When I'm financially free, I can start living the life I really want (part 3)

I challenged myself not to challenge me. And I died. Slowly. Not too painful in a physical way, but it was a damned dreaded rut that killed me after all. A wiseman (ok, an old pianist friend) once said to me: 'After all, all we do in life is trying not to be bored'. And then there was me, the guy who was afraid to live and opted-in on a life of boredom. A fool, I am.
I won't make this third part that long (ok, I alway try to make posts not that long and fail anyway, you're warned). I've been focusing on financial freedom too much. And with focussing on that too much, I've been more or less blind to alternatives. I only am looking at 'the money to be made' and have absolutely no trust in doing something I like and the money following me. It's crappy to admit, but it's always about money. Do you even know what money is?

I've never had a lot of money. I worked a lot to pay for my studies and drum gear (ok, might have overspend there a bit in the past...) but didn't save much. I could have saved a little bit but I just didn't. I guess I've lost a savings of a couple of K's during my twenties. With being an engineer giving me a fair paying job, I managed to still save... mostly nothing during my first working years. Buying a house and separating my partner in 2013 made my savings go all the way up down to an astonishing -18.900K. Including my small student debt I was down just over 20K when I just turned 31. Great. I hadn't ever seen such a big amount of money but I was in the negative with it.

Surely enough, the money pressure was more or less there (I wanted more) but I wasn't capable of holding onto it. So my biggest lesson was getting out of this debt-thing. That shifted my perspective on money. At the same time I came across the FIRE movement online. That shifted my perspective even more. So now I understand why it's good to save and accumulate money. But I got a bit overboard I think. It's not that I want to give up on saving 50% of my net salary. Not at all. And to be honest, there's absolutely no need to do so. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. BUT. All my choices in life are based on this safety-thing called money. Sure, I took a risk by quitting my job and getting into software development. But there was a promise for a job to go with it. I've never felt insecure. But as I've discovered in my last pondering-of-thoughts, my biggest problem is not the money thing. I've had jobs. I don't mind working. I've had jobs and side-hustles during my twenties and never felt a lack of energy. If needed, money can be earned. I'm just lost on the scalability of making money and I'm lost in the balance between making money and living a rich life. Because they for sure are not the same thing. For me the time has come to let the I-need-more-money-quest go for a while and look for more in life. Get my priorities straight. What do I want to do, what brings purpose to my life, what brings me joy, what makes life worth living to me?

I can't say anything other than that I've come to the conclusion that the title statement of this trilogy of posts is wrong. It is just so wrong. My whole perspective on this thing called freedom was so wrong. It should be turned around. Completely. Literally. 

It should be 'When I start living the life I really want, I'm financially free'. 

So I guess this makes my new quest very clear: what does it take to start living the life worth living for me? It looks like i'm into redesigning my goals section for the first time since 2017...