How would it be if you woke up one morning around 4 am, consumed by an idea that felt like the Best Idea You Ever Had. You spend the next two hours fervently researching said idea, watching videos, reading in-depth articles, compiling a spreadsheet comparing costs, techniques and options, then buying a whole load of books and equipment, and signing up to courses to teach you how to bring this fantastic, life-changing idea to fruition. You book a viewing for the new house in a new country that you are going to buy after investigating climate, housing options and work opportunities.
You book the flights for that trip, to a Pacific island, where you will learn to scuba dive and set up a business as a dive instructor having fully understood the tourism industry and its legal implications. You g after comparing the cost and quality of all colleges offering these courses. Your research is deep, your conclusions well justified.
These are all good choices. Buzzing on your own brilliance at finding the answer to all of your problems, your true calling in life and, basically, frigging nirvana, you are desperate to wake your beloved, who is lying beside you, blissfully unaware that their world is about to be rocked. You think about waking them because you can’t contain all this excitement alone and need to share it, but it’s only 6 am and you know from experience that this wouldn’t end well.
So you sit, fidgeting, watching the clock until 6:30 am. Surely, that’s late enough? Perhaps if you bring them coffee, they won’t be so mad.
Yet how could they be mad, when what you’re about to reveal to them will make them say: ‘Why didn’t you wake me up sooner, you genius?’ But as you sit impatiently waiting for an acceptable hour to rouse your beloved and blow their mind, your whole self shifts sideways, like someone just turned the TV over to another channel or a changeling took over your mind. You suddenly realise that your previously designated Best Idea Ever is full of holes and is actually a Terrible Idea. You are puzzled that you didn’t see this sooner.
You can’t move house because your kids are in school here, you have a full-time job and bills to pay, and you don’t have the attention span to read your horoscope, let alone do a master’s. What idiot thought that any of this was a good idea? OK… time to cancel it all and hope that you didn’t lose too much money and that it will all be back in the bank account before ‘they’ wake up.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
