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The Big Quit
It’s time to slow down.
There’s a word for it.
It’s Mandarin for lying flat — doing nothing. No career goals. No dream job. No side hustle. It sounds beautiful.
One of my mentors once gave me some odd career advice.
He said:
“Sometimes your friends will invite you out.
Tell them no.”
Another mentor ran into me at the gym. This was ten years ago, when I was a 20-something grad student. He squinted.
Aren’t you supposed to be at the library?
He was joking. Sort of.
In fact, that’s exactly where I was headed next… the library. I didn’t have an office yet. Looking back, that was the defining attitude of my 20s. It didn’t matter where I was. The gym. The library. The singles bar.
I was supposed to be…
Somewhere else.
The world is ending.
You can feel it, can’t you?
Wildfires. Entire towns burning down overnight. Entire towns getting washed away in floods. Every metropolis sinking back into the earth. All despite our futile attempts to barricade and fortify.
