A little over a year ago, I quit my job on Wall Street. I made great money. I worked with smart people. I was eligible for promotion to Director. And yet, I was deeply unhappy. I felt trapped. The journey to get to the day I resigned was a long one. So, I’ve decided once and for all describe my journey out of the golden handcuffs, out of a job I didn’t believe in.
I hope you find my process enlightening, or at the very least, amusing. If you follow these steps closely, you too can be an successful entrepreneur unemployed hippie incredibly happy human being.
1. BE DISSATISFIED WITH YOUR JOB.
PENGUIN ENNUI
Find it hard to wake up in the morning. Feel the weekdays crawl by. Wonder what you could do if you spent all day working on YOUR projects instead of sweating for someone else. Have a melodramatic attitude about what you’ve done in your career (“Nothing!”) and life (“I’ve accomplished nothing! Nothing I do matters!”).
Suffer malaise and ennui.
Complain to all your friends about how much your job sucks until they can’t stand to hear anymore. Complain to them some more. Complain until your social circle consists only of your equally complain-y coworkers, or friends you see once every two months who always forget that you just bitch about your job the whole time.
Difficulty level: EASY
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Filed in: Burning Man, change is hard | agoagoago | September 27, 2011 | View Comments
Tags: art, Burning Man, change, happiness, Human Cost of Deception, joy, money isn't everything, QUIT YOUR JOB, reality
Tabatha and I are headed to Burning Man in less than five days. One of the things she’s looking forward to is seeing the Temple.
The Temple of Flux has a lot to live up to after last year’s Temple, The Fire of Fires, with its intricate, carved lattice walls, and its column in the middle that shot up bursts of fire every few minutes at night, illuminating the temple and filling our ear drums.
One of the things she’s worried about is seeing the Temple burn.
It is funny for me to hear her say that. I am truly a Burning Man virgin no more. Anyone who’s been to the playa knows, the Temple is like the Man: they both must burn.
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photo by masepack
From hundreds of meters away you can see it. The temple that glows orange from its center. Its spires twisting and spiking into the night sky, against the brown and red mountains made dark with the loss of sun. The outline made possible by the fires that shoot up from the center of a giant plastic tubing, expertly installed. It spans several feet, and every few minutes flames will burst up and through. You shiver and pull your coat tighter over you. You touch the inner plastic tubing, hoping to steal some warmth from the Fire of Fires.
The temple is packed at 3am. It pulls people in with a magnetism of quiet and solemnity, so different from the rest of the festival. The winds whip, the dust gets in your eyes. People mill about, run in circles, go in and out, sit in meditation, rock back and forth with their hands in prayer, in mudras. A man dressed in a black top hat, mascara that extends from the corner of his eyes in branches, sits with his false-lash-draped eyes closed, his hands together in prayer, motionless. A woman with red hair and green eyes bows back and forth before a picture of a young woman.
The columns of the temple are made of flat panels of wood carved in latticed patterns, intricate as a church’s confession screen, decorated as stained glass windows, but instead of color, there is only light, negative space, and the pale yellow of the wood. Layers and layers of lattices, some carved out with open triangles, diamonds, stars. There are certain sections with open squares large enough to crawl through. In one, a young woman looks around through the carvings, fingering the patterns in the wood.
The whole structure vibrates with the passing winds that kick dust through the many openings in the wood. We travel up and down ladders, over stairs, across slanted ramps. A temporary shrine that will burn in silence on the final night. Sharpie markers are the main instruments of prayer here. Writing and drawings blanket the temple walls.
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