Jettisoning things from my life gives me a thrill

Plus a theme word for 2021

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Dear friend — 

What strange new habits have you picked up during the pandemic?

I’ve picked up quitting. To be fair, I’ve always excelled at calling it quits: I like starting over with a clean slate. Jettisoning things from my life gives me a thrill — oh, the luxury of the empty space it leaves behind! 

But my quitting addiction has accelerated of late. Last June I quit my home and pretty much all the stuff in it. I became a nomad and quit one city after another — I’m in city number six now, soon going on seven. Along the way, I quit my car (and got another). I quit my job too (and got another). 

And earlier this month, I quit my job. Again.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how odd this concept of a job is — and more broadly, how strange this world of capitalism that we all arrange our lives around. Most of us passively accept, for example, that we will dedicate half or more of our waking hours to benefit companies we ultimately don’t care much about. And they don’t care about us either. We’re employed at-will. We can be fired whenever, for any reason or none at all. And we can be laid off at any time, as far too many people have discovered in the last 10 months.

The cumulative effect of all this is a nation of people living in life-long precarity and fear. 

For a while, I worked in marketing for a company with an interest in studying the effects of layoffs — which I learned are long-lasting and profound on those affected. Getting laid off dramatically increases your risk of both mental and physical illness. Suffer a layoff, and you’re way more likely to suffer everything from severe depression to killer heart attacks.

And even if you’re not directly affected by a layoff, you’re still likely to suffer from seeing it happen all around you. Many Americans live in layoff anxiety, wondering when the other shoe will drop.

I’ve been lucky to never have been laid off. I think this luck may be why I’m more willing to quit jobs that go bad, as jobs unfortunately do sometimes. I don’t feel much trepidation when I quit a job, because I haven’t ever had the experience of struggling for months on end to find a new job, any job, to make ends meet.

But too many people I know have gone through this desperation-inducing experience. 

One of my friends was laid off when her company went through a merger. She recovered from that, but then was laid off again last March at the start of the pandemic, when finding a new job was damn near impossible. Another friend suffered a job loss — during the Great Recession, if I remember correctly — that ultimately forced her to declare bankruptcy (She’s fine now, don’t worry). 

Experiences like these I think teach us some terrible lessons: that we should hold on to jobs even if we don’t like them, that we should endure pay cuts and overtime and ill treatment because they’re par for the course, that we should stay loyal to institutions that feel no loyalty toward us, that we should simply be grateful we have jobs, period.

And because the fear and panic induced by layoffs are so profound and long-lasting, those lessons aren’t easily unlearned.

I am not experiencing fear or panic. I quit voluntarily, have savings, and am lucky to have skills that happen to be in demand, even during these turbulent times. But I nonetheless created a wave of fear and panic with my decision — because while working at this company, I’d hired a half dozen freelancers. As soon as I told them I was leaving, they started worrying — most of them asking outright if their gig, the income from which they’d come to rely on, was dunzo.

I felt really bad, because I consider these people friends. I did my best to make sure they’d keep getting work from the company — but I obviously can’t promise them anything, and I don’t know how long their gigs will last. I will be replaced with someone new, and that person’s just as likely to bring on their own team as to continue working with the one I brought on.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In many European countries — famously, France — employees aren’t employed at-will and can’t be fired without really, really good cause. In addition, companies that conduct layoffs are required to provide extended severance pay and career transition help so laid-off employees can find new work before, say, being forced to go through bankruptcy.

And of course, nearly all European countries have universal healthcare — so laid-off workers don’t lose medical, dental, and vision benefits along with their jobs in one fell swoop. 

Will the people get more protection under the Biden administration? I hope so — but we’ll have to really push for it.

Meanwhile, life goes on. I’m slowly figuring out what I want to do, income-wise, going forward. Go back on the job market? Freelance? Join a commune? 

There’s no hurry though. My theme word for 2021 is TRUST — to trust that I’m doing the right thing, that I’m where I should be. 

Tell me: What’s your theme word for 2021?

By the time you get my next love note, I’ll have moved from Arizona to New Mexico. Until then, stay well.

Love,

Siel

That’s me in Tombstone, Ariz., a little touristy “Wild West” town

3 links you might love — the rethinking work edition

1.  Why do Americans work so much while getting so little to show for it? Jill Lepore offers a primer of sorts in The New Yorker. The short answer is that unions have lost power while CEO compensation has gone up astronomically.

2. What does it even mean to be “productive”? Cal Newport looks at how email and Slack have made us less productive and more reactive in "The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done.” I highly recommend Cal’s books: Deep Work, in which Cal makes a pretty inspiring argument that you need to clear chunks of time for deep, focused work if you want to do great things, like write a novel, and Digital Minimalism, which might help you tame your social media habits.

3. Is it time to rethink what remote work looks like? Anne Helen Peterson argues yes in her New York Times opinion piece, “Are You Sure You Want to Go Back to the Office?” I am one of those people who definitely does not want to go back to the office, even after this pandemic ends.

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