In this post I ended by posing the question:
Where do I go from here?
Well, I’m going to the future.
In this post I want to give you a fairly broad overview of what part of my future might look like.
To infinity and beyond…
Well not actually quite that far, but never the less, the future is interesting to say the least. There is so much potential to explore it’s actually quite daunting.
It’s amazing how after such huge changes you can quickly get back into comfortable, easy, static living. Which is fine for now, we needed to recover and get our bearings, but it’s dangerous if I’m to have the future I want.
I still have some fears about what lies ahead. I fear the unknown, of course I do. I fear failure and humiliation. I fear making things worse than they were before. But I fear something even more.
My biggest fear is that I’ll do nothing at all and just fall back into the same rut. I won’t be going back to the police but I might end up getting another job just because it’s what I know. Just because it’s easy. Just because there’s a weight of expectation from family and friends to go and get a ‘real job’. That sort of pressure is already looming on the horizon.
I can see it staring at me.
So the deal is….
I’m at home with the children until they are at an age when they are all at school and that could be a soon as the youngest starts half days at nursery (about 2years from now).
If I can’t get the finances under control and live within our means on just one full time wage, it might be a soon as a couple of months. But that would be so sad, we’d be back to where we started and this would all have been for nothing.
When I left the police it was decided that I’d retrain as a plumber. I liked the idea and there’s a shortage of plumbers in the UK. It’ll cost to get trained up and we’ll have to sell the house to release the funds, but as I said previously, we’re happy to do that.
Of course after being trained and learning the ropes I’d want to be my own boss. I want to be the master of my own destiny.
Plumbing is a good choice for me because I’m handy with that kind of work. I’m used to dealing with the public in their own homes. I get to help people (without ripping them off). I could work as much or as little as I want to, or can afford to. I could be flexible with my hours to enable me to work around the children or my wife.
It’s a business capable of growing, of being passed on to the children. It’s a business capable of supporting a semi retirement or being sold and supporting a complete retirement.
The idea of work doesn’t scare me and I’m even happy to work past retirement age – as long as I love what I do – as long as it pays enough – and as long as I’m physically capable of doing it.
With some of the pressure off now and having time to think, I was reminded of a time when I was responsible for creating a new department at work. This was a fantastic challenge and I set about it with massive enthusiasm.
What I ended up building made me very happy and very proud. I likened it to having my own business. It was at that point I started to believe that I might be capable of achieving things other than those I’d been trained for.
So the idea of setting up my own plumbing business seems like a great prospect.
But what if?
Since leaving work I’ve had all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas about how I could prolong my current lifestyle. I mean why wouldn’t I? I absolutely love it.
A plumbing business would be good of course, but it won’t give me the lifestyle I have now.
The thing with plumbing (or any other traditional job) is that earning potential is fairly limited. Earnings will largely depend on the amount of time I’m doing physical labour and there is a ceiling on the value of each hour I work.
With the golden opportunity I have in front of me now, I feel I want to explore other possibilities and not put all my eggs in one basket.
At the moment my head is filled with ideas about making money from the comfort of my own home – in between emptying the dishwasher and ferrying kids around the countryside.
Other people do it. Why can’t I?
I’m not foolish enough to believe that I could make a full time living from blogging. I believe it is possible for some, but I don’t think it’s possible for me. That said, I don’t see why I couldn’t earn something from it. The ‘it’ probably isn’t this blog but I believe I can learn a lot from this experience and use that experience elsewhere.
One of the reasons I’m here is to explore the options from a first hand perspective – to get involved in the ‘doing’ rather more than the ‘thinking’ or the ‘talking’.
I hope to find the options becoming clearer as I become more experienced and encounter new people and new resources. I don’t need to rush this and I can afford a little time just to see what happens.
I’ve come back down to earth with a bump though… Before I can do too much about the future I have to do something about the present in order to make the future possible. This is where my challenges are right now and I’ll be writing about that very soon.
Thanks for reading.
Dave.
Photo: Ecto Parasite
