Category — Work and Meaning

I have always secretly dreamed that one day an individual would cross my path (or I theirs) and find my talents so unique and valuable that they offer to be my patron.

I know, I know, a terrific fantasy, and one not at all filled with much humility or indeed reality. But hey, as far as dreams go I used to think it was a pretty good one.

Yes, I longed to be the Leonardo da Vinci who finds his Lorenzo de Medici, and at the same time I know I’ve idealised the whole scenario. We know that Leonardo was a unique genius whose many interests led him in a variety of directions and without successful focus on any one area. We also know that many of his commissions for various patrons were left unfinished. In fact, instead of living a comfortable life, unworried about finances, he was often left with a month or two of savings. Much of his famous art, rather than being something that he was proud of and enjoyed producing, is more likely to be a commission he reluctantly accepted to allow him enough funds to pursue his other projects and to allow for food and lodging.

What I suppose I’m trying to impress upon you is that it seems very likely that even someone as amazing as Leonardo da Vinci had a job too. He had to find ways to employ his skills to earn his keep, even if he would have preferred having years of time stretched ahead of him to work on flight, optics and the mysteries of the human body. While his patrons certainly allowed him many freedoms in this regard, they weren’t entirely without their price. They wanted their share of his genius too and even his life was a balance between allowing his creativity and intelligence to follow their natural inclinations and submitting to the whims of his employers.

So I guess you could say I’ve started to rethink my desire for a patron and turn instead to designing my life in such a way that I am my own patron.

Even as such I will need to work and exchange my skills in part for some financial gains. Yet I seek a solution that allows for this on my own terms, as far as is feasible, and with a system of balance suitable to me.

You would all know by now that I’m not content with snatched moments for myself here and there. I am not content to live a life where the thoughts of the day revolve around work to the extent that my own unique thoughts have barely any energy left to communicate with me. I am not willing to give the best of myself to others in a way that asks me to compromise on what I have left for me.

As my own patron I understand the important balance between establishing finances that are sustainable and also freeing. The work that I do for myself must hold some intellectual stimulus but also be in the background of my greater goals and ambitions. I cannot let a situation arise where I spend more time trying to establish businesses or income streams than I do on the personal pursuits that are important to me. If I were to let this happen, then it would be the equivalent of working a full time job for someone else. I would have become a slave to the patron (even if the patron is me) rather than the patron being in the background supporting my pursuits.

I think many of us imagine that working for ourselves will be a wondrous endeavour filled with freedom. I think it all depends ultimately on why it is you want to work for yourself. If you imagine that it means having more freedom of time and choice then I think you may be deluded. If you think you will have more opportunity to pursue your greatest interests then I think you need to examine the reality more closely.

If what you seek is a lifestyle that will allow you to read, learn, experiment, grow, philosophise, experience, savour, inquire and detach, then you need to ensure that the necessities of life are automatically created in the background of your life, rather than in the foreground. Work as you need to and then set it aside as you pursue your real interests. Organise working so that it occupies less than 50% of your time – a 3 day working week with 4 days for personal pursuits would be a great place to start.

When it’s time to work do so with focus and ungrudgingly knowing that this work too is for you. When it is your time, turn with full focus, putting finances aside, and create and learn knowing confidently that your patron is in full support of your lifestyle.

Give yourself permission to be your own version of Leonardo da Vinci but without the insecurity or sense that you need to compromise yourself.

Living a life with foggy or undefined values is like driving around in the depths of darkness. You can’t possibly know where you are heading or even where you want to go unless you have taken some real time out of your everyday busy existence to pause and ponder what is truly important to you.

I think when people hear the word “values” there is a tendency to stifle a huge yawn. It isn’t a very inspiring word and for me at least tends to conjure up memories of sitting in religious education at school talking about what morals and values were depicted in an equally uninspiring biblical story.

These are not the sorts of values to which I’m referring. Instead, think “guiding principles” or “life beacons”. What I’m talking about here are the essential elements in your life that make you who you are, and more importantly, guide you into being who you want to be.

Yet still, this may all seem a bit intangible and have that whiff of an impending activity involving brainstorming and butcher’s paper. In fact it’s the exact opposite of this. Your values aren’t determined by you coming up with something that sounds like it might be good. Rather, you already know what you need in your life, even if it has been buried under the layers of inauthenticity over the years.

If you feel bored, stressed, depressed, frustrated, angry or sad with any area of your life on a daily basis, then this is a clear sign that you are denying your own values and that you are suffocating under the weight of your own disappointment. You might already realise this to some extent, but feel powerless to know where to start in establishing any real change. The first step is to identify what values would occupy the life of your dreams.

As an example from my life at the moment, I can see very clearly where my situation is out of alignment with what I value most, and doing so is an important first step in changing the situation. I value freedom above almost anything else, and this includes the freedom to choose how to spend the hours of my day. For me this isn’t just a wish, this is a guiding principle in my life. Above all else I know I need to figure out a way to align my life with this value.

Another value that is imperative to my sense of self is meaningful engagement. There are many people out there who are just fine with doing a job five days a week, 48 weeks a year, that is neither meaningful nor engaging. This is certainly not me. I am finding that I feel physically ill at not being involved in activities that I feel are meaningfully engaging. As I’ve spent time over the last year brainstorming possible occupations for myself, almost everything I think of has been rejected after a day or two, and this is owing to this one value. For example, I’ve considered freelance writing as a possible career change, but the thought of spending time on assignments that I don’t feel are engaging or meaningful almost makes me shudder. Sure, some might think that adhering to a value like this severely limits my options and is a tad unrealistic, but I’m not out looking for something a bit better, or even something significantly better, I’m looking for the exact right fit. I’m looking for the extraordinary and the deeply fulfilling.

To give one more example, contribution is another value high on my agenda. This value has been integral to my decision making since I first contemplated university courses back in high school. When people were telling me I should become a lawyer or an engineer, I chose teaching because of the opportunities I saw in being able to contribute something to the lives of others. I have long been interested in shaping and contributing to young people in particular and I still am. Teaching mathematics is no longer the correct avenue to fulfil this value since it doesn’t align with my other values, but I will still carry this value of contribution with me into future decision-making.

If you don’t take the time to clearly and succinctly define what you value then you’ll be stuck where you are, possibly indefinitely. Once you identify your values they then serve as the cornerstones or beacons that guide you out of the mire of your current situation and into the brighter reality of tomorrow. If you don’t take the time to really get acquainted with what you need in your life, then you will have nowhere to shift your focus. Ultimately your focus will continue to be on your feelings of anger, depression and frustration, rather than on new feelings of excitement and curiosity at what is coming up next.

As you sit at work today, instead of watching the clock tick over or distracting yourself with yet another cute and goofy photo of a kitten, sneak a moment for yourself to identify your top five guiding beacons. Send them to yourself in an email, keep them on your phone, put them in your calendar and set a reminder for yourself to view them each day.

This is the beginning. This is how you will change your life. This is how your focus will begin to change and with it your external reality.

I would love for you to share even just one of your values with me and with those who stop by to read this post, so please take a moment to share in the comments below.

I have a little confession to make; I was wrong to start up at another teaching job this year. Although it is all part of my plan to accumulate savings rapidly in order to retire early, it is still a mistake.

It’s not the school, and it’s certainly not the students, who are a really delightful group of young women. It’s me. It’s who I’ve become. I’ve changed and unfortunately I’ve pushed this realisation aside while throwing myself once more into a situation where I don’t want to be. Realistically I’m stuck here until the end of the year. Sure, I could resign, but I feel I’ve made a commitment to these students and so will do my best to see the year out.

So how am I going to get through a year of feeling stuck between worlds? How can you get through another year if you’re feeling the same way?

Have an end in sight

Feeling stuck indefinitely is far too overwhelming to cope with long term and will almost certainly break you down. You need to have the ability to remind yourself of the impermanence of your situation, even as a means to temporarily cheer yourself up. The end of whatever has you stuck should be in the relatively near future, with three years as an absolute maximum. If what you’re stuck in is a terrible relationship, this should be three months not years.

Work knowing that this is the last time you’ll be doing this job

Going back to teaching maths in a high school setting has confirmed for me that this is the last time I’ll be doing this job. It no longer stimulates me like it once did, and it no longer holds fulfilling challenges. Yet knowing this is my last year brings a new freshness to the situation and allows me to shift my perspective when at work.

Each lesson sees me making the most of my students, enjoying the time I get to spend with them and getting to know them.  Teaching offers the unique opportunity to forge many relationships and to perfect your communication skills with a range of different people and I’m going to make the most of it while it lasts.

Research, plan and research some more

Spend time in the evenings and weekends planning your next move. How long will you be able to last on what you will save during this time? How much can you save? Where can you reduce your expenditure?

At first you’ll need to really figure out who you are and what you value. Cal Newport has two great posts he wrote recently explaining that to make a career choice you first need to define what sort of lifestyle you are seeking and which elements you need to include in your life to feel you are living a remarkable life.

The first place to start might be with identifying what it is about your current situation that is making you feel so stuck. Essential elements that you need in your life are missing from your job and clearly defining these will help you determine what you need to look for.

Make time for yourself at work

Whether in your lunch break or a few stolen moments here and there at work, it is important that you create little islands of time for yourself. Maybe it’s to read a novel, or to read an interesting article or do a little more research on an idea you had this morning. Depending on how busy your day is this won’t always be possible, but try to take time to devote to you.

In doing so you will experience a moment of freedom in your day and you will take back a moment of control. This will contrast significantly with your usual feeling of being stifled and stuck and will act as an energiser.

Treat this period as a valuable Meantime

Transitioning from one period of your life to another doesn’t usually happen overnight. In fact, when life does change dramatically overnight this is usually to due to a tragedy, and so you should welcome and embrace a period of less rapid and more conscious shifting.

Yes you will wake up each day wishing that the new phase of your life had already started, but it won’t start without the necessary groundwork anyway. Think of it as a challenge. If you can set up the framework for your new life in the middle of a life that leaves you very little time for your own pursuits, then you must really want it. In a way, you will prove to yourself during this time that you mean business and that your goals are important to you.

In fact, on some days you’ll be glad to see that the deadline for the end of this life and the beginning of the new one is still so far off when you realise there is still so much to do. In a way I think it can be likened to the nine months of being pregnant. As a mother you are given nine precious months (in the best case scenario) to prepare for your new life. There are many times when pregnant women can’t wait for the baby just to be born already, sometimes because of the great discomfort or for feeling unwell, and other times due to the great excitement. Regardless, all women have to wait. I’m sure there are an equal number of times where mothers are glad for the time to adjust to the idea of this new role and to have the time to prepare mentally, emotionally, physically and practically.

Consider that you are currently in the gestational period of the new life that you are creating for yourself. You need this time to prepare yourself, both mentally and practically. Waking up overnight into your new life would more than likely fail miserably. A gradual change of which you have control over is far more likely to be successful.

Feeling stuck is simply a sign that you’re ready to move on and that you are overdue for a change. There’s no point sitting around wishing and waiting for your lotto numbers to come up. Instead you need to use this time to plan your escape. Don’t put all your focus on the ending though, the focus needs to be on the beginning of what happens next.

This is where I went wrong last time. I put my focus on what I didn’t want rather than on what I wanted and needed. This in turn ensured I had no firm plan for my next move. Without the correct clarity I’ve fallen back into what I know. So I’m setting myself the challenge of using this year to exit a life I don’t want and to enter a life that I do want and that I have successfully planned for.

I can’t trace back to an exact date when I started taking the red pill, but I know that I’ve been taking it in small doses all my life, and for the past sixteen years regularly. In case you’re not sure what I’m referring to, it is a reference taken from The Matrix trilogy, now used popularly to refer to waking up to reality and truth.

Once you begin truly thinking for yourself, examining the whys and the hows, and being slightly suspicious of the truth behind everything you hear and think you know, there is no going back to the innocence and ignorance that you may have enjoyed before. No matter how much you might wish to go back to a life where you accepted the status quo, you can’t go back.

After some time, you will find that you are on the outskirts of the status quo, watching everyone participating around you, while you wonder what might be left for you. You can’t participate with those who are seemingly content with the way things are because you don’t understand how they continue to fail to awaken and they don’t understand what’s wrong with you and why you just can’t be happy. This is where I find myself now.

So what are your options? What are mine? All of us who find ourselves here on the fringe, on the edge, have to find some way to live outside of the status quo as much as possible, while we find a way to build a life and a world of our own imagining.

Eventually, more and more people will leave the status quo and will come to join the rest of us. This is how the world will change. It won’t happen in the space of a few months, or even a few years. It won’t be a sudden change in the world. Rather, individuals have been changing their lives. Now these individuals have started to gather with people similar to them and small groups are forming. Small, yet growing, movements are leading by example, sharing their ideas and knowledge, often in blog form, and more individuals feel drawn to experiment for themselves, and find a way to live true to their essence on the outskirts of the status quo.

So I’ve kept you in suspense long enough haven’t I? How am I going to live outside the system that I can no longer tolerate?

I am going to retire early and simplify my life. By early I mean at the end of 2015, at 35 years of age.

What were you expecting? Something more dramatic? Something more magical? Or perhaps you’re wondering how?

I will probably write further posts to explain some of this in more detail, especially if there’s any interest. But here are the bare bones of what I intend and what I am doing so far:

For the first 9 years of my working life I have saved hard (and then my husband joined me) and we have a house that is paid for. Thus our largest expense, the mortgage, is no longer an obstacle.

I no longer see our house as a “starter home”. I refuse to buy into the notion that I need something bigger and newer in a nicer location. The energy (time spent at work plus denying myself mental and intellectual freedom) that would be required to “upgrade” our house and lifestyle, is not something that is worthwhile nor feasible for me.

I could technically stop going to work now and rely on my husband’s income. There is no way I’m going to do that though. My financial independence is essential to me. I could not be the feminist that I am and simultaneously rely on my husband for resources. This might not sit well with some of you, and it may offend others of you, and yet this is what I am. And so, I will spend the next four years, saving and simplifying, so that I may achieve my financial freedom.

I have been reading the book and blog by Jacob, over at Early Retirement Extreme, and so much of what he says resonates deeply with me. As a numbers person myself, I enjoy his analysis and the way he has crunched the numbers for himself. To that end I have begun creating a few spreadsheets which calculate daily expenditure, average expenditure and projected savings progress. I aim to save at least 80% of my income over the next four years.

As I save I will learn more about how to simplify my life and how to become more self-subsistent. Although I wouldn’t consider myself to be a big consumer, most people know I don’t even enjoy going shopping, there is more I can do to combat my consumerism. I am reading about how to eat more simply and am making progress with this. Grocery expenses are our largest expenditure. I intend to learn how to sew and to expand our vegetable garden.

I won’t be able to be completely self-subsistent and will thus be living somewhat inside the economic system of our world. I will focus on buying only those things that are a need, with the intention of buying quality items that last almost a lifetime, rather than succumbing to the need to upgrade constantly.

Once I have a high level of savings, I intend to live off the interest earned. I don’t intent to “play the stockmarket” or to become a financial wiz. Unfortunately none of that really interests me. At this stage I intend to earn interest from my savings (either from a term deposit or a high savings account) and live off that interest. At this stage my aim is to live comfortably and happily off around $12k – $15k a year. I realise that this wouldn’t be possible without living within the economic structure we have in place and until I come up with a better strategy, this doesn’t bother me too much.

What I have presented above is put in basic terms, but it really isn’t much more difficult than that. I have always said that if only there was a job where you could get paid to be an eternal student, learning whatever you want whenever you want, then that would be my dream job. Unfortunately there is no such occupation, and unless I find a patron soon, I will have to fund my own dream.

The only thing I’ve ever truly wanted is to be free. I’ve tried to convince myself from inside our world system that I am, but since taking the red pill I know I’m not. I can’t just get on with it and be happy with the way things are now that I know better. Having had this brief hiatus from “the real world” I now know how sweet it is and that this is the life for me.

To reach my potential and to find deep fulfilment I need time, space and flexibility. To achieve this I need to exit the world of work and to do this I need to exit the world of consumerism.

I’m not the first to do this, and I know I won’t be the last. I’m joining one of the small movements.

And what will I be doing from 2016 onwards? I don’t know yet. I envision that it entails more sustained writing and a deeper contribution to moving this world in a new direction. But it is too soon to start talking about that.

I may find that I don’t meet my target or that my calculations were optimistic. I may find a need to continue with part time work for either financial reasons or otherwise. This is all ok with me. I know that either way, 2016 will be the year of my true freedom.

What will you do now that you’ve taken the red pill?

I’d love to hear what you think about this or address any questions you might have.

There are too many aspects to life that we participate in because we think we have to and because we think it is what life is all about.

Every day that you go to work is a day that you participate in the overall system set up and maintained by society. The so-called economic system is not real. It’s not like the eco-system which existed (with a lot more health) before humans had even been imagined. Economics is not a science, and although a lot of maths and complicated formulas might be involved, it is something that people have created.

Humans exist independently of this economic system. That might be hard to absorb on your first reading. You might wonder how you could survive without money. You might think it’s impossible to extract yourself from the economic system in which you are so deeply entwined.

Lately I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and reading about how exactly I can become a non-participator. How can I extract myself as much as possible from the economic system, or from what most of us have to come to know as life?

I’m not talking about stopping work to live off social benefits. Sure, I wouldn’t be participating in work, but leaching off others in the system isn’t a viable option for me.

I also don’t mean I’ll become a lady of leisure, living off my husband’s income. I want to be financially independent from him.

I once watched a current affairs report about an Aboriginal man, in his fifties, living with his wife in the far north west of Australia. They lived out of their station wagon car and roamed this vast north west region throughout the year. The reporter asked them if they needed government funding to buy themselves a house in a community. The Aboriginal man told the reporter that he liked to live outside and sleep outside. He also said that he wanted to be able to move around and to go fishing sometimes. He said his car carried everything he needed. He didn’t say much but I understood him perfectly. He didn’t want to participate in the Australian way of life. His life and the life of his ancestors meant everything to him. I can imagine that he found our way of life to be completely bewildering. He wanted the freedom to live, the freedom to be.

Looking at how we all live from his perspective makes you think. For many Aboriginal communities I’m sure that the Australian way of life still feels extremely foreign. As they observe us choosing to stay put in one house, going to the same place everyday, pushing papers this way and that, pressing buttons here and there and coming home exhausted, they may wonder what on earth we are doing it all for. Why are we spending our weekends shopping and hoarding more items in our homes? Why aren’t we out there experiencing the world?

Anyone who knows me knows that there is no way I would choose to become a nomad, especially not spending my time in the harsh sun of the Australian outdoors. No, I’m not talking about anything that radical. It’s just that the interview with this man really made an impression on me. And it struck me that the perceived Indigenous issues that politicians are always going on about might just be as simple as the fact that for hundreds of years we have been trying to force a group of people to live by our system, when they are more than content with their own. The endless government spending and opportunities might be going to waste simply because our Indigenous Australians want nothing to do with our broken and ridiculous way of life.

Perhaps some of our Indigenous Australians see things more clearly than all those protestors protesting against the 1 percent. Here they are, essentially asking, through protest, that the system change itself to accommodate them. When the simplest and perhaps best solution is if they each extract themselves from the system as far as possible.

There have been ironic comments appearing about some of the labels these protestors have been wearing; designer brand caps, t-shirts and jeans. The 99 percent participate and fund the 1 percent and then complain about it. Clearly ridiculous.

Asking for change is an inefficient means of creating change. If you don’t like the structures in our world, change your own life. Once more people do the same and a critical mass is reached, then the structures will either collapse or change to accommodate the new world.

As they say, you can’t change other people, you can only change yourself and how you interact. This applies in every situation.

I personally despise the system that most of us live under. I see it as a more clever and subtle form of slavery. It’s clever because the slaves are invested in maintaining the system. We all want nice things, nice houses, instant access, an easy life, and so we keep working to make the money that buys these things. The trick is that just when we might think we are satisfied, something new appears that we feel we need, and off we go to work again. And of course we are each the cogs that keeps this machine running. We enslave ourselves for the better part of our lives. It is a genius system that doesn’t need many people keeping the slaves in check.

Most people aren’t aware that they live in this system. You might be pondering this new perspective now. You might also think I’m talking a load of rubbish. Of course that’s entirely up to you. But you’d have to be blind to not notice the cracks that are starting to appear. Do the slaves look happy to you? Do the increasing rates of depression, binge drinking and violence sound like the making of a healthy system? The problem is, like the 99 percenters, these are all symptoms of people trying to deal with the system by staying in the system. When really the answer is to step away from it entirely.

So what do you think? Are you intrigued? Do you want to know how I plan to move out of the system as much as I can?

I’ll let you think about these ideas for a few days and then I’ll write another post with my plans. If you are intrigued by what I have to say then perhaps you’ll think about trying it too. One by one, we might just change the system for ourselves.