{"id":1299,"date":"2010-04-05T09:11:15","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T14:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=1299"},"modified":"2010-04-05T09:11:15","modified_gmt":"2010-04-05T14:11:15","slug":"when-i-win-the-lottery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2010\/04\/05\/when-i-win-the-lottery\/","title":{"rendered":"When I Win the Lottery"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"texas-lotto-ticket.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/images\/lotto.jpg\" alt=\"Texas lottery ticket\" width=\"250\" height=\"398\" \/>&#8220;When I win the lottery<br \/>\nGonna donate half my money to the city<br \/>\nSo they have to name a street or a school or a park after me&#8230;&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8211; Camper Van Beethoven, &#8220;When I Win the Lottery&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n<p>Most of the posts on <em>The Juggling Writer <\/em>are about writing.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the posts are about day jobs (and how they apply to writing).<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes I talk about  juggling (and how it applies to writing).<\/p>\n<p>This post is for everybody, regardless of whether you  write or not.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n<p>What would you do if you won the lottery?<\/p>\n<p>What would you do if you won a big  jackpot, at least 20 million dollars?<\/p>\n<p>(If you&#8217;re thinking about how much is held back from an all-at-once payout, how much is taken in taxes, and other things, you probably think about the lottery too  much. So let&#8217;s just say, &#8220;What would you do if you suddenly had 20  million free and clear?&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>Chances are, you wouldn&#8217;t continue  working at your day job.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n<p>What would you do if you suddenly had 20 million dollars?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not asking what you would buy &#8212; I&#8217;m asking what you would <em>do<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>How would you occupy your time if you were a multi-millionaire?<\/p>\n<p>What are the top three things you&#8217;d do?<\/p>\n<p>Are you working toward any of those things right now, at least on a weekly basis?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re not working toward the top three things you&#8217;d do if you won 20 million dollars, try this:<\/p>\n<p>1. Grab a piece of paper.<\/p>\n<p>2. Write the top three things you&#8217;d do with your time if money were no object.<\/p>\n<p>3. Ask yourself what you can do to work toward those top three things, lottery or not.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s my list of three things I&#8217;d do if money were no object:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Write.<\/li>\n<li>Teach People Stuff\/Share What I Know.<\/li>\n<li>Travel and Hang Out.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n<p>Now that you have your list of three things, define what you really want to do with those three things.<\/p>\n<p>In my case, I want to write, share things with people, and travel and hang out.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s not really specific.<\/p>\n<p>Defining what I want might look like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Write:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol>\n<li>Finish another novel.<\/li>\n<li>Get back to selling articles.<\/li>\n<li>Attend a writer&#8217;s conference.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Teaching\/Sharing:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol>\n<li>Teach a juggling class at a community recreation center.<\/li>\n<li>Share and encourage live storytelling.<\/li>\n<li>Keep working on<em> The Juggling Writer<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Travel\/Hanging Out<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol>\n<li>See one new thing out of state this year. (Yes, if I won the lottery, this might read &#8220;Hike across Scotland or New Zealand,&#8221; but this is doable now.)<\/li>\n<li>More camping this year than last year.<\/li>\n<li>Continue making time for family and friends. (This might mean refusing to work overtime at the day job, or taking a lower-paying job, but it&#8217;s worth it.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>With this defined list, I can see if I&#8217;m at least making some effort toward the big things that make me happy. I can also see if I can combine things (e.g. satisfy the travel and article items by maybe getting back to travel writing).<\/p>\n<p>This list helps me. If I&#8217;m not working on a novel, working on articles, or working on my pitch for an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2009\/09\/19\/austin-or-bust\/\">upcoming writer&#8217;s conference<\/a>; if I&#8217;m not practicing juggling to get back into shape to teach juggling, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2010\/02\/28\/friday-night-mothup\/\">telling stories<\/a>, or working on this blog; If I don&#8217;t make a plan to take at least a small vacation out of state, go camping a few times with my wife, or making sure I see family and friends; if I don&#8217;t do these things that make me happy, what good is winning the lottery?<\/p>\n<p>If I&#8217;m not working toward things regardless of being able to fund all I&#8217;d like to do or not &#8212; as silly as it may sound &#8212; I don&#8217;t feel worthy of winning 20 million dollars. (Not that I play the lottery to begin with.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n<p>Now that you&#8217;ve defined how to actually make aspects of your big three goals happen, it&#8217;s time to get busy.<\/p>\n<p>You probably don&#8217;t have time to do <em>everything <\/em>on your list every week &#8212;  the  point is to at least work toward <em>something <\/em>on the list.<\/p>\n<p>Now, if you win 20 million while playing the lottery, you have a better plan than, &#8220;Buy stuff!&#8221; But the odds are, you&#8217;re <em>never <\/em>going to win the lottery. If you strive for doing some of the things on your list each week, I&#8217;m betting you&#8217;ll be happier than the weekly let down of not winning the lottery and having to return to a job you don&#8217;t particularly like. <a href=\"http:\/\/sethgodin.typepad.com\/seths_blog\/2010\/04\/one-in-a-million.html\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sethgodin.typepad.com\/seths_blog\/2010\/04\/one-in-a-million.html\">Putting everything on one thing<\/a> with long odds isn&#8217;t the best idea for a life plan.<\/p>\n<p>Granted, if you play the lottery, you have a chance at beating the odds and winning 20 million dollars, but you have much <em>better <\/em>odds of being happy and making things happen if you work toward what you love at least a little bit every week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;When I win the lottery Gonna donate half my money to the city So they have to name a street or a school or a park after me&#8230;&#8221; &#8211; Camper Van Beethoven, &#8220;When I Win the Lottery&#8221; *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 * Most of the posts on The Juggling Writer are about writing. Some of the posts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[24,23,29],"tags":[17,67],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}