A Dream Life Scenario
In one of our daily chats about everything1, Manuel asked me what I'd think a perfect day would look like.
He asked:
What’s your dream life scenario? Without thinking too much about the financial aspects of it, that is. Like, if you could have all your basic needs met no matter what you decide to do, what would you want to do?
It didn't take long to answer the question: the life I currently have, minus the day job, except I’d work with my current employer as a client instead.
This made me realize that the life I currently live is close to what I'd call a dream life scenario. The only difference is that I'd like to have a bit more freedom in how I plan my day. Right now, I'm trying to fit all the different puzzle pieces (gym, running, overkill, cliophate, reading, journaling, meditating, spending time with loved ones) around a 9-to-5 lifestyle.
If my basic needs were covered2, I could probably dial down the 9-to-5 by either working part-time, or by taking my employer on as a client (and maybe some other companies, too), and then flip the puzzle pieces: try to fit in the client work around the other stuff.
This realization showed me how the life I have right now doesn't need much changing, and that anything messing too much with this lifestyle, without bringing me closer to that dream life scenario, just isn’t worth doing.
There's an interesting equation by Chris Williamson (timestamped) that I came to believe in strongly:
One of my favorite insights is that we sacrifice the thing we want for the thing that's supposed to get it. So we sacrifice happiness in order to be successful, so that when we're finally sufficiently successful, we can actually be happy. And if you have some sort of simultaneous equation, and you just sort of stripped success off from both sides, [only happiness remains].
Realizing this showed me that a recent path I thought I’d be interested in3 was a dead end. Following it would’ve meant giving up all the puzzle pieces I actually care about, just to pick them back up later, with nothing gained but burnout, since those pieces are what keep me balanced in the first place.
That path wasn’t worth the sacrifice. Not worth giving up happiness, not even for a while.
