Ask Lemmy

Be a librarian. I always felt like being a custodian to knowledge was a noble pursuit, and I respect librarians alot for it. I never went into the field myself because I couldn't afford the schooling just to get a job that in my area, doesn’t pay very well. If pay wasn't a problem? Hoo boy!

Someone asked me this question recently and I had a minor existential crisis.

2 chicks at the same time

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.

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.

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.

Make a tiny caravan and travel all over

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.

If I were rich Id open a "Nerd-pub" board games, tabletop games, arcade machines, pool tables, pinball machines...

If I were just "doing ok" id probably start a youtube channel buying really cheap cars of FB marketplace and just reviewing how much of a piece of shit I've bought this month.

Id probrally learn programming and become a Linux distro/software maintainer for projects like Debian and maybe Libreboot.

Retire. Fighting my medical conditions is a full time job as it is.

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

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.

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 art

Exercise, play music, go jogging around town and meet new people all the time. Basically what I do now except not having to condense it into the little time I have off.

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.

Write, program, cook, maybe have sex

Teach

I would make handcrafted furniture, work on my garden, and contribute to open source software that supports both farming and woodcrafts.

Same thing I do for money now, handyman shit

Read, learn, create, and explore.

Define basic needs.

Is that just food water shelter utilities Healthcare clothing?

Does it include entertainment?

Travel?

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.

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.

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

Make music, check it out:

www.thassodar.com

I don't make money from it so I'd still do it even if all my needs were met.

Run an animal sanctuary and grow lots of veggies and flowers

Purse writing

Help my community with the things I have expertise in.

Have children

I’d be a teacher

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.

Write, read and analyze literature. Hopefully I’ll be able to do it as a job.

I'll tell you what I'd do, man...

i'd pick a direction and start walking.

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.

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.

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.

Enjoy it

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.

Go around pantsing people all day. Go so hard that it starts to feel like work. Then pants myself and end it all.

Write only free code. Right now, probably 80% of my code is free. I’d bump that up to 100%.

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

Spend as much time as I could in nature or playing video games. Or playing video games while in nature. Lots of camping.

Continue to work and fuck over poor people is very popular.

Probably mostly cooking, cleaning, going on adventures with the dog, playing music, and smoking extravagant amounts of weed