Imagine you're completely free for a month. What'd you do?

What are all those things you've always wanted to do but never had enough time for in your daily life? What new things would you learn, or skills would you polish, or creative projects would you do if you had a month with no work/ school/ family/ responsibilities etc and had all the time to do whatever you always wanted to do?

When I had college I was always brimming with ideas and inspiration for creative projects (painting, making film, making music) and things I wanted to learn, but I never had enough time. Now I have all the time but am completely uninspired. Also, I currently can't travel anywhere, and all my friends are busy.

So what would you do if you were by yourself and had a month to yourself? Don't worry about sticking to my situation, I'm just curious what others would do (preferably at home) with all this free time, and hopefully I can inspire myself by reading about other people's enthusiasm :)

learn to handstand

Have high aspirations for what I could do or want to do... and fail miserably on them, and probably waste away playing video games all the time.

I think it has to do with me having a lazy personality, but what I've noticed is that whenever I have a lot of freedom, I end up doing the thing that is easiest, or most easily digestible, and so don't get anything worthy of note done.

So in other words... don't be me!

I know you restricted the parameters to remaining at home, but the truth is that if I had any sort of extended period of free time then I would definitely set off somewhere new. Japan has been on my bucket list for a long time, and I'm itching to tick it off.

If I were absolutely forced to remain at home, then I would focus upon smashing fitness for a month. Would take up some form of martial art or new sport, and spend every day doing something outdoors and active. You'd feel better in yourself, and would begin to see some improvements after a month. If you're not into your fitness then I'd do something like attempt to learn as much of a language as I could in that amount of time.

Travel, assuming money was no concern.

I've been slowly learning Gamemaker and working on a game. I'd start spending most of my time on that. It's been a uniquely satisfying experience for me, and only having a couple hours a night plus weekends to work on it has been a bummer.

I have a couple weeks of vacation time available, and I'd like to save up a couple more and do exactly that: pretend game development is my full-time job for a month and see what I can make.

I had a few months between when I finished college and when I started working a job. When I got to the end of college, I though of all those things I'd love to do... and I wound up passing the ten thousand posts mark on Giantbomb and playing a lot of video games.

However, one of the things that I did want to do was read, read, and read some more, and I did just that. I went to the library once every few weeks, returned the books I'd read, and checked out some more. I also wrote some, though not anywhere near as much as I'd like, and nothing particularly well-done.

The other things, like learning coding and Japanese and how to play guitar and losing weight, I dabbled in but never actually did. Sometimes I still think I'd like to do those things but I get to my free time, take a big ol' sigh, and don't do them.

Basically, I'm pretty good at my job but my motivation seems to be stuck there and mustering it up at home is hard.

Hey, don't look at me like that, I'd bet that almost all of you are the same way.

We'll find out. In 3 weeks I start my 5 week summer vacation. In an ideal scenario I would teach myself some skills regarding game creation, learn an instrument or language. But I'll probably just sit in the sun, drink beer and read Hunter S. Thompson books when I am not playing too many hours of video games.

Though given a real choice with no boundries, I would travel places that are historically significant.

Play video games, self pleasure time, and eat fried chicken and Taco Bell. In no particular order.

Take some machine learning courses. It'd help a lot for my work.

I'd travel as much as possible within whatever budget I had available. Visiting someplace international would, of course, be awesome. But barring that, I'd visit state/national parks that are within driving distance, or even visit a nearby city that I hadn't been to. In a real pinch, I'd walk around and explore MY city and surely find something I hadn't seen before.

I'd spend more time focusing on hobbies. For me, that would probably be photography and carpentry. I'd take my camera on whatever trips I could afford, and build stuff in between. If my dogs were around during this imaginary month of solitude, I'd spend some time training them. With a whole month, I might even take up something new - I've always thought it would be fun to learn to ride a horse or learn to scuba dive.

As somebody else mentioned, I'd spend more time exercising. The biggest hurdle (for me) to getting in better shape is the time commitment. Having an entire month with no work or family requirements would make it easy to get in a workout every day.

I'd work on programming a fun personal project that taught me something new. Probably also work on my digital art skills.

Well that's exactly what I've been doing with this summer since I didn't get a job, so I can tell you with certainty the answer is watch Twitch all day and play video games.

Videogames are 100% the last thing I should be doing before anything else, so probably that.

If I had the money though, i'd really like to travel! Its so darn expensive though.

Assuming I have money, I'm going back to Alaska for some vacation time. I love that state (I live in California for the record.)

As someone who just graduated college in may and hasn't been able to find a job yet...a whole lot of nothing.

I was unemployed (and completely broke) for several months after I took the bar exam, and I spent a lot of time getting myself into shape, running everyday and eating healthy. I think you should commit to doing something that you always make excuses about not being able to do when you are working regularly. Try to improve your life in some meaningful way, whether it be by getting into shape or learning a language, or taking courses on edX/Khanacademy or whatever.

I've spent almost an entire year with nothing but a fairly unstressed part-time job to occupy my time. Overall, I've... I dunno, played games, hung out, and gone to the cinema a bunch?

I'd rest for a while. And make one of the projected websites I've planned before. But only when I felt fully rested.

I'd do what I do every day, Pinky. I'd study. Haven't taken a single day off in almost 5 years now, nor do I plan to.

Week 1 - visit France & Spain

Week 2 - visit Germany & Italy

Week 3 - visit Switzerland, Greece & Turkey

Should I have to stay at home... Start learning French and build a new patio with a fire pit.

Force myself to spend a few days with my Dad learning some car & mechanic stuff and practice over and over until I wasn't a completely useless modern adult. I would also try to cook almost every meal to get more practice at cooking. I know those are fairly mundane, but I don't know that I have any wonderfully creative art film projects brimming in my head, or Tested style funky steam punk prop projects just waiting to begin. Basically I would take self driven home ec half the time and laze aroudnm the other half.

Guess I'll go with Practical and Fun.

Practical: Hopefully I could pick one person to do this with me that has some mechanical skills and learn how to work on the car some, as mentioned before me.

Fun: Learn to play the bass outside of the main riff from Smoke on the Water that a friend taught me years ago.

If I had a month off right now, ideally I'd spent it learning how to use coreldraw properly.

In the last 15 years I've taken maybe 2-3 weeks off in total, I think I'd probably go batty if I had a whole month with nothing to do.

Get back into shape. Kids and responsibility have a way of messing with your eating habits. I gained a bit of a gut after dealing with an infant, placing food convenience over it's healthy aspects. I'd like to get rid of that.

I'd do the same thing I do everyday: patiently waiting for a technological future where all my medical problems have been solved. I don't have anything major like cancer, but I do have a ton of unexplained pains, allergies, and whatnot that really suck the fun out of life.

Sleep.

If you want to answer, what is the goal of your study? Are you taking a degree?

Travel.

When you work, even when you have good benefits with four weeks of vacation, you can never take them all off at once. Thus, I would take the time to travel. I like to sail, so I woudl take one of those work on a tall ship vacations where you stand one watch in four working your way across the ocean. Storms, cold, blistering heat and getting a few calluses on your hands is good for the soul.

For me, it would be to further my website and game dev skills. I think I would attempt to make a procedurally generated old school map, with moving characters. I would attempt to get me some Augmented Reality board game going. Something along the likes of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective meets Pandemic.

Needless to say, I'm building a much smaller version of this as we speak, but I would like to use the time to make it a little more impressive. No AR, unfortunately, although it would be awesome if it did have it.

Assuming money isn't an issue, I would rent a cabin in the pacific northwest, and just explore the outdoors. That's kind of my ultimate life goal as well.

Um, I have 4 weeks now somewhat completely free.. I guess I am going to do a whole lot of nothing and play video games and hang out with loved ones. I am kinda lame like that.

1.Be overwhelmed by the possibilities of all that free time

2.Get a headache from thinking about all the things I need/want to do

3. Ultimately accomplish nothing and then go to bed

4.Repeat everyday for a month

Kill the Devil. Naturally.

Wait, don't most people here get a month off work/school/whatever every summer?

What part is expensive to you? I've traveled on the cheap a lot. Maybe I could give you some pointers?

Here being where? Europe? Yes. The U.S.? No.

Pretty sure in a month without any annoying family problems and other annoyances holding me back I could find a decent job, get my drivers license back and maybe, just maybe, find a girlfriend that doesn't treat me like a doorstop. Yeah that sounds pretty good... can I sign up for this free month now or do I have to wait in line?

I am completely free for a month, two in fact. I'll pretty much be working on my art projects and try to hang out with friends.

Keep working on my theoretical game. I'm probably never going to make it, but writing it is strangely fulfilling.

https://bn43.wordpress.com/2015/01/27/my-game

Feel increasingly bad for not doing anything worthwhile with my free month.

@bceagles128: what are you talking about? In the U.S. Most students get summer off unless they want/need summer school and people with real jobs get PTO(paid time off) they can use (for summer if they wish).

@bluefalcon: I took it as completely free. As in, no obligations towards family, friends, job/school, day to day errands, all that shit.

@geirr: most people here in the US don't. I've worked it out with my employer that I take two weeks paid and one week unpaid vacation so I can travel.

I would spend 29 days thinking of cool things I would do the next day, then on the 30th day I would panic and end doing nothing

Probably just laze about thinking about how great it is that I'm doing absolutely nothing right now. Probably just that for the whole month.

I get 5 weeks paid vacation and I use it to travel.

I'm already relatively free. I have little to no commitments besides work, so I think I'd do exactly what I already do, but more of it because work hours aren't a factor.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee.

I live in Sweden, I get one month of paid vacation every year. It always ends up with me getting sick for 2-3 weeks though.

In a petfect world I'd spend that time writing music and learning game development tools.