It’s only after we’ve quit everything that we’re free to do anything.
How I learned to stop working and love the silence
Today’s essay is part of a series on work that includes me, Joshua Doležal, Bowen Dwelle, Michael Mohr, Dee Rambeau, and Lyle McKeany. You may remember past series about fatherhood and recovery. This week, all of us will wrestle with what work means to us. I can’t recommend these guys’ writings highly enough, so give them a read and let us know what you think.
6,514 days ago I was inculcated with the gospel of hard work. I prostrated myself in the front leaning rest. I discipled at the feet of camouflage-clad mythic warriors. Working hard hadn’t come naturally, but the Navy succeeded where high school French and Physics teachers had failed. It turns out, pain and yelling were all it took. I came to believe the mantras and parables of hard work, and would often tell myself (and embarrassingly, sometimes even other people) “my enemies might be smarter or faster than me, but I will have worked harder than them and that is why I will win.” At any other school I would have been rightly laughed at. But this was the Naval Academy…
Leaving school, work provided meaning and motivation. Work provided identity. I sat at various Navy bars, my flight suit as green as I was, and regaled beer soaked strangers with my future dreams. They all had to do with changing the world, and it was always through hard work. No matter what I envisioned, work was a constant. In the Navy, work helped me serve something bigger than myself. Strapped into the cramped cockpit of my E-2, nervously awaiting a catapult shot, I believed that my work was to spread the ideals of freedom. Later, sitting in too many boring meetings, drowning in acronyms and dreaming about flying, I fell back on the belief that this work at least made a difference to someone. Work was righteous. The Navy gave me 4,054 opportunities to prove it. And just as many beers to talk about it.
When I left the Navy, work became success. It was wealth, and after eleven years of trading wealth for purpose, I was ready to make up for lost time. The first time I nervously negotiated my salary over the phone while pacing laps in my bedroom, I was sure I was on my way. From there, promotions and raises, new opportunities and a portfolio of equity became my measure of success. I started to believe my two line, ten point font resume bullets about all the great things I had done. I started to feel that I deserved more. I went from employee to Venture Capitalist, and then to founder. Along the way, success didn’t make me happy, much the opposite.
I was lost. So I turned to the one thing I had known; I started looking for righteous work. I founded a social business, supported non-profits, and worked toward writing my first book. I tried to fit my goals into the only things I knew, if only I could regain the lost sense of purpose. This Substack was originally part of that effort to find meaningful work, and I felt a mixture of pride and fear every time I shared something here. I searched for 2,389 days. It, too, failed.
Then 66 days ago, I stepped away from what I’d come to know as work. I no longer brought my steaming french press to my desk, no longer imagined characters or narrative arcs while staring out the window wishing I was skiing. Instead, I sipped silver needles tea at the kitchen table and tried to figure out how to homeschool my third grade son. I tried to figure out how to protect his toothy smile and intense curiosity, some might say obsession, from the labels of stupid, failure, or autistic. I’m still trying, four hours a day, to teach him1. I have no path to financial success, no hopes for a promotion, and no dreams that the hours spent with his shoulders pressed hard into my arms while we read The Odyssey will make a “dent in the universe.” But I love it.
If we continue homeschooling through high school, I will do this work for 4,380 days. That’s 17,520 hours of homeschooling. That’s upwards of $2M of salary, who knows how much missed equity, twelve investment opportunities, and call it 6 books2 that I won’t achieve. Instead, I will have participated in what my friend Dave calls invisible labor, and at the end of this phase I will be 52 years old with a dozen years away from the workforce.
***
The numbers tell a bleak story. By not working during my prime earning years, earning no money and losing the accrued interest on those earnings, atrophying any work or social skills, I increase the odds of a failed future every day. It can be hard not to take heed of the coming storm, and I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night wondering if I’ve made a mistake. But just because we can measure something doesn’t make it a story. And I refuse to let opportunity cost be my story. Because my relationship to work — in this case the lack thereof — is far richer than the numbers tell.
There is the pride I experience watching him reciting poetry. His small voice fills with confidence, his eyes focus beyond our world to the divine when he recites Robert Frost3. His unruly tuft of brown hair, normally laid over his shy eyes, transforms into a wild mop, scraggly beard and all, as he becomes Whitman sounding his barbaric yawp. I swell up, like I have just witnessed deliverance. Because I have. The tingling in my arms is the sign of freedom, a realization that without the trappings of school, of community expectations, of labels and boxes and false prophets who would save us from our own humanity, we’re doing pretty damned well.
Then there are the friends I’ve lost. I no longer attend weekly coffee socials, no longer get invited for dinner or drinks or planning meetings. No one calls me with their dreams or schemes. When the calls and texts stopped coming in, I wasn’t really surprised. Work provided a great social fabric — a community lubricant. We were all playing the same game, but then I wasn’t. I no longer had anything to add to the conversation. It’s not that they judged me or I judged them, but we no longer had any reason to call each other. I was more surprised by my own reaction.. I felt a lightness as those relationships faded away. I wasn’t sad to be excluded; I was freed. Free to be my own introverted, reclusive self. I got to be me again.
Lately, I’m working on my inner self. I’ve read more this year — deeper and wider and with wild disregard. It’s like getting to explore this uncharted wilderness that we all knew was here, but no one acknowledged. Among the woods, I discovered a desire to touch Truth. I found the sacred, the divine, religio. I started meditating again. Sitting on my cushion, old stories rushed to the surface. My savior complex, my need for control and escape, my hurt, and my peace all laughed at me as if they were Puck, and I Nick Bottom. At the same time, I glimpsed what life is like connected to the Godhead. I’ve yet to be the same after. The low grade anxiety that has characterized my adult life simply dissolved. Maybe I’m finally chilling the fuck out. This isn’t work, it doesn’t contribute to GDP or create a better world. Still, everyone should have the chance to work on themselves.
Without work, I was surprised at how my aspirations dissipated. Not just towards money or success or fame, but all of them. At the onset of homeschooling, I prepared other outlets for those goals. I negotiated times away (at least in my mind) and intense bouts of work. But instead of needing the time away, my drive changed. Those drives were never mine; more a desire to keep up. But now I’m not keeping up. And instead of feeling like I’m falling behind, I feel that my desires have become more pure. I still want to write a book, but for the simple joy of saying something true. If it becomes a bestseller, that would be awesome, but it’s not tied to the goal of writing. I can’t imagine starting another company or non-profit. There are too many tradeoffs I’m not willing to make anymore. I’d rather simply know Truth, and maybe get to talk to one or two friends about that truth. Only when I quit the game did I see that I wasn’t really suited for it in the first place.
Best of all, I get to be here with him. We’ve always had a strong relationship, but it’s even stronger now. The other day his therapist texted me during a session to say “I’ve never seen him this relaxed…something is working.” I love that he loves color theory and painting and insisted we had to learn cursive and Latin. I also love that he regularly tells me “I always knew cursive, and my handwriting is better than yours.” Our time is making a real difference in his life. Words escape me as I try to describe that feeling, but I’ve tried joy, pride, happiness, and love. Rewarding is too small for what this experience means to me.
This phase of not working will eventually come to an end. My children will grow old enough to take on their own education. Their foundation will be laid, and I will no longer be an integral part of that journey. Whether that happens two years from now, or twelve, they’ll go out into the world without me, and I’ll be left still sitting at this kitchen table, staring out the window, alone. Then I’ll be confronted with a new relationship with work. I often think about those times when lying in bed, N’s silhouette pressing against my side as she sleeps. I’m usually studying yet another book by the dim light of my nightstand. I find myself drawn to studies of discipleship, of social movements, of resistance and change and of Moksha. When I was busy working, I never would have read books so rebellious. But tonight, I underline and write in the margins, all the while wondering what the future will hold. Though I don’t know what my work will be in the next inning, I can’t imagine going back to supporting a system I no longer believe in. I can’t imagine maintaining the status quo and trying to earn enough to be comfortable, all the while shutting up and coloring. I’ll die before I go back.
Maybe it took stepping away from work to find the courage to simply stop believing. That distance from work gave me the freedom to see a new story. I’d love to map out where this one goes, but the truth is I can’t. I can’t spell it out — in numbers or words.
Still, I need to tell it. I’ve still got work to do.
Read the Work Series
He’s decided that I’m teaching him at most 20% of the time. The other 80% of the time he’s teaching me. I suspect that ratio might be about right, since I know very little about what it’s like being him and he, with the benefit of youth, knows exactly what it’s like being him and me. I only hope the 20% of the time teaches him the important things.
Maybe I’m being a little optimistic here when I think I could write 2 books a year. I’ve heard that it can take ten years to get your first novel ready to be published. Even if that’s true, I would be a lot further along if writing were my soul focus, and the point still stands, even if the numbers don’t. It’s the story that matters after all.
Our first memorization project was Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. He then memorized Foreign Fields and Psalm 23. I well up a little bit when he finishes a new project.
This was one salient passage for me: "By not working during my prime earning years, earning no money and losing the accrued interest on those earnings, atrophying any work or social skills, I increase the odds of a failed future every day. It can be hard not to take heed of the coming storm, and I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night wondering if I’ve made a mistake. But just because we can measure something doesn’t make it a story. And I refuse to let opportunity cost be my story. Because my relationship to work — in this case the lack thereof — is far richer than the numbers tell."
There's a tension in these sentences, and in the essay as a whole, between conventional notions of success and failure and the definitions that you're trying to craft for yourself. How could your investment in your son yield failure of any kind? Yet I know what you mean, as I struggle with this myself. Prioritizing parenthood doesn't feel like professional progress and doesn't come with any guarantee of recognition. It's a story that you have to believe independently of anyone else, a choice you have to own even if there is no tangible reward. That's pretty tough for those of us who cut our teeth on extrinsic benchmarks of achievement.
But as Lyle recently reminded me, you are modeling a different relationship with work for your son. There is clear value in that. Perhaps someday your example will be the life raft he needs out of hustle culture.
Really enjoyed this piece. I relate a whole lot. You nailed it about leaving behind the unhealthy [conformist] system and embracing a new, healthy vitality which is self-sustaining and spiritually nourishing. I'm glad you're homeschooling. I think it's fantastic. The idea of "work" is complex in our modern times. We're all taught that money is the key to adulthood and success. But I always consider the spiritual and emotional sides to "adulthood." You may make a lot of money and drive a $150,000 car...but if you're an emotional narcissist, you ain't a man in my book. It's the ability to look inward openly and honestly, and the possession of genuine self-awareness that creates men.