I Have Two Master’s Degrees But I Prefer to Scrub Dog Poop.

Passion is an emotional prank. At least if it’s used as a metric for declaring a major and making money.Dependence breeds resentment. And there is no force as poisonous, as potent, as the apathy born of loathing what you used to love.Many of you contacted me to share how deeply you resonated with my last piece about buying a laundromat. I figured I’d capitalize on our apathy and perform an autopsy on my personality problem. Below are snippets from the exchanges I’ve had with many of you about your pursuit of a “simpler life”; maybe I’m looking for it, but I’ve found a common thread amongst them all:Thanks for reading honestly unorthodox.! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.1. People having failed repeatedly at monetizing their hobbies, because they start to hate them, which stifles creativity and motivation to do them at all2. Feeling insecure about what used to just be a passion project or “for fun”3. Being pressured to start a business by others (based on their interests/passions) because of their skill4. Becoming hyper-perfectionistic and neurotic with routines that used to be stress-relieving5. Obsessing in private how people would like their public personaDavid Graeber, author of Bullshit Jobs, writes an unflinching account of the “spiritual damage” that is doing work which is useless, unnecessary, and functionally pointless. In one portion of his book, he writes, “I am using the term “box tickers” to refer to employees who exist only or primarily to allow an organization to be able to claim it is doing something that, in fact, it is not doing.”For much of human history, mostly before the debut of technology and when identity was shaped through religion or community, work functioned as a form of survival rather than self-actualization. “Doing your part” held more weight to the everyday employee than the self-expression so rampant in younger workforces. Abraham Maslow reminds us that survival needs must be met before our brain even begins to consider concepts like “purpose”, “meaning”, or “self-betterment”; you’re unlikely to agonize over your soul’s calling if you can’t afford heat during a Midwestern winter.Although work was necessary for us humans to live, pre-industrial societies sustained their lives and relationships through these work roles, making for at least subtle changes in an person’s self-concept (i.e., while hard work was not yet seen as a moral obligation, a sense of duty remained at the core of work). It was with these newly-rendered temperaments that the professional focus shifted away from steady, paying gigs to the promise of a “meaningful impact.”Historian Christopher Lasch in The Culture of Narcissism describes the Protestant work ethic as being morally virtuous, even righteous, but not personally fulfilling. I frequently wonder if we’d be better off seeing our professions through the lens of “morally good” versus “I’m passionate about this and it’s my calling, and it’s pivotal to who I am as a person.”Absorbing our work to compose a performative brand has made for young professionals seemingly incapable of understanding themselves outside of how well-liked they are by faceless avatars, avatars entirely uninterested in who they are beyond their Instagram enactments.Sociologists refer to this Western-specific melodrama as “passion ideology”, or a surly fetish for “loving what we do so we never have to work a day in our lives”, or that we’re lesser-than individuals exiled to a life misaligned with our public-facing values should we confess this unadulterated truth: that we want to do everything but also nothing, that owning a business and snagging the title of “Girl Boss” sounds great, in theory, but so does coasting along getting paid to do next to nothing in a bullshit job.Feigning open-mouthed fascination with makeshift problems is our way of compensating for Graeber’s understanding of our “bullshit job”. Those hellbent on attaining some fleeting sense of intention in their work (I was for many years) are almost guaranteed a professional life rich with make-believe troubles to “solve” with sham findings. There’s an industry for this brand of imaginary play, and it’s called “consulting”, or any role whose title ends in “coordinator” or “liaison”.But what if we allow our work to stay soulless, while all of the hours outside of it remain intact, rife with joy, meaning, fun? You be the judge of which ranks as more demoralizing: dancing around with our cellulite-covered ass cheeks on social media in an attempt to market ourselves and our personal lives like products… or getting paid stable income to do nothing? I suppose both scenarios are unnerving, at best. And our willingness to tolerate either is largely dependent upon our personality and, yes, our values.Aspirational labor, or pretend-work which serves the purpose of emotional wellbeing more so than financial (see above industries, like “consulting”), smudges the lines between our hobbies, our jobs, and our sense-of-selves. In many ways, we don’t have jobs anymore; we are jobs. Performing for the sake of attention has appeared to replace much of a person’s actual personality, eroding trust and leveraging gullibility as financial security. This forces people to either get ridiculously, elite-level good at that hobby they once considered “just for fun”, or to keep up in private with the persona they’ve so gaudily marketed in public. Both are time-consuming and require far more work than we realize.Maybe, just maybe, coasting and accepting life as an average joe is the most stable path toward FIRE (financially independent/retiring early). I do very much appreciate “influencers” like Codie Sanchez and the Hormozis convincing every day, average employees to reclaim Main Street by owning their own businesses. I also think it’s overly simplified and a tad reductionist to assume that the act of buying or starting a business is, inarguably, hard work, but also mind-numbingly simple. Even the simplest of businesses will more than likely require a person to work double the amount they would had they just stayed in their 9-5. It’s worth it to weigh and measure what gradient of insufferable crap you’re willing to scrub before jumping in the glistening pool that is “entrepreneurship is for everyone, and being an entrepreneur means you’re cooler than the average shmuck.”Working with my hands has been the central feature of every hobby I find meaningful, a productive use of my time, and a net-positive towards my personal growth. Working at an animal shelter for 6-8 hours a week, much of which is scrubbing dog poop off of the grooves of my shoes, underneath my nails, in the fibers of my clothes, and even from my eyebrows, has become just one task I take pride in more than any behavior plan I’ve ever written. It’s almost like I can visibly witness any professional ambitions I once had swirling down the rust-and-shit-smeared drain along with the fragments of feces, urine, and grime.I have two Master’s degrees, both of which pertain to the human psyche and why us humans are insistent upon our own extinction via repeated, seemingly unpunishable stupidity. Although I had my reservations about college even during my graduate programs, its rotten motives were only revealed after I’d entered the workforce. With my every basic need met and now two expensive pieces of paper to my name (along with over a hundred thousand dollars in student loans), I’d scrounge every grimy corner of clinical settings, schools, group homes, and research labs for that little ember of purpose other students spoke so frequently of. That ember would never be found in a career, because this entire idea (i.e., that work serves the purpose of brand-and-identity-building) is deceiving as it is clownish.Do you think plumbers feel like imposters? Do you think electricians spiral about whether they’ve earned the right to install wiring in a corporate office, or farmers are tormented by their values misaligning with having to breed dairy cows?Do I feel a sense of, “This is so not my vibe” when a shelter dog takes a sprinting dive into diarrhea, turns to lurch towards me, and paints feces across my mouth in steaming streaks? Not in the slightest. It’s actually quite the opposite. Lobotomizing my “work personality”, and removing any pursuit of purpose from any gig which lacks clear mastery criteria, is how I’ve managed to forge peak excitement in that which is mundane.Overidentifying with abstract, often times made-up roles builds the bones of misery. We need a sense of mastery in a skill to feel accomplished, and roles without clear criteria for this sort of skill-acquisition (i.e., writers, artists, entrepreneurs, therapists) breed a sense of “imposter syndrome”, which is little more than insecurity. What does it mean to be a “good” versus “great” therapist? How does a writer know when they’ve mastered writing? Do artists feel rewarded when they’ve “officially” hit a ceiling on their skillset?Through university degrees, some of us believe we’ve purchased a future ripe for significance, only to find our purpose in the dirt, down a grimy hallway, in a steaming pile of shit. To reiterate a reality that will never go viral: some of us are perfectly content with our low-6-figure salaries, traveling once a year (maybe a little less), hoarding as much money as possible to retire early doing something completely unsexy, boring, revolutionary, or “rewarding”. Paid pointlessness is, in many ways, a form of freedom.I once heard Alex Hormozi state that “good friends are busy friends.” I think I understand what he’s getting at with this statement: that people he finds personally valuable and relationships he treasures tend to be with those who share his motivation for work and money. What this statement misses, though, is the entire concept of modern day: that 75% of jobs are functionally meaningless and, while they can make anyone look “busy”, they still produce zero results worthy of a blink.Anyone can spend 9+ hours a day pretending to work. Even I can do that, and I can’t say with certainty that I’ve ever worked longer than a 10-hour day in my entire life. To be frank, I’m sure there are many a day that I worked out more than I actually worked.Hard work and productivity are not siblings, but distant cousins. Most “productive” people I’ve met are productive so long as the task is aligned with what’s comfortable and socially acceptable. Most hard-working people I’ve met are complete nobodies to the outside world and have found solace in peace over purpose.Maybe, just maybe, simplicity will be the new revolution.Thanks for reading honestly unorthodox.! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit honestlyunorthodox.substack.com