In my experience (now on my 6th lifetime), I've found that I tend to circle around interests and behavior that were already recognizable when I started on my first lifetime at age 11. It's almost as if this whole temperamental/personality typing theory is real In practice, it means I'm visiting (spending lifetimes) on things I've always been interested in. (Keep in mind that I've always had a strong center or core knowing what I wanted; I've rarely been much influenced about other people's ideas about me, see adolescence comments above.) YMMV.

As such, if you want to build out your future, list all the things you've ever been into ... and then try to arrange them as a strategy of lifetimes so they ideally build on each other. If you can create some coherence out of that it will also be possible later on to say [to yourself and perhaps in your obit] that your life had purpose.

What I would say is to echo trying to avoid [ETA: randomly repeating / going over and over] that 'noob -> master' dynamic, also known as becoming a person with a multitude of hobbies that don't really hang together by anything other than 'I was interested in these'. Also if you don't weave this into a net then things or skills will fall apart and fade.

I think also it does not make much sense to do something instrumentally to get to something else without finding enjoyment in it itself. This is maybe contrary to the critique of 'do what you are passionate about', but I think people who are into enduring an activity (eg learning) in order to get to an outcome (eg. skill), enjoy either the process (of learning), or the prospect (of having skill), or there is something else about this situation that makes is in fact such that I would label it 'following passion / interest'. Though this comes with risk that one doesn't end up with an outcome they were hoping for.

I remember that comic from an ERE blog post way back in the day. I remember mapping out 7 year periods when I was in my teenage years and first discovered ERE, but of course what I thought I would do back then changed pretty significantly.

I would say one of the earliest interests that I really threw myself into was music. At one point I thought I was going to get a degree in jazz performance. I spent a couple years of high school giving it all I had but one issue I encountered was that I hadn't started really playing guitar until relatively late (15 when many had started playing at age 10-12 or earlier). Another issue was that my ego/identity were too tied up in being a musician and I gradually came to the realization that such a career path was unwise from a financial perspective. A part of me thought that if I was a successful musician then I would somehow earn the respect of my peers (and get girls to notice me). What I didn't fully realize was 1) most people don't care about music, 2) the type of music the average person cares about is typically quite simplistic e.g. pop music, 3) As an INTJ, I was spending way more time alone in my bedroom practicing and obsessively studying famous musicians than I was actually playing music with other people. I spent time combing over every biography or interview from my idols that should've been spent just playing live with other musicians (because the former felt easier/safer). So long story long, after I had a few unsuccessful auditions, I pivoted to an undeclared major and then eventually settled on computer science. In retrospect, what I enjoyed most about music was that it gave me a vehicle to study and progress a little bit everyday. I now thought that music would be something that I could pursue outside of a full time job, inspired in part by the blog of a programmer who saved up enough to be able to practice guitar fulltime for 1-2 years (the timeline coincided with Jacob's blogging years). From the Woodshed was the name of the blog and it is surprisingly still up to this day (posts range from October 2007 to September 2012).

As college progressed, I found myself playing guitar less and less. It seemed that musicians all hung out with other musicians, basically only socialized at house shows or concerts, and I was a bit on the outside looking in since I wasn't a music major or minor. I also had a lot of friends who had other interests. In other words, it gradually died because it didn't really fit into my lifestyle from a systems perspective. When I became entwined in the military, I switched to studying Mandarin as my hobby. This was actually similar to music in a lot of ways, but even more engaging because I could incorporate my studies into all of my socializing (to include dating) while I studied abroad. The military even paid for me to study abroad 3 times over college. At the time, I thought it would translate (no pun intended) nicely to my military career in hopes that I could get a first assignment somewhere in the Pacific region. Instead, my first assignment was in the deep American South and my Mandarin proficiency gradually faded because despite my best efforts, it didn't fit into my lifestyle from a systems perspective.

Fast forward to my last assignment where I rekindled my interest in Magic: the Gathering which I had previously enjoyed as a prepubescent boy. DW and I were in a long distance relationship and I was working weird hours in a boring job so I needed a source of entertainment that was on demand and engaging. I spent most of my waking time practicing, watching videos of gameplay, talking strategy on Discord, even starting a Youtube channel and publishing dozens of videos. I even got some professional coaching and traveled to play in a few big tournaments at convention halls. It was fun as an escape while I was working that job, but once I got off the shift work and moved in with DW on a normal schedule, it also gradually faded. I played it a few times in the past year but it just didn't feel the same.

So that ramble brings me to the current day where I have several interests that I put probably a few thousand hours each into but I haven't picked back up since I retired. I'm not really sure how they fit into my current lifestyle. I have thought about picking up the guitar again. I’m unsure how to find musicians to play with but I used to go to open mic nights and jams (I think a lot of those died during Covid and never returned). Moreso though I’m not really sure what my end goal would be. Before I was striving to be good enough to go to music school and get professional gigs. I thought I might end up as a musician on a cruise ship or circus then eventually tour with a band playing original music. In the military, I traveled so much and worked in austere conditions (along with the fact I now live with DW) that now I’m not really interested in such a lifestyle. Similar situation with Mandarin in that I can’t pick up and move to China/Taiwan with DW’s career and my family/friends being in the US. I could muddle along and try to recover my Mandarin proficiency while living here, but I know my progress will pale in comparison to if I was immersed in it.

TLDR: I do really like the idea of interweaving the different 7 year lifetimes but in practice I have not been very successful at it thus far.

Statistics: Posted by white belt — Mon Jan 19, 2026 5:37 pm

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