LIAM CHAI

“Passions evolve.” – Scott H Young

For a long time I thought you could only have one passion in life. If you were fortunate your parents guided you towards it when you were young and you became really good at it. If you weren’t maybe you lived a passionless life, or you discover it during your mid-life crisis. I tried desperately to find my passion in life without realising I was already doing things I was passionate about. I realised you could have one more than one passion, and that passions evolved and changed over time. Some passions stay with you a lifetime, some just a few weeks, but they are all passions.

Everyone has had a few passions already. There has been a time where you did something you really enjoyed but never thought there was a future in it so you quit or labelled it a hobby and left it at that.

After A-levels a passion for learning about where my food came from developed. I took a gap year and travelled around to experience this answer. This passion has quietened, but I have gained a lot from it, namely the knowledge that I can buy a piece of land, build a house on it, and live the good life.

Back in London now I feel new passions igniting and I want to build a platform for developing these passions. I Here are the criteria for my platform:

1) Live on my own and create a creative space.

Most of you probably live independently.  I still live at home with my parents and moving out is one of my main objectives for creating this passion platform. The lack of responsibility for things like cooking, doing the laundry and paying bills is instilling a bad mind frame.

I have lived in this same house since I was 12, and there are some habits and attitudes that have developed which I no longer have, but keep persisting because the house has become a trigger for them. I want my creative space to begin with a clean sheet.

2) Have as much free time as possible without starving to death.

I worked out how much I spent on average each month in the past year, which was £129 per month. Then I predicted the rest of my expenses I would have if I moved out.

Rent is based on gumtree ads I have seen for potential rooms, which includes all bills and Internet. Transport will probably be lower depending on the job I have but it is based on a weekly young person’s oyster travel card. Food is an estimate from how much my friends who live out spend weekly and misc is based on my average monthly expenses while living at home*.

At £8266.40 I could survive by working part-time (24 hours per week) at £6.66 an hour. Obviously this will vary, I could earn more per hour or reduce my expenses more to have more free time, but the point is I can quite easily have a four-day weekend every week.

By working this out and seeing how much money it takes to survive for a year it makes starting a business or becoming self-employed less scary. During sixth form I tutored maths for £10 an hour, at that rate I would have needed only sixteen hours of tutoring to survive.

3) Develop a foundational skill set.

This is the most important part. The first two have been external issues but a foundation skill set is internal and needs constant attention and development. Some of the skills I have learned, am learning and will learn are:

• Minimalism
• Ability to establish new habits and routines
• Creating an inner core of fearlessness
• A reset tool (to get out of plateaus or downward spirals)
• Curiosity

The point then is to have a platform that I can stay with indefinitely until I discover or develop a passion that I can monetise. Eventually this income will remove the need to have a job but otherwise the platform will remain the same for life.

*It was £69 per month if I did not include the materials for my cabin.