Or a minions opinion of why the great resignation is happening....
Life in the cubicle
I used to wake up, and from then on frantically move from one task to the next until it was time to go to sleep. 7am wake up, by 7.30 showered, dressed, breakfast, feed the cat, out the door, on the bus, train, train, at my desk by 9am. By the time I arrived at work I was already frazzled from the commute. Then work all day, and when tired, instead of resting - force myself to look busy because it's not the done thing to take time to rest when you need a break, therefore overall productivity suffers as you drag yourself through the day.
I would finish up by Friday night absolutely exhausted, and when younger, would then go out in the city after work, however because I was so tired, it only made things worse. I'd wake up on Saturday morning feeling totally drained, and then the rest of the weekend was an exercise in dragging myself from chore to chore to get ready for the next week at work.
After a few years it put me in such a bad mood - I was constantly rushed and stressed, and I noticed that I hated supermarkets and was always angry when in them. I would have to leave work (late) then bus to the supermarket, rush around the supermarket, bus home, make dinner, shower, blow-dry my hair so it was acceptable for work tomorrow and fall into bed exhausted without any opportunity to exercise or consider my own goals. Every waking moment was a chore. The majority of 'time off' was actually time needed to support the working time with home chores.
The weekend was spent doing housework & jobs, if I went shopping for clothes it was a mad rush, unable to find what I really wanted I'd make compromises and always end up with things I didn't like because there was never enough time to explore the options.
...and back to work on Monday, not at all refreshed, for another 40 hours of work plus 10 hours of commuting and 5 hours of preparing to leave for work.
Even with the best intentions - and I am a pretty consistent exerciser, I would rarely have the time to get up and exercise before work. When the job permitted I would cycle to work and home (say an hour each way) to smash the commute and the exercise into the same timeframe. Not exercising enough of course leads to weight gain and being unhappy with yourself, it fundamentally undermines your health and lifestyle values. Exercising enough makes you think and work better.
And a pool table / gym membership reductions or whatever they offer doesn't make up for this - A) if you're seen playing pool you'll probably be the next on the redundancy list and B) these half-hearted perks do nothing to fundamentally change anything.
If I needed to see a doctor, I would have to get a very early or late appointment, otherwise I'd have to take a half or full day off work. One time I needed an operation which would take a full day, and couldn't do it because I had no sick days left at work and no holidays, and I was paid so badly that the lost day would really hit my finances.
When I wanted to take a holiday I would have maybe 2 weeks per year, but often that would be eroded by taking the odd day here and there for necessary tasks (like the doctor). Taking into account mandatory days off at Christmas (assuming I wasn't mandatorily working most of them) I would have little opportunity to travel. The best you get is 2 weeks.
When you think about it, even slaves get given a place to live, food and basic personal belongings which support the work they do. That's what this is. I wasn't living where I wanted to live (rather, in a shitty rented flat), doing the things I wanted to do, owning the things I wanted to own, everything revolved around the work and supported the work. (work clothes, shitty apartment near work, car to get to work....)
Life after the cubicle
Not too fancy, but it's ours, and my office is in the RV on the right hand side
I find that my most productive and creative hours are the first 2 or 3 hours of the day. My mind is un-frazzled, ideas run smoothly, problems are solved quickly. Beforehand, those hours were wasted in the commute.
I now wake up much earlier, but naturally - if I'm feeling tired and need a bit longer, I just let myself rest until I'm ready to get up. Many days I'm up at 6.30 and have done 2 hours of work on my laptop by 9. Then I get some exercise in - either a jog, or weights or yoga in the garden, or a couple of videos from Alo Moves, or a 30km cycle, taking in some necessary jobs on the way.
Then I shower (which I can do, because I'm at home), have a healthy breakfast when I'm hungry with fruit (rather than bolting down cereal at 7.15am), and I carry on with my day. On Thursdays I cycle 10km return to the local market where I can buy fruit and veg without any plastic wrappers on it - so there's less landfill. If I have to make a doctors appointment, I can make one at any time in the day and just go without any stress or using up holidays.
Now I travel for 3 to 5 months of the year. I do that to avoid the European winter, and because I can work from my laptop I only need to be careful to always have a half-decent wifi connection. I tend to find a nice place and stay for at least a month, since constantly moving eats too much into the work day and it's expensive (what is the wifi password, where is the supermarket in this town?).
Instead of wasting money and natural resources running back and forth to an hours distant office every day, I make one big return flight each year.
Because I'm in a better climate, I can exercise outdoors all year e.g in Colombia from October to March, I can jog up mountains, surf, run on the beach, go on 30km walks with other people's dogs, do my yoga and Alo moves and lay in my hammock with my laptop when I have some relaxed work to do.
I'm also not spending a good proportion of my spare cash on uncomfortable work clothes which I would otherwise never want to wear. I don't have a commuting car anymore, I have an RV which I use as my office and it's parked outside our 2-room wooden cottage.
I cook inspired, healthy meals every night, and cook also with dried chickpeas, beans and lentils, which I can soak during the day because I'm at home and can think ahead and prepare them. This also saves a lot of money, and wastage because I'm not buying them in cans.
My income is now split into income streams. I mark assessments online for one educational company, I do online lessons in design, I look after other peoples dogs when they're at work or on holiday which means I can earn money doing computer work whilst I take care of the dog. I create website templates to sell which is client (stress) free work too.
Basically my remote working, multi-income stream lifestyle is waaay less stressful and supports my goals of eating healthily, exercising, reducing stress and actually enjoying each day far far better. I can wear anything I want to, I don't have to put makeup on, but still tend to look tidy enough for video calls.
From home I can water the garden at any time, do a load of washing and get it out of the way before the weekend, take a rest when I'm really tired - even a nap if I'm feeling ill. I can meditate from time to time and write down a few life goals, plus I've been really extending my skills in Webflow, CSS, Figma, style-guides and investing in recent times - training was unheard of in the cubicle times. I now have the energy to pick up a paintbrush on the weekend and have some R&R (I figure that the word 'Recreation' made from Re + Creation - meaning that time out allows us to create ourselves anew)
The idea of being limited to 4 weeks holiday per year in a full time job and giving up this lifestyle just isn't worth the money, even when it pays 120k/year in Euros.
Screw that! I need flexibility, to be healthy, to do basic necessary life stuff without constant stress feeling that my life is owned by the corporation or some master... and I want more than just 2 weeks out of every 52 to live my own life!
Some of you will be outraged at my insolence, I know.... Lets face it, our whole world and education systems are focussed on getting us ready for this slavery, making us not even question it, keeping us meek, keeping us tired so we don't even have time to challenge the system, think for ourselves, think about our own goals.
But if I don't have to live like that, why should I? I believe the world is taking a shift away from the industrial revolution mindset, and it's long overdue*. It's also up to us minions to drive it, demand more of our own lives to live on our own terms.
If you're still stuck in the cubicle and you want to get out, read my article 'How to be a Location Independent Digital Creator' which has a few tips for non creators too...
What are your thoughts on this? How are you improving your own lifestyle? What do you want more of? What do you need help with? Let me know in the comments.
*This site 'Away from the Race' has been around for a few years and it's my own small effort to get this show on the road and help people break away from the 'Rat Race'.
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Image credit cubicles: Asa Wilson, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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