My Gap Year

When I am all grown up I am going to take a gap year.

I am saving it up so that I can really savour it. like the last sweet in the packet. It's not something to be rushed. I don't know when I'll do it or what I'll do with it, but I am looking forward to it.

I would probably travel, but I don't like the idea of backpacking and slobbing around in dingy hostels. Perhaps I would travel from 5 star hotel to All-inclusive resort around the world. I'd love to tour around the USA. To go to India, China, Africa. High in the Swiss mountains. Paris. Ahhhh.

More likely I would go and sit in a library somewhere for a year and browse interesting books. I'd find some books that were so complex they would make my head hurt. But I don't know if that would keep me busy for a whole year.

I might try to learn something new. Pick a new topic, a new domain and immerse myself in it.

Or I might get out and about, meet interesting, intelligent, thoughtful people from around the world and think of interesting things we could do together.

I would want to create new things. New initiatives. Things that I could look at and say "wow, did we just do that?"

I think I will try to do some good in the world. Try to have an impact and change some things for the better. Or at least flap my wings like a butterfly and see what storm blew up across the world.

I would spend lots of time with my family. Watching, talking, helping, enjoying. I would want to spend time standing on the touchline and cheer my son scoring tries at rugby. I would want to have the time to go to concerts with my daughter and "throw my hands in the air like I just don't care". I would want to sneak off to the cinema with my wife, buy huge illegal buckets of popcorn and munch all afternoon.

I might even see if I could start a company. But not any old company. I would start an outrageously ambitious company that was trying to do something completely new. that if it worked would change the face of the world. And if it didn't then it wouldn't.

Hold on, hold on just a second. Aren't I doing all these things anyway? I seem to be doing exactly what I want to be doing. Now what am I supposed to do on my gap year? Damn!