Chance And Fun: Having A Good Time Without Employment

It dawns on me that we probably don’t hear many podcasts or read many blogs from people who sought total autonomy and escape from the grind.

People who achieved FIRE because they don’t want to fall back into the grind Likely don’t publish such things.

I think we hear more from people who stay in the grind.

Let’s take the crew of S/V Delos. They were an inspiration for some of the ideas behind a Highway to Yeah lifestyle.

But honestly, I’m not sure they ever had the intention of escaping the grind itself.

It seems plausible that they wanted to escape the grind so they could have the autonomy to sail around the world.

That is a purpose. And it is a good one.

However, my understanding is that when they reached New Zealand and Australia, the Trautman brothers both needed to go to work to fund the next leg of their journey.

The goal was circumnavigation.

The vehicle was the boat, Delos.

The fuel was the YouTube channel that became a hit.

If their success on YouTube hadn’t happened, I wonder what would have become of the crew once the circumnavigation was over?

Brian is still at the helm of Delos, with his wife and child, still living in the sailing world.

His brother, Brady, is now running a sailing school with his partner, I believe.

I’m sure they’re both doing this to fund their living and lifestyles.

But what if you don’t have a purpose like this?

I had a desire to ride a bicycle across the country, but I don’t have that desire anymore. And I’m not sure it was ever a burning desire.

It sounded like a great adventure, and my paid employment demands were the reason I couldn’t do it.

Like the Trautmans, I’m sure I could have figured out a way to do it if it had been a burning desire and unifying purpose.

But it wasn’t and isn’t.

It was a dream of adventure.

Therefore, I’ve been looking for ideas about how to live in a carefree and spontaneous way, seeking adventure and fun.

How do you do this when you really don’t have a burning desire, or don’t know how to unplug and have fun?

Here are some of the better ideas I’ve come across.

Time Block For Fun

One challenge I have is that I’m writing a daily blog post and getting 15,000 steps in per day.

I’m also interested in keeping rehearsed and eventually recording the “best of” songs I’ve written and performed, and then writing some more.

Add to that a desire to do a strength workout at least three or four times per week,

keeping up with financial and household duties.

and attending to important relationship responsibilities (not just fun-in-the-sun stuff).

I mean, I could keep going, but my point is that when you no longer have a “real weekend,” the days just sort of flow together.

Without paid time off from a sometimes-toxic set of workplace demands, what am I taking a vacation from?

The grind I’ve created for myself comes from the structure and routine I’ve established to ensure I follow through on these intrinsically motivated objectives and time commitments.

I guess I need a break from myself.

That’s the only answer that makes sense to me.

Enter the idea of time-blocking for fun.

This is one of my least favorite ideas, but it has merit.

I’ve considered some options for this before, but haven’t implemented any of them.

What doesn’t seem to work for me is mixing daily routine and structure with a daily time block just for having fun.

I mean, I do it already, but it feels like one more thing on the to-do list.

Today, I’m going to be showered, dressed, and heading out the door by noon to go have fun.

And I need to remind myself to be grateful for the opportunity to do this.

Taking off in the middle of the day to have a leisurely lunch with a friend is great.

But it can start to feel sort of rote after a while.

I have someone I’m meeting for lunch, and that is the purpose and it is a To do.

Otherwise, I’d likely just keep batch-processing blog articles and getting my steps in.

Thus, this idea likely only works if I can get out ahead of myself.

For example, if I declared the last week of every month to be “adventure and exploration time” and did nothing else that week, then it might work.

But to do that, I’d need to batch up a store of at least seven blog articles, fully drafted, edited, and prepared for publication.

And I’d want to get 20,000 steps per day in for the first 20 or 21 days to ensure that I could basically “sit on my butt” for a full week if I wanted to.

Again, I’ve done this to myself, and I must either wait until my one-year commitments are done or decide to implement this.

However, I also ask: What is it that one can do in a week that is worth doing?

Sure, there are trips.

Attending workshops or courses.

I mean, there are good things to do, no doubt.

I would just need to have a burning desire to do them, rather than forcing myself to take PTO.

When I was working, I had no trouble taking PTO.

It gave me a mini-escape from the grind.

And … another real problem I have with this approach is that I always have a “re-entry” tax after sitting idle for a week.

If I go a week without paying attention to my diet, exercise, rehearsal, and practice routines, I rebel and get a very bad case of the “I don’t wanna” when the Monday after the trip rolls around.

Nevertheless, I may do the week off per month. Likely not? Who knows?

Forced Boredom For Fun

It’s a good idea to just sit around and do nothing. I suck at it, but it is a good idea.

This is a big part of why I implemented the Escape from The Algorithm One Hit Wonder.

If that wasn’t there, I’d easily binge-watch YouTube, streaming shows, and other sorts of distractions.

Hell, I allowed podcasts to come back into the picture, and I see I’m still using them to avoid the “void” of doing nothing.

This tells me it would be a good idea to “force” myself to stop this, too.

No reading. No listening. No writing. Maybe walking.

Or just sit. See how long I can do it and what comes up.

I guess that is meditation.

but what I’m hoping is that it would release more “inner knowing” and reveal my burning desires.

Going Down A Rabbit Hole

This is the idea of getting very obsessed with something, but then letting it go when it’s over.

I do this naturally.

In the recent past, I’ve done it with astrology.

In 2020, I became very interested in astrocartography.

This is a theory that the planetary lines on your astrological chart can give you some signals about where you will thrive.

That sounded a lot like a part of Zeroscaping.

Douglas firs don’t do well in the Southwest desert, and cacti don’t thrive in the rainy Pacific Northwest.

We’re all living, biological creatures, and I think we should pay attention to how a place makes us feel and how, or whether, it nourishes us.

As a result, I wanted to understand my astrological chart, too. Up until that time, I only knew my Sun sign.

This led me to watch one YouTube video after another on the topic for several days in a row.

And then, when I was saturated, I stopped. At least for now.

I’m still testing the ideas of astrocartography, and they hold up so far.

If there’s a goal, it’s not as immediate or pressing. It’s more fluid.

A Stone’s Throw

This is something I haven’t done yet, but it intrigues me. It was a suggested name Lee had for the YouTube channel we were considering.

The idea is to let randomness take you someplace and spend some time there, just absorbing what it has to offer and show you.

The suggestion I read recently was to put a radius around your current location, perhaps a two-hour drive.

Then come up with some sort of system for determining how and where you’ll go.

You could list all the places within that radius and assign each one a random number.

Then pull up a random-number generator on the internet, and voilà, it tells you your destination.

Or, you could get in your vehicle, drive for 15 minutes, and flip a coin when you come to an intersection.

Heads, you go left. Tails, you turn right.

This is a pretty cool Idea.

but I would likely still struggle with “Why am I doing this?”

Sigh.

Saying Yes To The Weird

If someone invited me to learn how to salsa dance or do Zumba, my first reaction would be, “Nah, I don’t think I would like it.”

With this practice, you just say yes, if you can, as long as it doesn’t violate a value or principle you hold.

I recently did this with the Northwest Tarot Symposium.

My friend told me she was presenting, and I was wanting to do “just because” stuff, so I kind of “invited myself” to go.

It was great.

Then I fell down a rabbit hole on tarot and ended up facing a deep depression I had been holding onto.

Bottom line: Leave some things to chance.

But travel safely, and be good to yourself.