RETRO LIFE, THE
Friday, May 21, 2021
Every day can start as fresh canvas or blank pages – or we can paint over, re-write, and repurpose anything and everything we’ve done. Of course, we can rebuild bridges too, but that’s tougher to do because ones we’ve blown up usually come with collateral damage …
What would you do if you weren’t doing what you are doing?
The old way was to get smarter, get older, get a little wiser, but then get ignored – because getting older and irrelevance were synonymous. That may have seemed like an OK vision of the world when we were twenty or thirty – but nobody asked me back then.
I wish someone had.
Instead, I am left looking back at my failure to ask …
And if we are never asked, does that mean we can’t answer, at least quietly under our breath?
A note to self can as easily be ‘whisper to self.’
Quick, easy answers: billionaire, prime minister, rock star, movie star, Olympic athlete – but those are ‘if I was 16 again, dreaming with the knowledge I have now answers’ – but seriously, I’m thinking about alternatives to middle-aged real estate agent novelist in the making, writer/publisher, home cook, dreamer …
I could be a Walmart greeter in Maui, open a t-shirt shop/burrito stand combo …
Again, with the dreams.
Practically speaking, we can all do anything we want just about anywhere we want to do it – but will that change make a difference? Will that change make us happy?
I’ve worked on some things that made or enabled real change to happen for people – and that has been the most satisfying work I’ve done. Most of it paid nothing in terms of income – and cost me in terms of time, effort, and out-of-pocket costs, but remains some of the happiest of times. I want more of that retroactively.
We can re-take any fork in the road. We can unmake any choice we’ve made, and we can re-make our jobs, businesses, personal lives, passions and careers …