If all your basic needs were met and you didn't have to work to get by, what would you do with your life?
If all your basic needs were met and you didn't have to work to get by, what would you do with your life?
Get high and scroll Lemmy, apparently
Work to solve problems. Not on a fixed schedule, but my choosing.
Also, long walks and visiting people I like.
Work on Free Open Source Software. Seriously, I fucking love software engineering and I can't really imagine doing anything else with my life. In fact, that's kinda my current plan - work towards financial independence and then work on things that matter to me, on my own terms. I really hope I won't get burned out somewhere in the process.
I'm a licensed electrician. I do construction for my job.
If I didn't need to work to support myself and my family, I'd offer my services as a licensed electrician to my community at-cost. I'd charge for materials, but not my own labor. Basically, just use the skills I have to support others in my community who could benefit from those skills.
But I also wouldn't work anything close to 40 hours/week.
I’d start with gardening, fishing, road tripping, camping, hiking, but I think that might eventually not be stimulating enough. I’d probably pickup a hobby that would enable artistic expression. Maybe pottery, or stained glass?
Get on my bike and see how far it could take me. And when I was done with that I would go build bike trails for my community.
Painting, drawing. General arts. Travel. Eating adventures. Fitness. Electronics and automation. Programming. Health focus.
And I'd make my point and click adventure game. Finally.
The dream
Get a proper sleep.
Make music, write terrible sci-fi, and publish economics research (assuming we haven’t reached post-scarcity yet).
Basically I’d have time to actually dedicate myself to my hobbies.
All the things I do for fun and hobbies I would do a lot more. Which would likely be the following:
- Exercise (running in the warm months and skiing in the cold)
- TTRPGs (I might move from 1 day of the week into two, and assuming everyone else has the same deal play in-person instead of digitally)
- Reading (books and more books)
But mostly I would work on living the permaculture / herbalism fantasy.
- Do a lot more herbal formulation and
- Maybe open the small apothecary to sell things at Art fairs and other makers markets.
- Turn my urban yard into a full food forest to help grow some of my own food, and herbs. (I want to have an urban oasis of edible trees, bushes and other useful plants)
- Volunteer more a local prairie restoration group that I have worked with in the past
- Finally spend some time gorilla gardening on open lots and sides of alleyways around my neighborhood to spread the plant love.
Travel, camp, travel. Play with dog
do you want a list?! I have adhd and 1.324 different hobbies and projects in different stages of completeness. If I had free time I would get 200 more hobies and start 200 more project without finishing the ones before lol
I'm a software engineer so I'd probably seek a way to use my skills in a way that benefits people, possibly something tied to volunteering work I already do. And also contribute to some open source project.
I'd try to maintain a somewhat regular working schedule but with fewer hours per day than I currently spend at my job. Maybe I'd travel and work from different places.
Volunteer at various non-profits. I am (sadly) one of those people that "need" to work in some capacity in order to fill fulfilled. I also need structure, which I'm not very good at building for myself. I need to be held accountable (such as being expected to show up to work at a certain time), and work has always helped me do that.
I'm about to leave my current job with no back-up plan, and while my savings and partner will provide for me for the rest of the year, I'm kinda dreading not having structure. I'll probably volunteer somewhere.
I would work on open-source software and play games, which is what I already do, I'd just have more free time to do it.
I'd love to keep working and volunteering. I'd still contribute to society and the social network that comes with it, but with none of the burden of having to earn money to survive.
I'd like to think I'd actually do all the art I'm too fucking stressed to sit down and focus on. Maybe make a video game or two.
My long term wish has always been to fuck off to somewhere not-too-warm and tropical, and write stories from a place where I can see the sea.
You're describing retirement. And, boy have I spent a LOT of time thinking about what that looks like.
A lot of people have lists of things they'd do, see, learn, or be. I had one too, but it kept fucking changing depending on where I was in life and what my interests were.
Any list I had always felt restrictive. Here's where I ended up instead...
I would put my energy and attention only on the things that I want to put them on at any given time.
I guess some call that living in the moment, but I call it retirement.
So many hobbies
Work so that others can also have their needs met.
House in the middle of the woods, with internet connection. It's the weird eremite techno wizard life for me.
Ride my Motorcycle and brew beer. Then go work out. Hang with friends. Hike, swim, explore the world.
DM or GM tabletop games for groups
I would spend a lot of time tending my garden, growing rare produce to share with the community, and crafting.
I'd work on cars. And my house. It feels like I'm fighting entropy, I fix one thing and find 2 more problems in the process. But I know some of that is just the previous home owner doing a bunch of diy.
Learn to wood work and build furniture. I have a deep, deep loathing for flat pack furniture.
Garden. I'd love to have a proper garden.
Honestly. I'd just like to be rid of my anxiety over finances.
This depends. But based on how much I have, one of these:
Open a small bar/tapas place in my neighborhood.
Travel
Do what I do when not working - garden, read, exercise, take care of the land & the animals, go see live music.
Work on myself for a good long while, then live a quiet happy life with some cats and, should i be so lucky, a partner i have mutual love and respect with.
See how deep the ADHD-hobby-collection rabbit hole can go 😁
Someone asked me this question recently and I had a minor existential crisis.
Chill on the couch. Watch Youtube. Go for bike rides. Learn the ukulele and go busking for fun. Do papercraft. I was able to do this for about 5 years, and then I had to go back to work, just as I was really getting my creative juices going.
Would finally make my dream game.
I'd love to go back to school, not for better grades, but purely for learning. There are some interesting af fields out there!
Judging by what I've seen lately: crime and opression to maintain my status because I only understand the world through the lenses of artficial scarcity and zero sum game theory.
I have ADHD and my hobby is collecting hobbies. I don’t typically get bored. I would likely need to do some side gig to supplement buying things for new hobbies.
Pick up learning new languages and how to draw and make music. Create the things i think would be awesome but nobody else wants to and i cant because i dont have the money to learn efficently the skills required. Live in a nice little house in the woods with someone who loves me for who i am. Eat healthy and exercise.
Read, learn, create, and explore.
Nothing.
Create art. Writing screenplays and books. Painting, gardening, working out, traveling, seeing live music, volunteer with whatever great organization I happen to be into at the time. Spend more time in my community. Have children.
Gardening, fishing, skiing, hunting, making furniture, building boats, long road trips with the family.
Basically typical retirement shit.
Continue to work for extra shit probably. Sure basic needs are met, but I don't think basic needs count for computer parts, drones, supplies for home improvements. My life would be easier on bills but would still need funds for projects and hobbies.
Making music, and building guitars. That's all.
Art and music.
Science research.
I'd travel, try new cuisine, and I'd also pick up jobs for short stints to pick up skills, almost like journeyman apprentice, I'd also do some kind of social work, and go back to academia with the intent to actually learn and not just to get a degree and get a job, but to potentially do some actual research and development
Today being labor day I would go down to the protest downtown, instead I'm going to the office to do as little work as I can manage, maybe have a couple meetings to slow other people down today too
Make and restore furniture. Build shit. Garden. Read. Organize and fill out my media library. Learn programming and try to fix some of the problems I'm dealing with on Linux. Probably socialize more because I wouldn't be tired of dealing with people and stressed out from work all the time.
Write, program, cook, maybe have sex
Short answer: work less.
Long answer: I actually enjoy my job, and have for a long time. If I had won several million long ago I would have kept my job because it (most of the time) was very fulfilling and important, though it has largely wrecked my body.
Now I can't fly anymore, so while my job is still important and fulfilling, it's not nearly as exciting, and I am constantly crazy busy, so I'd love to cut my hours about in half, probably. I'd still want to work.
Oh, and I'd build a forge in my backyard. So maybe work the same amount, but some of my time crafting things.
I would make handcrafted furniture, work on my garden, and contribute to open source software that supports both farming and woodcrafts.
All I want to do in life is make music, woodworking, and gardening for food. I would do that until I expired with a smile on my face.
Teach
Id probrally learn programming and become a Linux distro/software maintainer for projects like Debian and maybe Libreboot.
I’d sell all my things to just travel. Living in one place and being stuck in a routine is like a mental prison for me.
Enjoy it
Making furniture with woodworking or maybe kitchen utensils with blacksmithing.
I work in cloud tech. Pretty good at it.
But I feel like I should be doing something with my hands. Like woodworking or blacksmithing.
I live in a apartment so I don't have the space to even try out hobby stuff. It's also expensive to do either.
I settled for electrical stuff and bought a bunch of gear to learn soldering. Playing with breadboard is interesting but I enjoy the soldering more.
I'd grow food. Good food, and way more than I or my family could possibly eat. I'd also grow beautiful, ecosystem-supporting native plants. I'd offer to do the same for my neighbors who dont enjoy such things, or who just want a beautiful and functional yard.
With my leftover time i'd go hiking a couple times a week, and I'd read scientific literature when the sun goes down.
Run an animal sanctuary and grow lots of veggies and flowers
Build Legos and Gundam models. Finish writing my novel I keep restarting. Hold more Hunter: The Reckoning sessions for the group I Storytell for. Game, work my way through my backlog. Spend more time with my wife.
I’d be a teacher
Volunteer at a rescue centre to help the dogs and other animals
When the weather is good, be outside as much as possible. Do more long-distance, or even multi-day treks. Dick around in the woods more (survival skills for fun, learn more about identifying local plants and fungi, etc). Bring a book and some basic snacks, and hang out in public park space more often (we've got some beautiful spaces here). Basically just a lot more exploration, primarily on foot, bike, or skateboard depending on distance and energy level.
When the weather is crap, spend more time keeping my place in order and looking nice. Listen to music, read books, maybe try and get more deliberate about a writing habit. Pick a public indoor space of some kind and become a regular. Maybe volunteer.
Spend more time working on good habits to keep the energy level up for the above long term.
Write, read and analyze literature. Hopefully I’ll be able to do it as a job.
Continue to work and fuck over poor people is very popular.
Start painting or some shit idk
I'd make a few kids with my wife, make my private pilot license and travel the world with my family by plane (as the pilot, of course). In the meantime I build aviation related open source software.
I wish I could be a perpetual student attending college. And open a business that im passionate about.
Learn shit.
Become a blacksmith. I'd make all sorts of things.
And a welder. And a tool and die man.
I'd work with metal. And at some point I'd make a point to learn glass blowing because it's cool.
I teach philosophy for a living these days.
I’d probably keep doing that, but less of it.
I’d also do a lot of writing.
Probably mostly cooking, cleaning, going on adventures with the dog, playing music, and smoking extravagant amounts of weed
I would find work where I enjoy myself, and get a hobby of travelling the world and documenting cultures
Indie game development. Except more full time instead of just on weekends like I do now.
Acting and singing. Studied Musical Theater in my twenties but couldn't see myself making a living at it.
Peter Gibbons: I would relax... I would sit on my ass all day... I would do nothing.
Lawrence: Well, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man.
Make music, perform music, make games, make movies, write small books and maybe draw pictures.
And then I would try out being a research attorney, being an EMT, a pilot, maybe working with NASA at some point and working for some government agency specializing in digital warfare.
People always assume if you had everything you would just sit at home and be lazy and never try anything. But from my experience you don't do that shit just because you're complacent, you do it because either you are way too stressed out to try out new stuff or you are in the middle of a depressive episode. Almost all people I know wouldn't be able to be lazy for more than 2 weeks, they would start making something.
Make stuffed animals and donate them to hospitals, fire stations, and police stations
Organize town-wide scavenger hunts
Learn to cook good food and give it away to people who want some
Start a group that would teach people how to use a sewing machine.
Organize a bearded dragon rescue.
Trim people's hedges
Make videos to share all my knowledge with people for free
Find a deserted corner in the Pacific Northwest temperate rainforest, likely up near Haida Gawaii, and just… vanish.
I like civilization in general for the benefits it brings. I even like a few people. But humanity in general…
I truly enjoy solitude.
Travel, learn culture science theologie languages and so much more, teach
I can answer this because it's true. I work out daily, cook every meal, hangout all day with my dogs, explore YouTube rabbit holes, and read scifi. Without an alarm, I'm suddenly a morning person. Up by five with energy. I'm trying to figure out my next move. Weird thing is, it's probably another career. Just on my terms
The same life but without the pressure of a job.
Write only free code. Right now, probably 80% of my code is free. I’d bump that up to 100%.
Game (and probably stream myself doing so) a lot, get more exercise, volunteer a bit, probably contribute to open source projects a lot more
First year I'd definitely visit all Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Organise more and better LARPs
Write sci fi novels and take care of stray cats
Exercise, drink wine, read more, and take tons of road trips.
Probably continue to work in transpiration with special needs school kids. My job isn't so much about money to me at this point I'm deeply emotionally invested.
You know those people who restore old machinery and equipment? Locomotives, historic warships, industrial sites and so on? I'd absolutely be dedicating my day to that. There's something so satisfying about seeing that old stuff work, but they're always chronically understaffed and struggling to keep up with everything.
Oh, and write a novel.
Do so much more with horses Video games Art
Exactly what I am already doing. imagineering my top rated VR Theme Park and explore SE Asia and other parts of the world. Love both.
I would still be programming. Just that it would be the projects I want to do, instead of the ones my employer wants to do.
Haha I like to be silly at work sometimes after I’ve already paid the big monthly expenses. I say, “I’m here to do two things help kids and pay bills, and I’m all outta bills.” I would continue to work in my field on a part time basis. Then I would make time for a few doctor appointments and start going to therapy again. I’d walk my dog at different parks more often. Hopefully id make more time with my friends and family assuming they have the same deal. I would want to be more involved with my community too.
Metal, leather and wood working. Bee keeping and running a little shop
Still work but at a reduced rate and else I would actually think about volunteering or improving my living conditions like a garden or tech at gome :)
Go into teaching. I love to assist others in their learning voyage, I love science, research, classes. However, financial realities mean that I would be starving if I pursued that path. So I find fulfillment in adjacent activities in my current line of work. I would also have an electronics workshop, repairing computers and other electronics for fun.
Exercise to get healthy and work on my garden, to start. Then I'd handle any necessary projects for my home. Then I'd find causes to support by volunteering.
Volunteer, hands down. Local community stuff, create something akin to a co-op public broadcasting channel, spend time with my animals, bake and donate goods.
I would walk my dog, lift weights, study foreign languages, help my community
Without joking, most likely I would watch more Lemmy.
I've been using the stress of needing to do things to keep me going. Without it I can't even imagine what I'd do.
I'm into bird watching, so I'd want to travel to see new ones and what have you.
I would want to craft more.
I would read more.
I would take language lessons
I would work on that book idea
I would take classes on anything that interested me.
I would want to have a small farm, I just think it's neat.
Streamer but in like a chill way, no subs
Would study and do arts and use our findings and research to help improve the world in some kind of way, even if its a little.
Study more JiuJitsu and physiotherapy for poor people.
I would make radio. I do one show a week and I sometimes struggle to find time to even prepare for that, so if time weren't an issue I'd probably end up just doing a load more.
Basic needs only? Still work so I can have money to do more than just basic things.
I don't think I'd ever leave the makerspace.
Go around pantsing people all day. Go so hard that it starts to feel like work. Then pants myself and end it all.
Knowing me, do what I normally do in my free time, but hopefully actually get projects done.
I'd have plenty of time to play games, watch my shows, listen to CDs/music, hopefully finish a project I started on Wattpad or another program, and spend time learning coding to help with my NeoCities site and some other projects I wanna work on but don't know enough to make become a realiety.
I would become an author and write plenty of fiction, poems, short stories. I might also get into game development. And if time permits, I would even pick up on astronomy.
Write, write until I drop dead, with a smile in my face.
Go back to the low paying job that I really liked but couldn't afford.
Sounds like it would have to be free or low cost hobby. So probably I'd go hiking, and camping while reading books and making coffee with my aeropress
Basically yurucamp. A nice cosy anime. You should watch it
If there's somehow a way in this utopia scenario to also maintain a moped like a Honda supercub or vespa, add that as well as I cruise around between hiking and camp sites
Yes I can do that right now but you know how it is what it is
I'd dive fully into circuitboard electronics
Build things, well, until I get tired of it. The ADHD is strong and I hate fine finish work.
Make my pottery, dive deeper into woodworking, and learn permaculture farming.
Also my research but with less bs
I'd make a lot of paintings, learn how to animate, compose a gigaton of music, make a graphic novel, collect analog synths and various folk instruments, gaze at the stars, go camping a lot, make a garden of native plants, design my house to be optimal and asestically pleasing, read a lot of books, spend time with friends, host a server or two. And travel. Lots of travel but I'd do travel where I stay in one place for months as opposed to multiple in a couple of weeks so that I could really absorb the culture.
Write, travel
I'd design and build useful things
A) mental health would absolutely improve so I'd have more energy for
B) producing more shows and putting on more events. Personally I don't want to retire because I want to create a career where if I did retire I'd just do what I was doing anyway. I'm kinda doing that now but I have more BS and stress to deal with.
Read a lot of books. Swim. Go for coffee anytime I could with friends. Volunteer. Sit and stare out the window at the rain. Foster parenting.
Kung fu, charitable volunteering, and any intellectual challenge I could take on.
I'd spend more time playing guitar and chess and spend more time with my son.
play more games learn to draw maybe pick up a new language.
Join a 3rd band, I guess.
I would build affordable housing.
I'd be one of those old school naturalists and just, like, go live in a swamp for three years with one pair of clothes, a cot, a journal, and a pencil.
Make video games or digital interactive art pieces for VR
I'd probably teach something like scuba diving.