Carpe Diem

Every cloud has a silver lining. For instance, me, sitting at home, jobless. That is a massive cloud at 25 years. But you know I got to thinking one day, I really want a job and I don’t have one, what I should do is use this time to find something I really want to do that I won’t be able to when I do get a job.

So I’m going back to my Spanish. I started a while back but I stopped because I was going to university and my attention was totally diverted. Now I have the opportunity so this time I’ll have it rolling off the tip of my tongue.

Then there’s programming, another interest of mine. I wanted to write a computer program a while back but I didn’t know what it would be. After my national service, I got an idea to make it a little easier on teachers in managing the exercises of their students. I got this book, Visual Basic 6 for Dummies from an uncle of mine and I’m slowly, very slowly but surely on my way to writing my very first computer program.

I’m also going to put a bit more effort into this blog of mine. I like writing and this is a great way of exercising my writing muscles. I’m also going to learn Latin, because I wanted to add an unusual skill to my repertoire plus most modern European languages are a kind of spin-off from Latin so learning their origin, I always say, will help me better understand their present state.

I’m also thinking about a Masters degree in marketing so this is a chance to learn as much as I can about it. I also want to learn how to be a better conversationalist (if there’s such a word). I am hopeless at that, other guys can do it so effortlessly and have girls laughing and stuff, me, well …

And I’ve started exercising my legs, all my life I’ve been skinny and I don’t mind much but my legs have got to have some bulk to them, so now I’m into bodyweight leg exercises. I read somewhere that exercising your legs alone affects your upper body and since I don’t want to have the Johnny Bravo physique, I’m starting from the bottom up and I’m using this as a way of experimenting to see if the claim is really true, but that is another blog.

Most of all I’m not really into working for someone, I want the freedom and the drive that comes from doing your own thing, knowing it depends on you to make it work and since it’s something you love doing, it’ll really push you to work real hard at it. So I’m writing proposals to develop locations, that have potential, into ecotourism destinations.

Also to start a reforestation program for areas that have had their trees felled. My ecotourism lecturer always encouraged us to go out and set up our own business because it is still quite young in Ghana and being a degree holder you can’t go join a company and be a tour guide or something.

It’s an opportunity to prepare myself for reaching the places I want to reach and doing the things I might not have the chance to do if I had the regular 8 to 5 thing. I call it my ‘Carpe Diem’ list.