Life Goals, Ideals, Plans, and Dreams

[Animal]

What do you want to do with your life? Are you doing it? If not, why not? What are you doing instead?
Have you struggled to find 'the thing' you want to do? Has it changed over time? Are you still searching for it?
What's your ideal life, even if unrealistic? Is the gap between your ideal life and your current life haunting you? What kind of person do you hope to become? Do you want a family? What lifestyle calls to you?

Note that there is another thread about 'ideal jobs.' This goes beyond it, to include the lifestyle you'd want, the things you desire (family, inner peace), etc.

Feel free to explore this topic from any angle.

[BalalaikaBoy]

What do you want to do with your life?

among other things:
1) get a sexy, ripped body
2) find the love of my life
3) travel, including: tea farms in the mountains of Yunnan and Fujian, exploring castle ruins in the Carpathian Mountains (Romania and Ukraine), several trips to various jungles such as Borneo, Peru and . Uganda. tourist-y spots do nothing for me. I could just go on a cruise to get all those benefits (which doesn't sound like a bad idea, but it's not a major item on my bucket list)
4) write a few books (I may never actually publish them, but I'd like to write them)
5) make a living from trading stocks

Are you doing it?

yes. SLOWLY, but yes

If not, why not? What are you doing instead?

School and work. Mostly I just want to do so many things that I only have time for ONE life-fulfilling goal at once until more time is freed up.

Have you struggled to find 'the thing' you want to do? Has it changed over time? Are you still searching for it?

no, no and kind of. the basic gist has stayed the same, but it has refined and evolved with greater introspection, research and experience.

What's your ideal life, even if unrealistic? What lifestyle calls to you?

from the time I wake up, my schedule might something like this:
- 2.5 hours getting ready: shower, tea, various skin care routine, maybe a few episodes of anime, breakfast
- 3 hours of stock trading: preparing and trading the open on the stock market (if you're good, that's all you need to trade because most of the action is in the first 2 hours)
- 1.5 hours working out
- 3-5 hours a day listening to audio books, either while playing video games or walking through the woods. subjects include: economics, history, business/finance, law,
- 4 hours of skills acquisition, including: martial arts, classical singing, computer programming,
- 3 hours of miscellaneous/relaxing/snuggling with my man

the last three are interchangeable. some days I might just want to binge read for like 10 hours for example

What kind of person do you hope to become?

There is a definitely vibe to what I want that is unmistakable, but I have difficulty articulating it. words like "patriarch" and "protector" come to mind immediately. At times, I resonate with king figures, but by and large, I prefer to be the adviser who lives in the shadows and protects the light.

Do you want a family?

if I find the right person to have one with, yes

Is the gap between your ideal life and your current life haunting you?

YES!

[Animal]

Do you know how to trade stocks?

[BalalaikaBoy]

I have a few basic models to use, but at present, I'm unfamiliar with the necessary software.

[Vive]

Now, the first thing I will say might sound like it comes straight out of an Enneagram textbook, but honestly it is to not be limited by my fear. That means it can be there, it can be bad and over the top, and it can influence me, as long as it doesn't limit me anymore.

Why this is my ideal? Well, I've already realized that repressing fear is hardly helpful, just like avoiding things you fear and pushing through the fear, thinking rationally about the fear does help, but it won't dissolve fear and even when thinking as rationally as possible fear can be so incredibly exhausting. It ended up being so exhausting, because I started ridiculing my fears, because I knew they made little sense. The only real way through fears, when you possess and intellectual grasp of them, is surrendering to the fear, recognizing how much you care. Then, you take the plunge. Obviously though, this can be a real struggle to do, but I've gotten much better at it.

Other things I want to do/have:

I want my proficiency in Japanese to become near-native level.

1. Because I fucking love the language.
2. So I can speak to my girlfriend in her own tongue, naturally, understanding her nuances.
3. So I have an interesting intellectual challenge

I want to start a family

1. Because I like children
2. Because I'm a dirty little slave to my DNA
3. Because I am insatiably curious what someone that is 50% me or at least raised by me will turn out.

Those are the most crystallized. Other stuff is more vague. Maybe I will learn a couple other languages, but that depends on my success and speed and experiences with learning Japanese. I don't want to learn too many, it would make me spread too thin. I don't want to just work as a psychologist, I want to do multiple things, get different jobs. I'll have to see what catches my eye and captivates my interest.

[Animal]

I was born and raised in NY, yet I can barely get my thoughts out in English, so I guess I'm just never going to be good at languages. :P Although I was definitely getting there with French before my brain got ravaged.
Is your girlfriend also learning English? I know you wrote a post about this before but I've been unable to find it. I was working constantly for a few weeks and offline.

[Vive]

No worries, work is/can be a big energy drain, I imagine even moreso in your situation, with a chronic brain disease biting you in the ass.

But, yeah she's learning and I'm also teaching her. The way English is taught in Japan is well... let's just say that's in not ideal, at all. You get Japanese teachers with a merely theoretical grasp of English. Then sometimes translations are made that just make you go 'wait, what?'. That's why you end up with sentences like: 'In this room adult atmosphere is tossed.' and stuff like that is in textbooks. It is often funny, but I would like to help my girlfriend sound as natural as possible, at least.

[Animal]

Hahahah that sentence cracked me up.
Yeah, if I work four hours I'm DEAD and recovering for the whole night and the whole next day. It's ridiculous. The amount of work I had to do was a lot, but not THAT much, I did have some time off... but all that time is me basically attempting to fix the problems that come up as a result.

And that's really cool