where do you see yourself in 5 years

on being ambitious about (not) hustling, musings on a slow life, and whether you should quit your job

1. i wanna be crazy ambitious about not hustling

to ponder upon what kind of life one wishes to lead is indeed a luxury. but with the privilege of choice, does one still choose to run in the rat race and hustle, or is it in fact more ambitious to lead a slow, small, soft (proud of the alliteration) life?

this is a beautiful, pensive essay. and what a great line, challenging the premise of acceptable ambition¹:

My boyfriend dreamt of being a millionaire, and I dreamt of a bed shared with him.

My Five Year Plan

and oof :)

My five year plan is to live closer to my best friend - to sit beside each other while we do separate things. To take walks with her. To sit on her bed as she tries clothes on. My five year plan is to laugh with her. My five year plan is to see my mother happier. My five year plan is to see my mother go to therapy. My five year plan is to no longer be afraid of touching. My five year plan is nights at the bars with my friends, whiskey and wings. My five year plan is writing. Just writing. Not working and writing, not writing for work. Just writing.

My five year plan is to sit idly, patiently, softly.

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2. being ‘useless’ is its own kind of rebellion

everyone and everything operates in the capitalist structure of ‘productive value’, which has now far exceeded boundaries of work and seeped into our concepts of leisure and how we spend our ‘free’ time. being bored is a virtue. doing something useless is thereby a rebellion against capitalism.

this is one of the best written pieces around this. about spending life being useless, devoid of any utlity & instrumentality, and living for that very own thing’s sake.

Not money, nor fame, nor even the improvement in man’s estate that motivates the knowledge-gathering activity of the modern scientist: Baker’s effort was for the sake of something else entirely. He sought something splendid and beautiful, to be sure, but – in worldly terms – completely and utterly useless.

CLICK HERE: A Life of Splendid Uselessness is a Life Well Lived

and a lot more nuance inside the article:

No amount of birdwatching will win a person the presidency or a Beverly Hills mansion; making music with friends will not cure cancer or establish a colony on Mars. But the real project of humanity – of understanding ourselves as human beings, making a good world to live in, and striving together toward mutual flourishing – depends paradoxically upon the continued pursuit of what Hitz calls ‘splendid uselessness’.

if this were a book i’d be highlighting every 3rd line; go go go read it; final excerpt:

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3. striving for a future where the ordinary is magical too

in the spirit of the ‘splendid uselesness’ from above. what should we strive for? make the ordinary come alive, and the extraordinary will take care of itself :) one of my most favorite poems, that i keep coming back to. especially on days when the existential dread can get to you, and all you need is to be reminded of the magic in the mundane.

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4. easier said that done, innit?

assuming we can’t all quit our jobs and move to a riverside cottage sipping tea on our porch². but maybe that’s not the quiet life we’re looking for, afterall.

I’m not looking for some cottagecore fantasy where I drink tea by the fire in bespoke tweed trousers while my life looks perfect in every corner. What I want is something real. A life that feels good when no one’s watching. But that feels harder and harder to achieve when everything around us feels so curated, so polished, so fake.

made me chuckle:

maybe the quiet life is in letting go. letting go of control. of a plan. or fighting agianst the messiness. to stop optimising life. letting life just…happen?

The Problem with Wanting Less

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5. but what if you should actually quit your job?!

i found this intriguing piece, this pursuit of creativity & fulfilment, while still navigating the contours of employment but perhaps not in the construct of a ‘job’.

spitting it straight up:

Working even a good job cramps your sense of possibility, imposes narrow objectives, and eats away at the little things that could grow into big things if they weren’t so oppressed by the rigors of existing structure. I’ve seen this with my friends, in how they are full of ideas and adventurous spirit a few months after I convince them to quit their jobs. The world is full of ideas and opportunities to explore, but it takes time outside of structure to even adjust your eyes to the landscape of possibility. You are cramped by your job, unable to make the class of investments that is necessary for a life beyond the existing tracks.

in defense of those sans means, and why it’s imperative for those with privilege to fulfill their ‘cosmic duty’:

Relatedly, it’s unfair and wasteful for the people who could be out there exploring and building the future on their own dime to be either working normal jobs or simply managing their money for profit. This is a key part of what it means to be a responsible elite. You use your privilege and your personal judgment to explore and solve problems that no one else can.

CLICK HERE: Quit Your Job

it’s a provocative piece³ making sense of leisure and the pursuit of meaning/ambition, an excerpt:

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may the hustle never stop:

until next time & new reads!

🌻

~ rufus

1. this entire conversation around ambition is indeed gendered (can men make the choice of a slow life as easily? will women’s hustle be taken as seriously?) and to unbundle conditioning with ‘pure’ choice remains a challenge.

2. beachside tropical villa with a massive home library with floor-to-ceiling shelves for me pls.

3. when my substack blows up, i’ll need to start putting disclaimers that in no way am i asking people to quit their jobs.