OKAY, SO WE'RE DOING THIS

Recently, my workplace has been asking everyone a daily question before the start of our shifts, just to get us into the mood of working, and to let us get to know each other somewhat more personally. Yesterday it was "what would you do if you had one billion dollars?" and then I went into quite a bit of detail, leading my colleagues to say that I was really thinking about it. I was thinking about it, of course, you don't ask someone like me such a question and expect me not to think about it. My brain never stops whirring, and I'm a writer, so I'm always imagining something other than the reality I'm in. Plus, if you're asking a question like that, I take it very literally. One billion dollars is very different from a million dollars, I could stop within an hour of talking about a million dollars, but having a billion dollars, is having a thousand possibilities of spending that million, and I'm gonna fulfill this billion-dollar-potential as much as I can. First, I would pay off my parents' debts, then relocate my household to a nice cosy home in New Zealand, where my mum would like to retire with my stepdad and my family. This would take perhaps two hundred grand, with the migration fees and the house. I would put aside conditional educational trust funds for my six younger siblings, with a cap of three hundred thousand dollars each. If they all used it up, it would only be about two million dollars spent, and I'd have 998 million dollars left! Man, I love being a billionaire. I would take drumming lessons, and learn to drive, go for LASIK so I can be unencumbered by my failing eyesight. I would buy myself a beachfront house in New York, write and read all day everyday, drive out to the city whenever I want, to catch Broadway musicals and concerts. I would sponsor the educations of other women of colour, visit impoverished nations, and bring the brightest minds out and let them study whatever they want to, wherever they want to, in the world. There are way too many bright minds not given their proper spaces to flourish, and the white men with all the money will never change that, so I will. I will build safehouses and give visibility to QTPoC, and people who are no longer accepted by their families due to religious/cultural differences, etc. I will invest money into environmental causes, and also sponsor scholarships for inventors to make the world more plastic-free. I'll buy a bamboo/reusable straw for everyone able to use a straw. I would study fashion and change it to be more sustainable. I dunno, generally I think I'll just pay for less privileged/advantaged people of the world to be educated to try to level the playing field, and hope they do the same for others. I think I'll just keep 100 million dollars for myself to travel, and to live for the rest of my life (in case I do get cancer), that should be more than enough.