What you want to do with the rest of your life

If I were not bound by family and work obligations, I would spend the rest of my life traveling both the United States and abroad. There is a whole world I would love to see....people and cultures I would love to explore. I would love nothing more than hopping in a RV and driving from the East coast to the West coast.

I'm relatively happy with my life now. I wish I were freer to do what I want to do and be who I really am instead of playing the 'game' so often. But,I have all the things that are important in life....love, good health, laughter, friends.

Like you Rick, I know I'm lucky to be in this world.

There's a "rest of my life?" Holy crap! Put me out of my freakin' misery then!

But seriously, follow your heart Rick, you can't go wrong there. Anthropology is a very interesting and fulfilling career.

Any fool who says 'It doesn't get any better than this' deserves just that.

Unfortunately, I have an addiction to that weekly paycheck. so... gotta work work work.

What I want to do is write silly-assed poems and draw silly-assed cartoons to earn my dough.

And sail, and sculpt, and play my guitar, and make love to Mrs. SealPoet, and eat great food, and play with my kids, and, and, and...

I'm probably entering the last twenty plus years of my life, and that leaves me with some goals: to visit certain countries for the first time and some revisits, to paint some paintings I'm really proud of, and to enjoy many intimacies with wife and friends. But most important, or more basic, is my intention to deepen the quality of experience, to experience existence at what one might call the eternal level, to be one with all the so-called objects of experience which means to realize my unity with everything. With all that accomplished I'm sure I will have a wonderful death. And that I wish for all of you.

I'm thinking that I want my epitaph to be "Screw you taxman, just try to catch me now."

I qualify for early retirement in a hair less than two years. After that I'll be going back home to the States.

I'll probably want to work for a couple more years after going home, not so much for the money, but to be a real engineer again one last time.

Afterwards, I've been pondering going back to school again and earning a degree in History.

Jim
I thought about doing history too, at one point, and didn't decide against it for any other than practical reasons. My own not perhaps useful view is to do it close to immediately when you get back, do the moving on then, just jump in.

To be honest, I have a short term goal - to be an executive vice president before I am 45

I'd be happy laying in bed with my lady for the rest of my life.

What, for twelve thousand days?

Aw....that's sweet.

Erm, I think you meant twelve thousand lays. After that it's marriage and misery.

Hooray, another anthro person!

I want to do everything. Seriously. I'm interested in so much stuff - anthro, theater, writing.... and I'm building an online text game, which I definitely want to continue.

So I guess my answer is... whatever I can get away with.

get the next twenty years or so over with and be a contented old man with grown-up kids and perhaps some grandkids, reading books in my garden and smiling at passers-by

I want to continue to give my time and money to my local animal shelter, and help as many pets find homes as possible!

That has become more important to me than anything.

i'm not kidding, either

Well. I was an anthroplogy major in college. Got a BS in 1990. I went on to work at a series of meaningless jobs and am now trying to figure out (again) what to do with the rest of my life.

I love anthropology and I can't really say I should have studied some other field. But, make sure you have a clear course set for yourself in the field of anth before you graduate. And perhaps think of fine tuning your major into a more current and specific variant of the field like medical anthropology or something more market oriented (if there is such a thing).

my sis did anthropology ...

loved her studies, forsure. but yeh, no way on earth to get a job with that ... in fact, i dont think any of her fellow masters' graduates got a job in line with their studies.

Lemme specify/nuance that a bit more. She specialised in visual anthropology, thesis about a tunisian movie and gender images, coordinated visual anthropology film festival. And that all helped in getting her her current job as producer of (multicultural) documentaries, definitely. But thuth be said, there were a coupla tough years of unemployment and crappy jobs, a year-long government-funded seven-day-a-week retraining program in audiovisual work (camerawork, editing, etc), a few years as a production assistant to a documentary maker on a subsidized low-wage job scheme ("Melkertbaan", Rick will know), and some more years as production assistant on commercial TV programs in between.

So be prepared for the long haul -- or have a back-up plan.

ah, yes, the specified/combo anth degree. It's like a dual major where you can rely on the other half for some sort of job.