[kelnos]

Being free might mean that you take a traditional full-time job, if doing so is the best way to "do what you care about today". But the great thing is that you can take that job without all the normal financial stress that goes with it, and with the knowledge that you can just quit if you don't like it or end up with a bad manager.

Aside from that, though, I really think you should step back and try to reexamine "life". Why does life have to revolve around "work"? Why do people define themselves by what they do professionally? The world is very rich, and I personally don't find it very hard to find meaning outside of a job (traditional or otherwise).

I get that a lot of people who go the traditional route end up retiring at 65 or whatever, and then have no idea what to do with themselves for the rest of their lives, and that adding another 10, 20, or more years to that retirement period sounds scary. I think of this as a result of societal brainwashing. From a young age we're asked what we want to do when we grow up, and then during much of our teens we are pushed hard to pick a university, pick a major, and pick a career. And this is right while our brains are still developing; the focus on employment fundamentally affects the shape of our minds for the rest of our lives.

Free to do what, you ask? Literally anything. Learn how to play an instrument, join or form a local band, and play at coffee shops, bars, whatever. Learn new languages and travel (or just travel!). Get involved with your community, whether that's youth outreach, volunteering to help homeless people, or whatever you like. If you're a software developer, get involved with (or start your own) open source projects. Attack that ever-growing stack of books you keep telling yourself you're going to read but never seem to find the time. Find and grow new hobbies, whatever they may be, especially those that have nothing to do with your former job. Commit to improving your physical fitness by doing something (running, lifting, a martial art, etc.) for a certain number of hours per week. Go back to school and learn things you thought were too impractical to make a living off of back when you were 18. If you're a parent, you can spend a ton more time with your kids (raising a child is more than a full-time job anyway).

There is enough in this world to fill multiple lifetimes, and restricting yourself to spending 40 hours a day drawing a paycheck is a very small part of the possibilities. Relying on a job to define ourselves and fill our time is the easy way out because it "automatically" takes up half of our waking hours (or more). I get that it can feel like a daunting task to figure out what to do with all that extra time, but I can't believe it wouldn't be worth it to do so.

[oakfr]

Thank you for your reply. I found it very profound and insightful.

[kelnos]

I'm glad you found it helpful! One thing to add that just occurred to me: filling your waking hours with a job is "easy" because a full-time job usually takes up a large amount of our free time (half or more!). If you don't have the job, it might be hard (or even impossible) to find just one thing that fills up your time to that degree.

So when a person who is fully employed might in addition have one or two other activities that they use to fill up the rest of their time, a person with no job might have to come up with 10 or 15 other activities. I can get why that might seem daunting... the can be a lot of mental overhead just deciding what you want to do, and then some overhead around organizing that time and keeping up with your various activities. So I can see why that might be a little off-putting as well. But to me, I think it's worth it. And with a larger amount of smaller things that you do, it's probably easier to stop doing one and find something else if you decide you're tired of it. Much easier than changing jobs, at any rate.