I Quit!

"Winners Never Quit"

I'm exceptionally skilled at quitting—people, places, things, and especially jobs! I got my first job at age 15 as a bag boy at Bi-Lo, one of the three grocery stores in my hometown of Laurens, SC. Though the prospect of earning my own money was exciting in the beginning, it wasn't long before I started to dread my 4–6 hour shifts bagging groceries, cleaning bathrooms, and wrangling buggies in the 100-degree heat—all for a whopping $4.25 an hour.

One memory from the grocery store that I can't forget is when a customer accidentally dropped and shattered a glass container of spaghetti sauce, exploding its contents all over aisle 15. It wasn't long before my manager called me over the intercom to come clean it up. I very vividly remember laying eyes on this mess, that I didn’t make, and immediately becoming upset that it was my responsibility to clean it up. Dejected, I rhetorically asked my manager, "where do I even start?"

Since my first job as a bagger at 15 and my latest job as a web developer at 34, I've worked for 16 different companies in 19 different positions, and my tenure in each of these positions ended because I quit. In my experience, and contrary to popular belief, each position I quit always led me to a better and often higher-paying position than the one I held before.

There's a saying that goes, "winners never quit," and while I appreciate the sentiment and can attest to the fact that much of my own success is due to my persistence and perseverance, I can also verify through my own experience that quitting at the right time is often one of the best choices we can make for ourselves. Perhaps a better quote than "winners never quit" is "You gotta know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em," because oftentimes, holding onto our hand out of fear, pride, or the belief that our luck may suddenly shift can ultimately lead to us losing more than if we'd just quit when the time was ripe.

In my opinion, it's the lack mindset, birthed from the idea that life is a competition—perpetuated by comparison, capitalism, and consumerism—that often makes us cling to situations we'd be better off without. As if what makes for a fulfilling life is being able to say that you're materially doing better than other people, as opposed to waking up every day and being able to do what brings you the most joy.

It's a brilliantly designed system—one where those who truly own enough capital to be free sell the dream of freedom to everyone else for the small price of devoting the first 60 years of your life to building their dream. All the while, creating a market where necessities like homes are so high that you can't afford them without taking out loans that will take you decades to pay off, binding yourself even further into their trap.

Rich Slaves

I struggle to believe that any human being comes into this world wanting to work above anything else. That's not to say that people don't come into life with a purpose—that purpose being working toward something meaningful to themselves or to the world at large. But for those people, what they do doesn't feel like labor because they would do it whether they were getting paid or not.

This is very different from having to sell your time to do something you wouldn’t choose if you felt you had any other option. This might be a controversial take, but in my opinion, having to do something you otherwise wouldn’t—just to survive another day—is the true definition of slavery, regardless of how much money or comfort it provides. Nowhere in the definition of "slave" does it state that a slave can’t be compensated or comfortable. In fact, it seems the best way to keep a slave is to give them just enough comfort that they don’t feel like a slave at all.

This was evident at one of my more recent jobs, where I worked with mortgage brokers in commercial real estate. By most definitions, many of these brokers were rich. Part of my job was handling commission payouts, and the monthly payouts for some of the top producers regularly hit the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Commercial real estate is an industry where success is measured solely in dollars and cents, and to succeed, one has to hold money paramount to most other things in life. So, you can imagine my surprise when I announced I was quitting and received emails from several of these “rich” brokers, saying they admired my courage to walk away from a stable income to pursue my passions.

Despite how wealthy these brokers appeared on paper, many were bound by "golden handcuffs"—unable or unwilling to leave their high-paying positions because their lifestyle now demanded a certain income. Or, perhaps, they simply couldn’t psychologically justify walking away out of fear they’d never make that much money again. Ironically, these “wealthy” upper-class people were just as much slaves to capitalism as the rest of us. The only difference being that their slave quarters had marble counters, vaulted ceilings, and a heated pool in the backyard.

The freedom people believe “fuck you money” will bring them really only comes once we can say “fuck you” to money. If we depend on anything external to ourselves to feel free, then we aren’t free. Or rather, our “freedom” will always be insecure because it hinges on something outside of control.

Personally, I hate feeling enslaved to anything. Because of this, I live below my means. I’m debt-free and avoid making unnecessarily large purchases just to appear successful.

I’ve been driving the same car for the past 12 years and haven’t purchased a house—primarily because I don’t want to be trapped in debt that might force me to work a job I hate just to keep up with payments. Ironically, these lifestyle choices have put me in a position where I feel more free than many people with far more material wealth. So much so that no company can ever hold employment over my head to bend me to their will. In fact, my first priority in any new job is to save as much as possible—just in case I need to “buy my freedom” again in the near future.

This is exactly why I was able to quit my last job as a front-end developer with peace and clarity when my manager began to devalue me, disrespect me, and attempt to manipulate me into behaving in a way that pleased him.

You don't have to agree—just comply

Getting hired as a front-end developer was a huge deal for me because it was the first time in my entire life that I was doing a job I wanted to do instead of a job I had to do. Not only that, but coding is something I truly enjoy—whether I’m getting paid for it or not. It’s a platform where my creative and logical brains can coexist in such a beautiful way, and I’ve yet to find a job that provides me with so much psychological fulfillment as programming does.

To say that I was elated when I got hired would be an understatement—not only because I really wanted to work in this field but also because, as a 30-something-year-old bootcamp grad (instead of someone with a computer science degree), breaking into tech was substantially harder for me. But by the grace of God and some help from my mama, I did it.

In the beginning, everything was great! It was a fully remote position where I had a lot of autonomy in getting my work done, and in my opinion, I found much success. I started meaning meaningful contributions to the codebase immediately and within my first six months, I even got a raise. The company I worked for is a small, family-owned business—which definitely came with its own bullshit—but for the most part, everything was sweet. I’d landed my dream job, was making more money than ever before, and it genuinely felt like I’d hit the career lottery. Yet, before long, the imperfections in this idealized picture began to surface.

My manager at this company is the son of the CEO and heir to the company. This presented two major problems. First, he had no managerial experience (or work experience in general) outside of the leadership position he was gifted at his parents' company. Second, he had no direct manager himself, meaning there was no one to hold him accountable. He is in his mid-twenties meaning, in my opinion, he needed to do a lot more maturing and self-managing before being in a position to manage others.

Nonetheless, beggars can't be choosers. Though we'd butt heads every now and then, for the most part our working relationship was great and it was refreshing to have a team lead who was hip for once, lol. But in the last month, something between us shifted. We started butting heads more often, and the tone he used with me became disrespectful—sometimes even condescending.

This started with him threatening to write me up due to a simple misunderstanding where essentially he wanted code to be written one way, and I'd written it another way. Additionally, I think he was often offended by me questioning his choices and challenging his expertise in regards to how some things were written and I think he felt the need to put me in my place as a worker for his family's company.

This all came to a head a couple weeks ago where, after noticing that the tone he was taking with me was getting worse, I asked him if we could meet to discuss our working relationship. During this meeting, I told him exactly what I just told you—that the tone he’d been taking lately was disrespectful and that I didn’t appreciate it. We also discussed management expectations, where he revealed something surprising: even though I’d been hired as a junior front-end developer and was being paid at a junior level, he expected me to perform at a mid-level capacity because of the company’s size and needs and a part of why he was taking the tone that he had been with me is that he felt that my performance was not hitting his mid-level expectations after me being with the company for a year and a half.

I expressed to him that this was an extremely unfair expectation to have. (I did not express that if he had earned the title of "manager" through work experience as opposed to being gifted it through nepotism, he would understand why this is an unfair expectation to have — but I wanted to!). Towards the end of our conversation, he causally announced that he was writing me up for not producing the level of work that was expected from me and that, even if I didn't agree with the write-up, I still needed to sign the form and return it to him. He even highlighted that on the write-up form it says, "you don't not have to agree with this warning", but I just needed to sign it anyway, lol.

So, we got off the call, and he sent me the write-up. The reason listed? “Substandard work.” I found this especially confusing because, just a month and a half earlier, we’d had my year-end performance review where he not only gave me a positive review but also a raise and a bonus. But now, just a few weeks later, I was being written up for substandard performance?

At this point, it was clear to me that the write-up wasn’t about performance at all—it was personal. I also noticed he didn’t copy HR, his "manager", or even his dad (the CEO) on the email. It was as if he was trying to do this under the table. That confirmed my suspicion that this wasn’t about work quality but about control.

And in that very moment, my mind was made up. Not only am I not signing this shit, I'm also going to quit. Because despite how kind, compassionate, forgiving, and understanding I can be, one thing you're not going to do is play in my face.

I don't care who you are. I don't care who your daddy is. I don't care what your last name is. And I don't care what it is that you're providing to me.

I have too much love and respect for myself to betrayal myself in signing something about me that I vehemently disagree with.

So, the very next morning, on Valentine's Day, at 8:45am sharp, I sent him my resignation email with the warning write-up that he sent me attached to it (just in case anyone else needed to see it), and I told him that I was resigning because I have too much self-respect and integrity to sign something that I vehemently disagree with. I told him that this warning seemed out of place because we'd just had a performance review where he made no mention of "substandard work" and instead, gave me positive feedback and a raise. I essentially told him, in much more professional words, that he clearly got me fucked up and to take his write-up and this job and stick it up his ass.

These companies are acutely aware of the power they hold over us by providing us with a livelihood and when they feel that we are getting a little too comfortable, they will employ tactics, much like the ones I described above to wrangle us back under their control. But my former manager's grave miscalculation when it comes to me is that I value my soul, my self-respect, and my freedom much more than I value money. And though I doubt it will get to this point because I'm still working as a freelance dev and have enough money saved to hold me over for the foreseeable future—I would rather starve, be homeless, or die than allow some entitled brat to control me.

While I'm currently unemployed by a company, I don't feel unemployed at all—I feel free. The truth is, I'm employed by the Divine and ultimately my livelihood is the Divine's responsibility. And that's in part why I feel like my parting from my prior employer was inevitable. It wasn't just about my relationship with them but my relationship with myself and with life in general. The truth is, I've never been cut-out for the corporate world and it's always only been a matter of time before I parted ways with it for good. This break-up feels like the end of a cycle, of which I've learned the lessons I needed to learn, but now it is time to let go and open my hands up to receive something new.

So, despite the economic climate, despite the fact that I may never get another corporate software job, and despite the fact that even government employees no longer have "job security" — I'm 100% sure that I made the right choice to quit when I did. Alignment is not a permanent state and though I'm certain that I was meant to get this job when I did, I'm also certain that me and this job are no longer in alignment which means it's time for me to move on.

And I'm really enjoying the freedom to be, do, and say what is authentic to me at any moment without fear of what it might mean for my "career". That's why I felt so comfortable writing about my experience with psychedelics last week—because I truly feel that I no longer will need to hide parts of myself in order to make a living.

That being said, next week I'm going to announce an offering for those of you who might be interested in having a more intimate encounter with me 👀. I'm also available for web dev work if you or anyone you know are in need. And please believe that this newsletter will continue to be free—regardless. It is an offering from my heart to yours, but if you'd like to support my work you can by donating here or by simply just continuing to read and share if my words resonate with you.

Perspectives - Eli Horowitz

I'd like to introduce a new section of the newsletter where I invite people I admire to share their perspectives on the current week's topic. For this inaugural entry, I've invited my friend, and fellow philosopher, Eli Horowitz to give some thoughts on labor and capitalism.

Eli is also a published novelist, mental-health counselor, and an un-suspecting sharpshooter on the basketball court. What follows is the first few paragraphs of his thoughts and below you'll find a link to read his entire column which I think is brilliantly written and definitely worth the read.

In August of 2013, the radical anthropologist David Graeber wrote of the "profound psychological violence" inherent in our capitalist economy. Graeber's article went viral, giving him some measure of fame and introducing the phrase "bullshit jobs" into our lexicon. What it did not do, however, is tell us what type of system can or should come next. This is not to slight either Graeber himself or his work. But it is part of a pattern.

I myself have worked bullshit jobs. I've served as a rubber stamp for projects I didn't believe in. I've put in late nights building software features that were immediately recalled because it turned out the users never wanted them. I've sat in office cubicles, alone and baffled and drifting somewhere between terror and resentment, and watched other people play video games on YouTube all day because the people who paid me were too inept to give me anything to do. Those experiences made me part of the so-called anti-work movement, alongside nearly three million Redditors and a slew of popular artists...

Click here to learn more about Eli and to read the rest of his short meditation on capitalism and labor.

The Fool and The Wise Man

The featured image of today's post is the Fool card from the traditional Tarot Deck. The Fool is the first card in the tarot deck as it represents the beginning of a new journey — a journey into the unknown. The Fool travels lightly, carrying a small pack slung over his shoulder—holding only what he truly needs in order to progress to the next step. He's depicted as if he's about to boldly step off of a cliff, with a smile on his face, totally embracing whatever the coming free-fall might bring.

These days, people often describe me as being wise but I am only as wise as I am foolish. And perhaps quitting my relatively cushy, well-paying, remote tech job in today's economic crisis was one of the most foolish decisions I've ever made. But I know that the wisdom that I carry today is only a result of taking risks and never being afraid to start over. I have total faith that I'm being led precisely where I need to be. And though you have every right to call me "fool", be sure to also call me "free"!

With love,

Micheal Sinclair 💜