Year of play

"My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh -- anything but work."
--Abraham Lincoln

I've been reading a book recently called Screw Work, Let's Play on "how to do what you love and get paid for it". I'm only a few chapters in so far, but I find it inspiring.

My Dad, like countless Fathers before him, had an attitude to work that I am trying to shake off -- with the help of Mr Williams' book.  My Dad has always told me that you're not meant to enjoy your job or the work you do -- if you enjoyed it, they wouldn't pay you to turn up.  I am slowly starting to realise this doesn't have to be the case -- in fact, the most 'successful' people are ones who do enjoy what they do. They are successful at what they do, and successful in the wider sense that I strive to be -- happy with myself, and with where I am.

That's where this blog is coming from.  Unlike previous incarnations, I want this blog's purpose to not just log my life, to not simply record the day-to-day in a hopefully well-written way, but to show the journey to brightness.

One of the first exercises in "Screw Work, Let's Play" has you imagine you can take a year off.  What would you do with it?  "But I can't take a year off," you cry, or you do if you are anything like me, "I have bills to pay and rent to pay and..." -- and that's where you're cut off.  Imagine it differently, then.  You can take a year off work, and the author will pay you your normal salary, so you're no worse off.  Now, get to imagining.  You write down all the things you would do, if you could do anything.

Because it's my journey and my blog, my year of play filled with grand and impossible things is as follows:

Travel the world.  Especially the ancient civilisations of South America.
Write and blog.
Interview passionate people.
Perform and write poetry.
Have adventures!  Hiking, rock climbing, camping, surfing, snowboarding...  Also learn to do all these things.
Save the sea turtles.
Be a fire look-out in a National Forest.
Help people in need.
Study Zen.
Take pictures.
Enjoy music.
Help animals.

In my next post, I'll move on to the next stop.  What would I do with my life if I knew I could not fail...