Do anything you wanna do

"Tired of doing day jobs
With no thanks for what I do
I'm sure I must be someone
Now I'm gonna find out who"
Eddie & The Hot Rods "Do Anything You Wanna Do" (1977)

I've been here before, you know.  Wanting change, but not really knowing how to effect it -- dissatisfied with where I am, but not making any progress.  Except now, I am beginning to feel like I have some tools to work with.

In my last post, I mentioned John Williams' book Screw Work, Let's Play, and listed all the things I'd do if I could whatever I liked for a whole year.   The only trouble is, there's so many ideas and it's not necessarily possible to do all of them if you only have one year -- so instead you get to imagine that you have infinite opportunities, or for the sake of brevity in this case, seven.

 

This is my list of what careers I would follow over my now-various years of play.  There isn't actually seven of them in my case, but it might expand later -- I figure it can only help to add more as I think of them.

Year One: Adventure

Pro-surfer, snowboarder, rock climber -- you name the adventure, I'm on it.  As a side-note, my interest in adventure sports is pretty funny -- at school, I sucked at PE, and was the despair of many teachers who found that I didn't measure up to my athlete older brother.  It turns out since then that I don't hate sports at all, I just have to discover them in my own time -- and if lessons at school had involved more adventure and less ball games, perhaps things would have been different...

Year Two: Super Hero.

Save the animals. Help the people. Save the world.  I'd rescue sea turtles of central America and the beautiful Bongo Antelope in the mountains of Kenya.  I'd do aid work in disaster zones, build schools in developing countries.  I'd spend a season as a fire-lookout in a national forest, helping spot forest fires before they start.  I probably wouldn't actually have any super-powers though.

Year Three: Artist.

Poet, writer, sculptor, painter.  My days would be spent learning, doing, and expressing.

Year Four: Traveller.

Seeing the world, taking pictures, taking notes, dreaming. Always moving on.

Year Five: Buddhist.

Spend a year in a monastery -- studying zen, eating rice.

I feel like I am making just the tiniest, little bit of progress here.  It might not seem like it to an outsider -- it could seem I have a lot of dreams but no practical ideas on making any of them into how to get paid to do what I love.  But the first step is I have to work out what I enjoy, and what I would want to do.

In my current sales role, despite doing well against my own targets -- for the moment, at least --  there's not a moment's doubt that this isn't what I want to be doing, especially not here, and especially when they start kicking us for not meeting the weekly sales targets.  The sooner I figure out where to be, the better.

Ways you probably wouldn't die in a vacuum

I just read a fascinating science article entitled "Five Ways You Probably Wouldn’t Die In a Vacuum, and One Way You Probably Would".  The author does a fine job of debunking the myths of popular science fiction, crossing off freezing and death by exploding eyeballs along the way.  But you'll have to follow the link for yourself to get the full benefit, as I have no intention of spoiling it by regurgitating it all here.

I do have a small problem with the article, however.  Their ways just seems to lack imagination, if you ask me.  I can think of lots of ways that you probably wouldn't die in a vacuum.

So without further ado, I present the Come Back Brighter Guide to Top 5 Ways You Probably Wouldn't Die In A Vacuum.
 

1. Shark Attack.  Sharks are ferocious predators, equipped with row upon row of razor-sharp teeth and super-sensitive senses, they have ruled the oceans for millions of years.  However, the odds of being attacked by a shark in the vast emptiness of space are very slim.  A shark would be one of the least likely things you are going to come across in the last few seconds of your life, and while it would be a terrifying sight in most circumstances, a blood-thirsty great white would probably not be your demise in the vacuum.  It might be, though.
 

2. Struck by a Meteoroid.  A massive hunk of space rock, hurtling through the universe at hundreds of miles an hour, would do untold damage to even the hardiest of space crafts.  The effect of one on a body made of flesh and bone would be similar to that of a fly hitting a car's windscreen.  However, despite space being literally littered with this intergalactic debris, it just doesn't rank up there as a way you would probably die in a vacuum -- you would have to be spectacularly unlucky, more unlucky than just finding yourself moments away from death in a vacuum.  But it could still happen.
 

3. Accident Around the Home.  Accidents at home are high on the list in which people meet their unfortunate end, but the good news is that in the vacuum of space your odds are drastically lowered.  Falling down the stairs is a common accident on earth, and a big killer, but in zero gravity stairs quickly become redundant.  Misadventures with electrical appliances may cause a great number of accidental deaths back on terra firma, but outside of space stations -- literally outside of space stations -- I predict the numbers drop dramatically.
 

4. Lightning Strike.  An estimated 107 people worldwide are killed by lightning strike every year, and while this might seem very low when you consider the sheer number of people on the planet and the number of lightning flashes annually, it is even more improbable in the vacuum of space.  Do you hear thunder?  No, that's just the sound of your blood boiling (actually something that also probably wouldn't kill you in a vacuum).  Does it look like rain?  No, you are just losing consciousness.  Because space is a vacuum, there is no weather, so it follows that you can be reasonably sure you will not die from a lightning strike.  You could shelter under a tree from the rain as much as you liked, if it wasn't for the fact there are no trees and no thunder storms.

5. Car Accident.  You are more likely to die in a multi-satellite pile-up than a car accident in space.  Not even the Japanese have started putting cars into space yet, which is a shame because there's far fewer people on the road in space.  There is also far fewer roads.  Both of these factors make it incredibly improbable that you could be hurt or killed in a car accident while in the vacuum of space.  However, considering all the junk that is dumped out there, it is not impossible.