side shocks. The rules of economics that are apply to a person also do upon a temple. Many temples in USA have closed and sale of property has been done so that the devotees can be afforded shelter in other temples.

5 Attitude towards money:

When journalists used to grill him about money he'd say he's ready to pose for photo-ops hugging a pile of money if they wish to sensationalize it as long as the money is donated. The philosophy is: sanctity and profanity is decided by the relation of a thing to Kṛṣṇa-- if it is for my sense gratification, it is profane and if it is used in service of Kṛṣṇa it is sacred.

6 Target audience:

In NY he tried preaching to the affluent people to no avail. Or perhaps the spirituality market was saturated. It was not until he started preaching in the drug afflicted unsafe neighborhood that he started making devotees. What's that saying? "Every saint has a past and every sinner a future."

There were some studies done then regarding drug-user rehabilitation. Hare Kṛṣṇa program is: Waking up at 4-4:30 am to get ready and take cold baths, singing and dancing to wake up Kṛṣṇa at 5, chanting 16 syllables * 108 round * 16 rounds and its 7 am already, ...

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

Post by ertyu »

Every time this thread resurfaces and i read the title, I get the same vibe. I feel relief, like a burden has lifted, and like the terror that was there before is now gone. Idk what I would necessarily do if I were FI and had no ties to anyone -- but to be that way sounds so comforting and wonderful.

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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 »

I don't think anyone wakes up in the morning on day one thinking today Imma start a cult.
Just like militaries, it depends on
from among whom they're recruiting,
what types of people they're attracting,
what is the motivation for joining for the people attracted to it.

Kṛṣṇa says 4 types of pious people approach Him-
Those in distress
The curious/inquisitive
Those searching for meaning in life and the knowledgeable.

I'm unconvinced that size of organization has no bearing. The scandals in the Catholic Church does not make it evil inherently but scandals maybe the result of it being the largest religious organization.

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