Many of us have dreamed about a simple and wholesome life making something at home with our own hands and selling it to make a living.

That’s cool when you’re selling samples of your handiwork to friends and family, but how will you fare on the open market with real customers making real buying decisions? They have the power to buy whatever they need from Amazon with a few clicks, and will generally only buy things with lots of five star reviews.

The world always needs new songs. They put a spring in our step as we hear them on the radio, help us reflect on painful experience and offer new angles on love, sex and death. As an important part of what makes us human, songs are always going to be valid cultural currency. And there will always be a need for people who write good ones.

Writing is lonely and bad for your back, but it’s also a thrilling adventure of self-discovery and a potential money spinner. Those who feel driven to write will write regardless of what anyone says – but many a desk drawer is full of manuscripts that never see the light of day. Furthermore, writing can be a very slow process if most of the time is spent staring out of the window waiting for inspiration to strike.

Masterclass is an educational company offering online classes delivered by astonishingly big names in their fields. We are talking bona fide A-list people. Looking at their course list, one can’t help wondering “How on Earth did they get Helen Mirren and Samuel L. Jackson to teach acting? Gordon Ramsay to teach cooking? Annie Liebovitz to teach photography? Steve Martin to teach comedy?”

Sometimes you meet people who can recite the entire family tree of rock: which bands spawned which other bands, which members left and formed their own bands, where they came from, who produced them, the names of all their albums in chronological order, what was on the B side of all of their hits, and what their pets were called.

If you are visiting a foreign country, you might take along a pocket guide to the language to help you order things in restaurants or explain to the local police what the person who snatched your cell phone looks like. It beats pointing and grunting or shouting in English, and the natives will admire you for making the effort, even if they bring you squid instead of chicken.