sjt wrote: ↑Wed Jan 19, 2022 12:37 am
Free time: A lot of reading, hobbies (piano, painting, music), meditation, general self-improvement. Exercise. Learning to cook. Gardening. Time with friends.
sjt wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:12 pm
Perhaps some feedback on resources to find "the work" may be in order. Any advice in that realm might help.
When I think of "the work", I generally think of "a reason to get out of bed in the morning that exists outside of the boundary of my own skin". The Work is something greater than myself, because most days mySelf isn't enough to get excited about much.
It sounds like you've put in the effort to put on your own oxygen mask first: you've got broad skills, a low CoL, and a stable living circumstance. (Congrats on that, by the way, and thanks for making this thread. I'd be very interested in a journal effort, if you wanted to start one.)
And you've exhausted the general list of self-focused activities that interested you.
That leaves everything outside your skin. Perhaps it's now appropriate to spend some time exploring others-focused activities. Volunteer for stuff at your church. Start showing up to habitat for humanity work days. Do trail maintenance days. Read all the books on ocean microplastic pollution and apply data-science skills to figuring out some helpful algorithm for controlling cleanup robot-swarms. Start building wooden toys for underprivileged children. Join an online community of people trying to adapt common industrial scrap into human-powered machines that people in developing countries can bootstrap as a source of livelihood and lifting themselves out of poverty. @7 suggested that community service (as creatively imagined as you want it to be) as a thing ERE-folk probably ought to get into once they've got all the other boxes sufficiently ticked.
Cal Newport talks about expanding spheres of influence, and advises that people should start at the smallest scales and work up. So, maybe don't jump from personal sphere to global impact immediately. Move to your neighborhood, then city, state, nation, etc, or some rough guideline like that. If you don't have the experience to interact well with your neighbors, it's unlikely you'll have the experience/skills necessary to interact well with people on the other side of the world.
What bugs you? What bothers you when you read about it? That might be a line to investigate. For example, ugly buildings full of toxins bug the hell out of me, so part of my Work has to do with a built environment that sucks less.