this is a one way road
A very personal account of the extreme feelings that lead me to quit my full time / part time jobs, and commit to working for myself. This is a continuation of my series on wayfinding (my series of jumps into the void), featuring Jump #2: from aspiring writer with a 9-5 job — to deciding to become an entrepreneur.
I’ll explore these topics:
the ever-present feeling of wasting my life
life as a recovering good asian daughter / repressed creative / secret obscurus
the idea of energetic reciprocity as an embodied feeling
the notion that in order to feel safe, you must compromise yourself
an infinite earning potential as a metaphor for expansion
the desire to give 100% to the work that belonged to me
escaping the cycle of job samsara
My “one way road” was more like a deeply anxiety-provoking, messy, uncertain, tangled wandering in the dark. but I’ll explain why it was (and still is) worth every second.
hello friends,
{🌸 this is botanical studies of internet magic — a podcast on the alchemy and materialization of creative power through the vessel and portal of the internet. my name is Kening, and I’ll be your guide.}
in my episode last week, "Throwing away the iron rice bowl" -- I opened this series of sharing my own journey through way-finding, which I define as:
- abandoning the known path
- taking continuous leaps of faith
- committing to yourself enough to find your own way
last week, I shared my origin story -- the inherited cultural blueprint of my Chinese-American upbringing -- and unpacked the values I grew up with, the internalized nuclear alarm of panic that sounded whenever I strayed from those values, and the metaphor of The Iron Rice Bowl (aka job security) -- as something I completely rebelled against.
I spoke about how, after college, I decided to devote myself to becoming a writer -- and living in New York City, and supporting myself with a 9-5 day job.
and whereas the last episode explored Jump #1 -- going from my Asian-American cultural upbringing to committing to be a writer -- in this episode, I'll unpack Jump #2 -- or, why I decided that quitting my job and learning how to work for myself was, ultimately, despite all its miseries, an irreversible one way road.
in this episode, I'll explore a few topics and concepts:
- energetic reciprocity as an embodied feeling
- the notion that in order to feel safe, you must compromise yourself
- systems of qualifications vs. infinite earning potential
- the desire to give 100% to the work that belonged to me
- escaping the cycle of job samsara -- by choosing myself
I guess you could say -- this episode is how I got distracted from the journey of becoming a writer -- to becoming an entrepreneur. in this episode, you'll find out exactly how obstinate and dramatic I am (or was, in my early twenties). I'll share lots of extreme feelings, and I want to preface everything: this is 100% me sharing MY journey, and I don't necessarily think that quitting your job IS the best path (or even a good path) for everyone -- it was simply my path.
thank you for being here, for sharing this space of your ears with me.
let me take you to:
Chapter 2: This is a one way road
Life As A Recovering Good Asian Daughter, And An Obscurus
I think that I'd describe my first years after graduation as a series of slow train wrecks. I was so full of repressed creative energy that I felt like I was a ticking bomb -- like I could explode, and not in a good way, but more like a self-destructive way -- like one of those dark obscurus from Fantastic Beasts, the spirits of wizard children who never learned how to use their magic, and so eventually, they destroy their surroundings, then they self-destruct, and die.
That was me, inside the body of a twenty two year old, Recovering Good Asian Daughter, who, having freshly collected her Ivy League diploma, only recently rebelled against her parent's wishes for her high powered, high-paying career and, despite the sound of nuclear alarms in her head, decided to become a writer.
At the time, I was also inside a womb-like long term relationship with a man I loved and was deeply attached to, but who, ultimately, I realized, I didn't want to be with. I looked into my future with this man, this job, and my unfulfilled creative dreams, and felt a deep sense of dread.
I was constantly asking myself: _how how how? how do I become a writer?_do I need to go to an MFA? do I need to get out more, and meet people? what do I do???*
An MFA didn't feel right. I wanted deep personal practice, and slow discovery -- not another institutionalized hoop to jump through, along with debt, and a diploma to show.
So, instead: I continued working my job. 40 hours a week, doing digital marketing for a tutoring company. Ironically, my job WAS to help the rich children of NYC get help in collecting credentials and applying to fancy schools -- something that I would, in later years, feel total value-incoherence with. But, I didn't know that at the time. It was the first job I applied to, and the first offer that I received.
I was living in upper upper Manhattan with my boyfriend at the time. everyday, before commuting 45 minutes to work, I would wake up in the early mornings, and write.
Energetic Reciprocity
this was 2015. I counted and saved every dollar I made. and as a year went by, I realized that it was hard to show up to a day job, wanting to please my boss, to give more of my creativity -- but feeling like... for the amount I was being paid, it just didn't feel energetically reciprocal.
and this idea of energetic reciprocity -- is something I'm articulating now. It would become a crucial concept to me over the years -- showing up as I pushed my way through the creative hustle, as I did design work for clients, as I thought about pricing, and structuring offerings, and how to make art and business work in a way that felt sustainable and nourishing --
it's a concept that goes beyond the one variable of cash -- and to the inflow outflow balance of other resources: like time, and energy, and inspiration, and emotional investment. Energetic reciprocity is, more than anything -- a feeling.
Back then... all I knew was that I felt so depleted.
I felt poor in money. poor in time, and when facing my family, poor in having face, poor in pride -- because -- in their practical Chinese mentality, this job was a total waste of my Columbia education; definitely without a good ROI.
I quickly realized that showing up for 40 hours a week at a job where I only felt inspired to give maybe, 50% of me -- was eroding my sense of personal integrity.**
I felt like a lesser version of myself. And perhaps it's a personal shortcoming that I was bad at compartmentalizing my work from my personal sense of self. But something in me wanted, no, craved -- to give ALL or NOTHING -- and I just couldn't do it.
so, every Sunday night, I started to feel deep anxiety and existential dread.
Compromise and Security
even as I told myself that it was only a day job to support my writing -- it felt like a compromise of myself for a steady paycheck. and: I don't say this to at ALL diminish the importance of financial security -- only to say, that even then, without knowing it, really, I was challenging the notion that in order to feel safe, you MUST make compromises.
Why is compromise and security seen as something that goes hand-in-hand; a necessity that we had to accept? Was another way of being possible?
A way of being in which you could be un-compromisingly yourself -- AND create safety?
I didn't have the language to articulate it this way, back then, or the understanding to ask those questions. But the pulse and innate conviction was there. That is what I believed.
And I knew -- that in order to do the work to which I could give my 100% -- that work needed to be my own.
and... over the next ten years, I'd learn things from my astrology, human design, and gene keys that only reaffirmed my conviction in myself -- that the road I took HAD to be my own; that there was no other way for me.
Infinite Earning Potential
Back then, I also felt deeply inspired by the idea of an infinite earning potential... as in, there was no ceiling to decide how much money I'd be making, or not making, what percentage of a raise I'd get, per year.
Looking back with the perspective I have now, I think that my desire for an infinite earning potential was a metaphor for something deeper -- it was my infinite, creative potential; infinite growth and expansion potential, infinite value creation potential.
I resented the idea that someone else could decide the worth of my labor -- which, in a capitalist inherited conditioning, felt like the worth of ME, period.
(And side note: it would take me another journey to work through the relationship between money-value and self-value)
So, at the end of one year of working there, my boss praised my work, promoted me to Director of Marketing, but then... rejected my request for a slightly bigger raise. Her argument was based on credentials, years of experience, and industry standards -- things which, to me, felt completely irrelevant and arbitrary for the work I was doing. I believed that the only metric should be value -- that money was only a symbol of value, and an alignment of values.
But at the time: I think, subconsciously, asking for a raise was more of a symbolic gesture. Was I valued here? What is my value determined by? Are those metrics meaningful? Can I stay in a system governed by those metrics?
And the end of it all, I decided that I couldn't.
I wanted to believe in my infinite value, to create my own value, to expand my sense of self-value. No one else.
And so, in those last few months, very second spent in an office started to feel like violence to my soul. It felt like giving away my energy, my power, my life — to be an undervalued laborer in someone else’s garden.
The Act of Quitting
And so, at age 24, after working a little over a year of a 9-5 -- and in those last six months, saving every dollar I could to build a financial safety cushion... I quit my first and last full time job. (and also... I felt extremely guilty about it, but that's another story).
After a year of hustling for myself: I blew up my five year relationship. and, feeling completely emotionally de-stabilized, I had an opportunity to return to work, part time, at a graphic design studio in Brooklyn: a very hip, cool place. I stayed there for a little over a year.
Despite many good things there -- feeling nourished, inspired, and a sense of belonging -- a similar internal arc happened.
This time, it wasn't so much about feeling valued, or credentials. But the absence of ownership. Emotional investment. I could never take ownership over someone else's project. And having coworkers or a steady paycheck -- it wasn't enough for me.
Over the course of a year, I couldn't help but feel like, drop by drop, minute by minute -- working for someone else (anyone else) was to waste my creative energy -- that I was, ultimately, wasting my life. My discomfort was so much greater than the fear of failing.
I think, on my last day of work, I actually told the owner of the design studio: "Thank you so much. I think you'll be the last boss I'll ever have."
I was 25 years old: very young, obstinate, and very sure of myself.
Escaping the Cycle of Samsara
And, creative friends: I wish I could tell you that everything went up from there. I figured it all out, made a good living, and climbed the ladder to entrepreneurial success.
But that wasn't what happened, at all. Mostly because I didn't know what I was doing -- and instead, followed all the shoulds of the creative hustle until they burnt me out; a topic I'll explore in the next episode.
But, even during the nights when I was rolling around on the floor in tears, lost and confused, I still preferred this to the feeling of sitting at office, feeling numbed and dimmed. At least I cared about something enough to cry about it.
This is not to say that I didn't feel sooooo tempted, during the most miserable parts of my journey to just go get another job.
Over the years, I would encounter opportunities at creatives agencies, or see job listings that feel like they were written for someone like me: [Creative Content Producer at Calm.com] and how wonderful, how easily it would be to, when asked, to just introduce myself as a writer at CALM.COM. I would be so calm!!! I would be someone with a pre-defined role, an identity, instead of this figuring-out-nebuleous amorphous creative creature thingy...
but I know -- that for me, the cycle would only continue -- I would get a job, feel initial excitement, then discontentment, then, little by little, resistance and resentment would accumulate until I'd feel like I was wasting my life energy with every passing second, and quit.
For me, the only way out of my personal samsara was to take a one way road -- into my deepest self... where I felt like, at least, like anything was possible.
And let me say, this journey into myself definitely was not and IS NOT... NIRVANA. (even if, the end goal is a kind of creative enlightenment).
The process itself felt more like a slow trudge through all of my insecurities and worst nightmares in the dark forest of the soul... feeling so poor in new york city, too embarrassed to face my friends with tech salaries, too ashamed to face my family, where, every other conversation was "you're on the wrong path" and "why can't you consider getting a job?" and everyday waking up to the nuclear alarm bells, sounding in my head, warning me that I would fail.
and... yes, it was still worth it.
end notes
dear friend, as I'm closing this chapter of my story, I'll reiterate again that this journey was entirely a personal experience -- not one that I recommend for everyone or even... most people. It's also one of privilege -- I knew that despite my conviction in the one way road, I could always change my mind and just go out and get a job, that I had safety nets in my family and community to catch me.
but even though I felt tempted over the years -- I knew that more than anything, I'm meant to build something of my own in this world. I'm meant to give my 100% to a vision of my own. I felt sure that I was born for this. To ignore or do anything otherwise just felt like such a waste of my life.
Reflecting now on everything I've shared in this episode, I see how my values were emergent back then -- even if I didn't have the words for it:
- energetic reciprocity -- to feel nourished by the work, in all the ways, including but not limited to money.
- challenging the inherited notion that in order to feel safe, you must compromise who you are, or your values, in order to fit into the system.
- self-worth (and money value) as something I wanted to determine internally, to myself -- instead of feeling externally limited by the system: any job title, or boss, or industry, or credentials, or diplomas.
- choosing and fulfilling my potential as a way of personal expansion
- escaping the cycle of job samsara -- for me, meant committing to being an entrepreneur, and whatever it would take.
next week, in the next chapter of my story, I'll share the next part of the journey: how, for many years of feeling lost and ashamed and overwhelmed -- I obsessed over, and tortured myself with the question: "how do I survive as a creative, and not hate myself?"
🐦 thank you, creative friends, for listening to botanical studies of internet magic. you can find more of my work and writings on my website, keningzhu.com.
I also send a weekly newsletter on creative alchemy called guide.notes. I’ll look forward to speaking to you next week. until soon.