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.
It’s really satisfying. I’ve done this a few times, fixing someone’s home when they couldn’t otherwise afford it is one of the biggest ways to make an impact on someone.
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.
Same here. I wanna study compsci, do some research into things I pick up as being interesting along the way, then work on FOSS for as much as I can (without burning myself out, or anything like that). The world doesn’t appreciate FOSS enough, but it could very well be the future of computing, as our capitalistic society quickly gets fucked up :')
Work to solve problems. Not on a fixed schedule, but my choosing.
Also, long walks and visiting people I like.
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 would spend a lot of time tending my garden, growing rare produce to share with the community, and crafting.
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.
Damn, you really have a plan up your sleeve. Good for you!
Well I have a long term plan to become a Slash worker. I want to be a day job / Herbalist. So have some ideas about how to the last part in a much slower timeline. Need to keep the day job but don’t want it to be my only thing but its mostly talk at this point.
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.
Someone asked me this question recently and I had a minor existential crisis.
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.
Making music, and building guitars. That’s all.
I’m terrified because I don’t really have an answer.
I think that’s okay, because that just means your answer is something like “take some time to breathe and introspect about what I care about when I am given the space to care about stuff”, or “try out a bunch of stuff I didn’t have time or money for before, to see what seizes my passions”.
I mean, it’s not okay — it’s a fucking injustice that so many of us are deprived of the opportunity to explore what we would do if we were free to live as we chose, but it’s okay in the sense that it’s not your fault, in case that’s what you were feeling
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
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
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.
Art and music.
Science research.





