This Time Next Year, Rodney

A couple of weeks back, I was having a conversation with a friend about what we’d do if we were to ever become lucky, and win the National Lottery. (Or any other ‘big money’ concept – so long as it resulted in having a large amount of money) At the time, I said I would probably just keep on working (after a small holiday) and that’s still true – I’d want to be doing my own stuff, and have the ability to not worry if no money came in for a few months, so I could spend time getting things to work out properly.

But then I thought about it a bit, and something else occurred to me. If I had that much money, I’d be able to do the other thing I’ve always wanted to. I’d still want to do my own thing – the writing, the photography, and almost certainly the websites – but I’d also do something completely different.

I’d take the time out from working (other than the bits I want to do, of course) and go do a university course in zoology. And then I’d go to do unpaid (or bare-minimum paid) work at either a zoo or down at Monkey World in Dorset, which has been my long-term dream for at least the last fifteen years. Which is a scary amount of time for one ideal role.

It’s something that I could only really consider if I had the money behind me to manage the course – which involves not really working (in paid employment) for at least two to three years. And that’s only going to happen by me either working my ass off and building up the finances to that level, or by winning a significant amount somewhere along the line.

In the end I know that a Lottery win isn’t going to happen – it’s something that’s so open to chance, the probabilities are too high for anything to base plans on – but the working plans are still coming through, and who knows, something might work there. At the end of the day, it only needs one idea to go big, and I’m sorted.

So – what would be your dream? And how would you go about getting there?