- Get a bunch of pieces of paper.
- Write on each something you like doing. I’d think for you stuff like helping others, books, knowledge, travel, culture, music, gadgets, etc…
- Lay them out in front of you
- Pick 30% of them up that you feel most strongly about
- Lay them out and try to understand why you like them
- Make up a job which you think lets you do all those things
- Find other people who like the same combination and deliver a service to them (i.e. a travel website with photography and details on culture and ways of contacting these remote people, or a library site which focused on collecting music backgrounds, their ethnic and cultural background, location details, and make it collaborative so others can add their own details, use this to share music and culture experiences with other people) and so on.. Brainstorm it.

I reckon the problem is you might have too many things you like doing. Without a focus point for them, they are all hobbies.

Guess they need to take a shape as either a new business idea for you to explore or as a job you can recognise.

Back to Mazlow’s hierarchy, do you need money or experiences, etc to make you happy? It will determine your decisions here.

You are in a really fortunate place since you seem to have a reasonable experience of many things and seem to want to try to find an interesting challenge. I think you have everything to gain here, will be interesting seeing what you end up doing!

Maybe I am still trying to figure out what makes me happy; though how I’m doing that by not actually trying is another matter.

I know what I would like to do, but it’s going to take a while to achieve it. I’ve been debating going back into Hardware Support for a while.

After you come back….

I think you need to decide first of all,
a) do you need the security of a job right at this moment? If you do, you could do worse that take something you can already do and will meet your needs.

b) assuming you don’t need immediate security, you must be into the third or fourth tier of the hierarchy. In that case, you will probably have done some soul searching and as Saj suggested will have other needs to sort out. In that case, you are still on the same question you had before travelling; what exactly does Simon want out of life?

Hard choices Simon. I’d take a good look at my immediate needs, make sure food is on the table and I can afford the mortgage for a spell, then work out what I want out of life.

I guess you are still trying to work out what makes you happy?