Suddenly, come 2016, you will not have any reasons to consider playing the politics.
I realize that every job has some bad politics, and I typically find those easy to avoid. What's harder to avoid is the drudge work, the repetitive paperwork filing or meetings or reporting details or annual recertification trainings that everyone dreads. Those are harder to get away from, and to simply stop doing them would have significant negative consequences.
If you're looking for something to do that's expensive and potentially meaningful, there's always philanthropy or politics.
Philanthropy requires working longer, to do "correctly". Elected office sounds like all of the worst parts of my job without any of the highlights, but I might consider unelected positions like a seat on the city planning commission.
I think if I was about to go FI, I would probably keep working, but on more of a part time basis.
Some jobs are harder to do part time than others. I'm not sure mine is amenable to downsizing, without taking a demotion. Which might be a good way to go, actually.
One of the things which recently drove this home for me was standing in the ruins of ancient Rome. The quote which came to mind was "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair..." from Shelley's Ozymandias.
I think that poem is too often cited as an excuse for not trying. I accept that my life is small and insignificant before the sands of time. That does not imply I should commit suicide, or become a hedonistic drug addict. Even a fleetingly mortal visitor to our universe can aspire to something, and find value in the pursuit of it, knowing it is ultimately fruitless.
Besides, Percy found a kind of immortality in the sonnet itself, which was kind of the point. It's hipster irony in the Napoleonic era.
3) Loving your job is part reality and part fantasy you tell yourself to provide meaning to your own life.
I'm still debating how much 3) applies to me. I feel like my job provides me an opportunity to do good in the world, a platform from which to enact change that would not be available to me as a private citizen. I'm not sure how much I derive meaning from the position vs how much I think of the position as a tool to help realize change.
in my case volunteer work for causes I care about and epic Wilderness journeys, are what is meaningful - to me personally, and at least to the volunteer work, to the world. I can do more "worthwhile" things there than I can at the money making job.
I don't know what you do for a living, but one option would be to do your job, but as / for a charity.
My job IS a cause I care about, and it pays me to go on epic wilderness journeys! Without providing too much detail, suffice it to say that working for the federal government allows me to accomplish things that would be much more difficult to do while working for an NGO.
As a general recommendation, if you have not already done so, I'd recommend you read some of the better material out there about the purpose of life--books like Man's Search for Meaning and The Denial of Death would be some initial suggestions.
I'll look them up. Thanks for the suggestion.
If you love what you do AND you're financial independent, wow! You're in an even smaller category. Relish that! Don't be disappointed in it.
I'm hoping to find myself comfortably in that position. It does highlight, however, the difficulty in finding meaning in that situation. As I mentioned earlier, consider the thousands and thousands of trust fund kids, energetic young children of the super rich, who will never need to earn a paycheck in their entire lives. Some of them become layabouts or playboys, but a significant portion seek meaningful work not for the money but for the influence, for the betterment of it. They support PETA or crusade against child labor laws or found startup companies, but the point is that some of them do it really poorly and only a few manage to make a difference, even with their nigh unlimited resources. This is the stratospheric zone in which I am trying to envision myself living, making decisions about how to live that have nothing to do with money. It's a very different sort of calculus than worrying about whether to max your 401k or prepay your mortgage, and my competitive spirit struggles with understanding the metric by which success in that realm is measured.