I quit my job — a month ago
And for some reason it’s making headlines today
I thought I was quite clear about it a month ago when I posted the following tweet:
I worked briefly for Resett — it’s a minor Norwegian newspaper and has gained a fairly right-wingish readership that I disagree with on most things in life. When I started working there the goal was to create a platform for a diverse debate. As I mentioned yesteday diversity is important to me. Diversity was however never really reflected once we started publishing and I found the publication to be at edge with the values I wish to promote.
“I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It” — Voltaire
I have in the past been reffered to as a freedom of speech fundamentalist, a title I embrace. I disagreed with a fair bunch of the readership and the others at Resett, and still I kept working there. In fact I embraced it. Here were people feeling they were underrepresented in politics and the media, as a believer in a diversity of ideas, opinions and views as the antithesis to extremism that seemed like my jam — especially as the goal was to reflect a diversity.
The reality did however quickly come to kick me in the butt. First of all Resett never ended up reflecting the diversity of ideas, and in fact, the people who claimed to be under-represented in the media and politics seemed to have views well aligned with two other publishing-platforms in Norway, Document and Human Rights Service (HRS) — Document was an inspiration for among others Anders Behring Breivik, no friend of mine to be sure (long story short; he tried to kill med for disagreeing with him). In addition these worldviews have gained increased traction internationally and is reflected by mainstream politics in far too large chunks of the world.
Quitting a job is always nerve-wrecking, I had (and still have) no idea what the future holds, what I’ll do next, and so I put it off for as long as possible. It’s especially scary to do it in public, and so I tried not to make a fuzz about it, beyond announcing it in a fairly low key tweet. The fact that me quitting a job makes headlines might however be a sign that there are other options out there for me, other causes that might add more value, and be more aligned to the thing I actually want to do.
It’s difficult to stand up within a newly started organisation to point out the fact that it’s moving in the completely wrong direction, but I tried that, when that didn’t result in anything I started looking for ways to go.
There was a number of reasons to quit. First of all was the ideological differences. Secondly, what originally was supposed to be a part-time gig writing an article here and an article there turned into a 100% position with the understanding that I still had a number of international engagements and obligations, and that I in fact wasn’t living in Norway at all. Then the 100% turned into way more than 100% as more was required to keep the platform up — I tried my best, sleepless nights were had, I worked my ass off for something I already then didn’t reallybelieve in, because I firmly believe in the ethics and principles of hard work even when working for people you disagree with. I burned out doing that, amidst the scheduled work, the unscheduled work, the monomanic depressive worldview reflected in the content and the even more gloomy content of the comments I was set to monitor for hours and days on end — I’ve been on the edge of burning out for too long now (again as discussed yesterday).
And so; once I got the chance I quit, burned out, frustrated, and sad because of what the thing I’d worked so hard for had turned into.
Time to pick it up, and do something else.
