1 – What are you doing, Claudio?

What do you do in your life? When someone ask this question, 99% of time they refer to your job. Well today I can answer him that I have a decent career behind me, lots of proved skills, too many good ideas to develop, but I don’t have a job or passive income at the moment, nor I will worry to get one for the next year.
I am not rich and old enough to retire, but I am also rich and old enough to allow myself to celebrate in this way my 40^th birthday. I have some savings, little fixed expenses, I don’t have a family to take care, the world is falling apart, if it will not end on December 2012. I have tried all my life to build my future even if I already stepped out the rat race and made my priority to enjoy the present moment seven years ago.
So, why bother?
So, what are you doing, Claudio?
I am not going to send a CV to anyone, because they are useless anyway.

I am not going to try to invent a new online or offline business that will give me lots of money working 4 hour a week, although I will read and explore avidly successful and inspiring stories as always. (The reference to 4 hour a week is not casual as I am reading the Tim Ferriss book while I am writing this Manifesto).

I am not going to look a new way to invest any of my savings. The stock market already took it’s toll on them and I know it’s a very illusory road and anyway not one really appealing to me.
I am not going to try to build a network of friends, cultivate possible business partner, smart people, who will make feel I’m part of something and money and opportunities will flow effortless over a dinner with cool people who are one step ahead of the competition and need one each other to remind that. Because I always been antisocial, I can’t keep a friendship or good relations with people who can help me now or in the future and I will never learn. Hopefully I will help or inspire someone, but I’ll try hard not to offer my help to anyone, a mistake I have made too many times.
I am going to refuse any job or business offer that someone will eventually make to me.
I will take seriously in consideration everyone who will insist, because it’s stupid getting attached to an idea and if someone really insist and make an offer I can’t refuse..then I’ll take it. But I also know it will not happen.
I am not going to be minimalist, reduce my needs and desires ascetically, because I grew up with lots of sacrifice, I already get rid of many useless habits or vices and learned to manage ultra efficiently my time and money. Actually my personal trend is on be less attentive on how I spend them and I am not ready to stop it or reverse it…
I am not going to pretend I will not need to worry anymore for the rest of my life about money and working. I wish I can stay one full day without to, but even if this may look insulting to who knows how I lived in the last years, I need some serious time off.
I am not going to take a sabbatic and travel around the world, because..well it’s already eight years I am traveling around the world and even if I was working or trying to work all the time, I can’t really say I was too busy to think about me, who am I, what I want, where I am heading. But I will keep traveling, for sure. It’s just not the priority anymore.
I am not going to hide in a place with no internet and meditate all the time. But one day I will for a while.
I am not going to stick to all the above regardless, but I will remember myself about this post anytime I will be tempted to break my own rules.
Instead for the next year I will try to take care of this blog as the son I’d like to have right now, even in the likely possibility, that after a month or two or six, I will feel I am writing just for myself and nobody is listening, except maybe my mom. This is the only commitment I want.
And I’ll try to tell you how I fill all this time free from obsessing with work and money. Don’t expect extraordinary things though, just the trials and errors, the experiences of an (not really, I am well aware of that) ordinary man, but full of common human weakness.

Tools & Tricks

Anmol Mehta – Insights

Tim Ferriss – The 4-Hour work week

Chris Guilleabeau – The Art of Non-Conformity

Public Places where I wrote

Centro Comercial El Centenario – Cali (Colombia)