I’m Going on Indefinite Sabbatical
After 10 years of ladder climbing, wealth acquiring, and success seeking, I’ve decided to go on indefinite sabbatical. I sold my house, car, and possessions, fled the US, shuttered my business, and stopped the hustle. I terminated my phone contracts, cancelled my numbers, cut off communication from all friends and family that were toxic, and (somberly) ended a 5-year romantic relationship.
I have ample money to live simply without recourse to a day job. I want to invest for fun and focus on rediscovering my curiosities. I have no goal in mind. I do not seek to find my life’s purpose. I don’t need to make money.
One by one, over the last year while COVID-19 altered our identities forever, I have been eliminating everything in my life that perpetuates the delusion that success is happiness, that the noise of modern life is fulfillment. Neither minimalist nor consumerist, but striving to balance technology with simplicity. A hunter-gatherer with an iPhone.
Going off autopilot
While my solution may be extreme, it is only because the situation is dire. Every day we’re being programmed to think, feel, and desire whatever businesses are selling. Twitter noise, 24/7 breaking news, Instagram-polished lives. We are being curated to the highest bidder.
We no longer have original thoughts. We are forgetting what we really desire. We’re being piloted through almost every aspect of our lives to make money for others. We’re building another man’s paradise at the cost of our authentic selves.
In order to break away from this trend, I must ignore the noise from corporations, governments, influencers, social media, and anyone incentivized by revenue, power, and control. When we think alike, we buy alike. When we buy alike, we live alike. We become productized.
Deafening Noise
Social media has homogenized experts and brilliant minds with social capital seeking fools. The ramblings of a stock broker about vaccinations resonates farther than the scientist who developed it. In a social media driven society, the loudest, funniest or most controversial voice wins. Difficult truths are replaced by tantalizing tweets. We tweet for likes. We write for follows. We share for capital.
The noise to signal ratio is overwhelming. How the hell do we find clear, valuable, authentic truths worth believing amongst the 140-character chaos?
The only way forward, for me, is living on sabbatical to curate my own decisions, think my own thoughts, develop my own beliefs. I need a respite from the din of daily life.
We must be curators
Curation: the art of creating something new, coherent, and meaningful out of an abundance of related information and ideas.
Curators comb through troves of art, knowledge, and history to find patterns of thought and expression otherwise lost. While the masses enjoy whatever trend is being sold to them by influencers posing as ideators and startups jockeying for primacy, curators resurface knowledge and wisdom with timeless value. They create frameworks and principles for life from their own expert perspectives.
What is missing today is a curator of the digital realm.
Finding the Next Wild West
We live, laugh, and love online.
While I reject the notion of being available and connected 24/7, I’m still in love with the internet. Growing up in the 90’s, I spent the majority of my time either reading books or playing with computers. As a 30-something, I was lucky enough to reach puberty without the internet and then fortunate enough to awkwardly mature in my teens at the peak of the dot-com boom. I developed in the transition between worlds.
So yes, I love the 90’s internet. Not merely as a rose-colored nostalgic longing for better days, but because it was before the commoditization of our digital lives. When people created, built, and learned for the sake of it. When cyberspace was the wild west and authenticity was the default. You could truly be anything, learn anything, create anything. And money had nothing to do with it.
Today, the Wild West has been settled. Mega-cities have been erected where wagons once tread. Bars boom where crickets chirped. Billboards blaze where stars once shined. The dreamer has settled.
But I don’t accept this. I do not have to live in the megacity. I don’t need to hustle, ladder climb or influence. I don’t need to build an audience (the most obnoxious, egocentric idea I’ve encountered online). I am fortunate enough to no longer want for basic needs. So why must I strive as if I do?
So, indefinite sabbatical it is.
As I write this, I realize how difficult it will be. I have spent more than a decade sprinting, connected, iterating. To stop, step away, and breathe will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And yet, if I truly am to breathe again, I cannot help but do it.
This blog is merely my attempt to share my findings, failures, and ideas with others. I know I’m in the 1%. So why should I keep whatever value I have to share from the 99%? Perhaps it can inspire others to join me.
