Friday, December 22, 2017

What will I do after achieving Financial Freedom (part 2)

This is a continuation of my previous post (see here). After some thinking, I think it is not wise to blab about my interests as well as the potential areas of interests that I am keen to develop. Else, I will really overdo it with the number of "parts" there are to this post.

To make it more relatable, I think it would be better to show how I could potentially fill up my schedule with various activities over a 1-week time-span. For this hypothetical scenario, let's assume that I wake up at 8am each day and head back to bed at 10pm.

Why 10pm? I am a morning person who rise early and rest early.

To make scheduling "easier", I'll divide the time into 2-hour blocks. Hence, there are 7 such blocks in each day (8am - 10am; 10am - 12pm; 12pm - 2pm; 2pm - 4pm; 4pm - 6pm; 6pm - 8pm; 8pm - 10pm). This is just to make the blog post less-complicated; I am not going to really restrict myself in this way.

Other key assumptions have to be made before I begin. I assume that I will be single all the way and have no major financial commitments.

Here is what my schedule could look like after achieving financial freedom.


Okay, definitions, and their corresponding elaborations, are up next.

Exercise: Includes "low-intensity" exercises such as brisk walking to more "moderate intensity" stuff such as swimming, badminton, etc. Technically, I am not supposed to do any exercise as per the doctor's instruction owing to my medical condition. Hence, I expect to spend most of my "exercise time" on brisk walking through the various park connectors. When I was a student, I have brisk walked across park connectors countless of times. It is therapeutic, helps me to work up a sweat, and I could gamify the sub-routes to take. Beautiful scenery too, if you know which paths to take. :)

I have contemplated on more "exotic" physical activities such as swordplay and jousting before. On second thought, it may or may not materialize anyway.....and I don't think it is good for my health.

Spinning stuff is also a decent form of exercise once you achieve some form of competency in it. As there are multiple divisions which require different skill sets, it could be both a challenging, rewarding, and definitely time-consuming hobby to pursue.

Since we are on the subject of skilltoys such as yoyos here, it reminds me that I have other skilltoys such as glowsticks (see here for a visual demonstration), astrojax, and devil sticks collecting dust somewhere at home. The thing is that some motions cut across skilltoys and practising one of them could very well have a synergistic effect on my growth in the others.

Read: I am being very broad here and am playing around with semantics. This could include just plain reading of books, both fiction and non-fiction. It also includes Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) such as Coursera, EdX, and other similar online education providers. It also includes any formal or professional education that I may take up just for interest's sake or to try to get an insider's view of another field just to broaden my horizons (in a way I'm doing the latter now....).

With less constraints, I foresee myself spending more time in the library devouring books. The end goal (if it is even appropriate to call it a goal!) is to develop myself to become a well-rounded individual with exposure to various schools of thought.

Gaming: This includes both computer games and console games. As it is, I have a "backlog" of computer games to play. If arcades still exist in the future, I would occasionally visit them for their music/rhythm games. This ties in with the above point on exercise as well. Once you reach some form of competency in music/rhythm games, they could qualify as exercise.

Besides the more traditional conceptions of "gaming" above, I used to engage in tabletop wargaming. What you do is you purchase miniatures, assemble them, and hand-paint them. Besides admiring your accomplished work, you also take these miniatures to the field. You deploy them on a table with various terrain against other players and fight it out. Christopher Ng of Growing your tree of prosperity does this too. Something like the below picture.....


Back in Upper Primary/Lower Secondary, I used to host my own free-form text-based roleplaying website. You create characters and stories purely with words and get others to do the same, weaving their characters and yours together in a journey of epic proportions. I probably will attempt to revive my website after I attained financial freedom.

Reflection: Some may get this while others may not. I need time alone to reflect. It could be on anything. It could also be just soaking in the moment, being present in the here and now. 

I need to reflect on the stuff I learn/experience, to internalize it and make it personal. To progress from a shallow understanding to a less-shallow understanding. I need to have ample room to bounce ideas in my head, to think absurd thoughts. A cognitive playground for me to play in, so to speak.

I need to be a detached observer, like a scientist who curiously observes his or her target specimen.

Visiting museums and reflecting on the exhibits.

I could do this by staring at the ceiling (like what SMOL would do), observe how my pets (specifically, crayfishes and shrimps) behave (like what AK and Cory would do), or observe fellow human beings in their natural habitat. You can learn a lot through observation and it makes you think.

Job: As I have shared in my previous post, I like what I am doing. If there are interesting, meaningful, and challenging problems to solve at work, and since I get paid for doing it, why not continue working? One issue that I observe with this mentality of mine is that my health could suffer as a result.

Ideally, a scaled-down version of work would provide me with a good mix of "job" and "me-time." But you never know. Such arrangements may not materialize.

Hence, I have also thought of doing part-time jobs to keep myself mentally and socially alert. Preferably holding a part-time job in the area of my spiritual community. Firstly, to be part of a spiritual community and second, using the spiritual community's connection to the wider society as a platform to reach out to disadvantaged people in society. Of course, I am already "somewhat" doing this as a social science researcher since my work deals with the disadvantaged people in society. 

Social: Meeting with friends and family. Spending time together and creating memories. Nothing much to elaborate on for this.

Spiritual: This ties in with what I have briefly mentioned in the "Job" section. To be a mere participant/learner in a spiritual community and the possibility of working as a part-time staff in an organization aligned to my spiritual community. I get "spiritual nourishment" and I get some form of interaction with others who subscribe to the "same" spirituality.

Most likely, I will be topping up credits and upgrading my postgraduate cert to a complete postgraduate qualification to go into academic religion research in a niche area which I am interested in.

Of course must keep it hush hush. Last thing I want is a leadership position and meeting the expectations of others. @_@

Personal Projects: PP stands for Personal Projects. I have mentioned some of them in my previous post. To reiterate, I want to learn how to grow my own food and automate the process of growing them through the use of Arduinos and the like. I want to improve on my programming skills. I want to improve on my miniature painting skill and branch out to other areas of painting. I want to re-pickup a certain musical instrument and learn totally new ones. I want to re-pick up a certain language and learn totally new ones. I want to sharpen my investing skills. I want to learn gardening and help out as a volunteer at gardens. I want to keep more/different marine pets. I want to develop my own game. I want to learn how to design my own character sprites to be used in the games I create. Bla bla bla, yada yada yada.

Could I do all these things while I am still working? Nope. I have to be selective.

Will I be satisfied with merely dabbling in each of these activities? Sure, why not? I could spend my non-working hours on some of them. 

Are you reeeaaaaallllyyy sure with that? If have, have. If don't have, don't have. I am contented as it is. :)

8 comments:

  1. Hi UN,

    Nicely balanced schedule you have. And from the plans.. I can see you’re a really organized person :)

    Can I ask a cheeky question here? Please don’t hit me... is there public holidays in your schedule? :p

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Sleepydevil,

      Every new day is a public holiday from the activities done in the preceding day. :P

      Can mix and match activities mah. Kekeke

      Delete
  2. Too little social man ! If you ever wanna come back to TRPGs let me know !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Chris,

      I'm an introvert mah :P

      Sure, thanks, will let you know.

      Cheers

      Delete
  3. Hi UN

    Ur schedule looks too busy to me...
    I feel stress when I see schedule so tight & full...
    But as long as u enjoy doing that, then it must be every min is happy moment to u :)

    I still long long long long long... way to reach FF...

    All the best to ur retirement schedule :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi SY,

      Reflection time is free and easy. No rush. It's for stopping to smell the flowers. :)

      I'm still a long long long long long way to retirement too.

      Delete
  4. So much gaming ! I use to play World of Warcraft Online. Hope to return one day ... one day ... :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Cory,

      5 slots of gaming only lah, lol.

      Can one lah, you almost reaching financial freedom already.

      Cheers!

      Delete