I quit my job, and I don’t know when or if I’ll start looking for a new one.
Reading through my (previously unpublished) blog posts from the past six(!!) years, they reflect moments when I was struggling with purpose in my career, often in tension with the demands of my personal life. In some ways, these were very particular moments, but what I perceive underneath is a constant thread of a feeling that I just don’t fit.
I have proven to myself that there are things I can contribute to a workplace, things that I can do well. They may not be highly valued, but they are worthwhile. For a long time, this feeling has felt like insecurity. It has been a constant voice in the back of my head, whispering: I’m not good enough, smart enough, expert enough, driven enough, focused enough.
And that constant refrain – not enough – is probably what helped me see the lie in the end. None of us are ever enough under capitalism. It thrives on demanding more from us, so that we can buy more, to do more, to be more, to make more, to have more. Capitalism has to deny the truth of enough, because it dies when we realize we have enough, and that the price for “more” is nowhere near as cheap as what is shown on the price tag. The only reason we pay so little for so much of what we have is because capitalism relies on exploitation: of people, animals, plants, minerals, “resources“.
(As an aside: one might think me silly for getting most of my lessons from fiction books about magic, but I can’t deny that The Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik has shaped my thinking about “enough” in the past few years.)
For a very long time, I have used fear as my motivation for accomplishment. This is what we call anxiety, kiddos. I muddled my way through my 20s with the help of professors, mentors, family, and friends. I learned a lot and gained a lot of skills, but I’ve never shaken the fear that boils down to: I’m going to fuck up and end up homeless. 10 years into a relationship with a stably employed, frugal and responsible partner, I still find it hard to shake that fear.
But I finally looked around and did the math and said, “huh, I probably don’t have to be afraid of that anymore.” Well, not any more than any other person living through this current moment in history does. I began to accept the reality that security is an illusion. I could work hard and be a good person and dedicate myself to advancing in my career, but I’d probably miss everything that makes life worthwhile and not get very far, anyway, because let’s be real, I’m a fat middle-aged queer lady that can’t keep her mouth shut and gets easily distracted. No amount of skills can change that, and I don’t really want to, anyway.
So, I began to ask myself, if I am no longer motivated by fear, what do I really want to accomplish? Put another way, if I don’t have to work to survive, what do I want to do?
It turns out, the answer to that question is this: to work toward a world where no one has to be motivated by fear for their survival.
That’s not really a job description, I know. In the back of my head, I hear a chorus of nay-sayers, voices real or imagined. And true, it takes an inordinate amount of privilege to opt-out. And is opting out even really possible? This is still the world we live in, and I don’t want to be a separatist. But I also don’t want to be a reformist. The systems we currently have are broken. And maybe no system is immune to the worst tendencies of humanity, but it feels like it’s worth my time to try to figure something else out.
I don’t have any delusions that I will accomplish much. One and a half weeks in, and my house is only a little cleaner, my fridge only a little more full of wholesome foods. But I have had more time and energy for the things that are most important to me: caring for friends and neighbors, my garden (as part of the natural world), spending time with my family and helping their lives run a little more easily. It feels like enough, for now.