Waiting to Live
For those of you who haven’t heard, Tim Ferriss’s The Four Hour Workweek is a must read. It turns out, though, that the main idea isn’t so original after all.
Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Huzzah!
No matter who is telling you to live now, instead of waiting, it seems that almost everyone chooses, what Ferriss calls, “the deferred life plan.” We work all week to get to the weekend, and work for 40 years to get to retirement, and THEN we’ll live a little. The problem, of course, is twofold.
1) A lot can happen in 40 years.
2) By the time we hit 65, we’re not quite so up to the task of livin’ it up.
Most of us spend 40+ hours a week working jobs we hate, with people we don’t like, to buy things we don’t need. Of course, that isn’t everyone. Some people love their jobs and their coworkers. But if you aren’t one of them, take this page from Hugh MacLeod’s excellent book, Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination:
#Trust30 is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself. Use this as an opportunity to reflect on your now, and to create direction for your future. 30 prompts from inspiring thought-leaders will guide you on your writing journey.
