What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Note: Thanks, Goofy Girl , for that incredible quote in today's subject title.

The class yesterday on retirement investment strategies was not as dry and droll as I thought it would be (or conversely, I’m more dry and droll than I thought myself to be. Nah. Perish the thought!) Anyway, the class did get me to thinking long-term. Generally, I tend to think only about 5 years out. As of late, I can barely think past this fall - occasionally I’ll wander to next year, but primarily I'm pretty fixated on Fall 2005, for obvious reasons. Yesterday was a good opportunity for me to think “Okay, I shove Kid #1 and Kid #2 into school - what’s next?”. I know I don’t want to go back to the grind of 50 hours a week, being on-call 24/7, and having to travel. These past 2 blissful months of not working have certainly verified THAT. X and I don’t think daycare is evil, but working for Big Al under the above conditions is not worth putting our kid in daycare, for sure.

I am hoping that when our kids are in school, I can go back myself. For me, I see this huge life change coming as an overall catalyst in many respects. I am hoping to take these next years as serious thinking time - WHAT THE HELL DO I WANT TO DO??? Because bein' a CPA, doing information security or software development just ain't cuttin' it, folks. Depending on our circumstances, and if we have moved from Kansas City by then, I would love to either get a Ph.D. and focus on international business with a specialization in privatization OR I would LOVE to completely “start over” and pursue my true love - languages - either a specific language (Spanish or Hindi - I would love to finally be fluent in one of them) or just linguistics in general. Whatever comes after the kids, I want to ENJOY it and retirement should NOT be a goal. Both of my parents are not particularly excited about their jobs and my dad actually DESPISES his job. In his early 40s, he actually tried to change his career path, got frustrated, then gave up. That has always saddened me. He now spends a good portion of his time griping about his job and dreaming of his future retirement. It's very depressing to hear him.

How many people do you know are in jobs they hate, just marching time until the magic age of retirement?

Are you one of those persons yourself? If so, what can you do to change it?