First, a brief word…
Punk rock icon Henry Rollins once said there’s a terrifying feeling you get when you realize you can’t work a 9 to 5 job.
You’re not happy. There are no fireworks. You say to yourself, “Oh no — I’m not gonna have a straight life. What am I going to do?”
It’s scary as shit.
This is me right now. Six months ago I was offered a full-time position as a crypto writer for a startup. I couldn’t refuse. The pay was beyond my wildest fucking dreams. If I stayed there for a year, or maybe even two I would make it in life.
That’s not going to happen. Because I’m done.
Corporate life feels like a bad acid trip. It’s like being in a never-ending hall of mirrors where you see yourself reflected back, but you’re not really sure who you are.
I’m done with the soul-sucking, mind-numbing, heart-wrenching work that a nine-to-five job entails. I’m done with the false promises of upward mobility and the empty corporate mantra of “work hard, play hard.”
Here’s why you should think about opting out too.
Meetings are for douchebags
Meetings are Twilight Zone meets Groundhog Day. You sit in a room with a bunch of people who are all pretending to listen to each other, when really they’re just waiting for the entire thing to finish.
Many people in the corporate world have more meeting hours in a day than they do work. This is called “meeting culture," and it's likely responsible for the mental health crisis in the U.S.
In his book, "The Outsiders," William Thorndike Jr. found that great CEOs are often great at saying no to meetings. They know that time is their most valuable commodity, and they're not going to waste it sitting in a room full of people who aren't going to get anything done.
If you hear from your boss, "we really accomplished a lot in that meeting!” then get out.
Get the F out.
The paycheck is modern slavery
I met this very successful artist in Miami who told me something about New York I’ll never forget: “Everyone’s in a rat race and they don’t even know it.”
We race for digits in our bank account. We race to buy things on credit that we can't afford. We race to tell our friends we have a six-figure job.
Take a step back and make sure you’re climbing the right hill in your career. As Jordan Peterson once said, "Life isn't a game. It's a series of games, some of which you're good at and some of which you're bad at."
Here's the kicker: You get to choose the game.
So many of us are unsatisfied in our 30s and 40s because we didn’t have the guts to go back down the hill and start a new game. We’re too far in to climb back down, and we know it. This is society lying to us. It's lying like a used car salesman, and we believe it.
What makes someone like Jeff Bezos or Vitalik Buterin successful is they weren't afraid to start over. Critics might say they were lucky, but I think it's because they had the balls to start a new game.
You either build your dreams or someone hires you to build theirs.
You don’t exist in the corporate world
I just watched this movie starring Nicholas Cage called “Pig.”
In the film, Cage was speaking to a former employee of his who, out of cowardice, ditched his dream job for a comfy wage slave position. He told his ex-employee this:
“You aren’t real. Why do you care about these people? They don’t care about you — they don’t even know you because you haven’t shown them. Every day you’ll wake up and there will be less of you.
You live your life for them and they don’t even see you. You don’t even see yourself.”
We don’t get a lot of things to really care about in this life.
I don’t know how many hours, days, minutes I have on this Earth. None of us do. If you don’t show your unapologetic self to the world, or at least try, then God help you, because you’re living in a hell that you created.
And the worst part is, deep down you know it.
Final Thoughts
Let me finish by saying I have a lot of respect for many workers in the corporate world.
There are those with families who have to suck it up. They grab their baggie lunch and say “fuck — I gotta get through this shift to feed my family.”
There are also those who enjoy corporate life. Their boss treats them right. It’s a small office, there's a 401(k) program, etc, etc.
But there are some of you like me. You can barely wake up in the morning because your job is soul-crushing. For eight hours you’ll have to pretend to care. It's like being in a relationship with someone you can’t stand, but you can’t break up because of the rent.
It's killing you. You’re not living — you’re existing.
I refuse to do this for the rest of my life.
The dirty secret of life is that if you don't follow your passion it begins to spill over into everything. You’ll be too tired to take up hobbies. You’ll start skipping out on the gym. You’ll gain some weight and eat crappy foods. Slowly your ambition will die. This is why people drink.
Get out while you can. I am — and I’m not looking back. Fuck. I’m very happy right now. You have to enjoy what you’re doing, but don’t invest yourself unless you’re ready to put the work in.
Good luck out there.
I guess that must true otherwise how did they become aliens in the first place? By defying gravity of course!
I don't know much about Bezos but I've read up and watched enough of Vitalik to know that he lives in his own parallel Universe.