A friend recently put this on Facebook, and I thought it was a great question. At first my answer was just “high end leatherworking projects,” but after another friend elaborated, I rambled on with a longer answer. At the moment it seems to sum up a lot of my dreams, so I thought I would post it here (both so I can remember it and because I find it interesting to see what other people’s dreams are).
I would make things all the time. I would be a part time stay at home mom to one kid. I would make clothes and leather goods and whatever art strikes my fancy. I would be heavily involved in hackerspaces, sci-fi/gaming cons, and the SCA (already mostly true, but even more so). I would design my own lovely little home, just outside of Ann Arbor, that includes things like a barn with a huge crafting area with a forge, woodshop, medieval oven, etc. I would raise rabbits for meat and fur, and learn how to make things with all parts of an animal and do all parts of that process humanely. In my perfect world, my home would have several little houses in it, where people I liked and respected also lived and added to the little commune, with the crafting barn and forge being communal space to do collaborative art and learning. They would add things to our space (be that gardening, or raising goats, as one friend wants to do, or something else), and we could share childrearing duties and have weekly board game nights. I would have a small, part time gig (10-20 hours a week) doing something with science, be that research, STEM outreach and education, science writing, or political outreach to make things more scientifically accurate in politics (something that would use my engineering/science knowledge for good in our country). I think this is edging over into “knew I could not fail AND somehow had a couple million dollars to build my dream space.” But this is a lot of the thoughts swirling around in my head over the past couple years. I want a slow paced, nerdy life in the quiet countryside near my favorite city, where I can get enough sleep and do my art and science and have my community come surround me.
What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
