Going Off-the-Grid In a Shack in the Woods - The Fantasy Resonating with Careerists

 "I fantasize about quitting my job, packing my belonging, and moving to a shack in the forest"   Reddit Career Advice, April 24,2923. 

The poster is a 22 male with a good corporate job. So far there are more than 150 comments. Obviously his situation about wanting to go off the middle-class/careerist grid resonates. 

Back in 2018, before the world went crazy with COVID, a war in Europe, then inflation, and now massive layoffs, the same meme also caught fire. That was with the true story about Christopher Knight.

On day in 1986, Knight journeyed from Massachusetts to Maine and remained invisible and self-sufficient in makeshift shelter for 27 years. He had no utilities. He didn't work. He didn't seek out human companionship. How he survived was through petty theft, which eventually led law enforcement to end those days of Paradise.

Journalist Michael Finkel gives us that chronicle in "Stranger in the Woods." It has had 9,237 customer reviews and, although released in 2018, still ranks high on Amazon: 17,843.

Compare that to former Wall Streeter Jamie Higgins who decries her personal wealth-building career at Goldman Sachs. Her book "Bully Market" had been published in 2022 but it is already in Amazon limbo on the way to Amazon hell at 84,604. It has received only 457 reviews.

I am among those who smirk: Higgins took the money and the power and then bitched to high heaven. Seemingly that same pattern dominates this weekend’s comments about the culture of law firm Paul Weiss on Reddit Big Law. Lawyer jobs there for law school graduates with no experience start at a quarter of a million bucks.

Even after a year or so those newbie lawyers have the war chest to set themselves up in a cabin in the woods. There they can operate an ecommerce whatever. Yeah, implement the current dream of being off the grid versus weaving for themselves a web of escalating resentments.

Fortunately, there are myriad versions of that. They can be put together without becoming a WoodsMan/WoodsWoman.

The one most common with the clients for my intuitive career coaching practice is to develop a micro enterprise or enterprises and simultaneously do gig assignments. They had experienced the traditional workplace as increasingly toxic.

Another is to become a professional services consultant who lives cheaply. That creates the ability to be selective about the work which will be done. The Pareto Rule kicks in: 80% of revenue comes from 20 percent of clients/customers.

By 1987, as a careerist, I had had it. I put myself out there as a communications advisor and content-provider, with my desktop and fax between the kitchen sink and the refrigerator. The reference library was under the bed. Then, as now with my coaching business, I lease space just-in-time to meet with clients.

A third is to become financially secure so that you don’t have to care about much of anything. You are practically as free as Knight in his woods utopia. There is that old gallows humor: The only thing we have to do is go to work. You don’t have to do even that, not anymore. Such a liberation mindset is the platform for the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) movement.

Meanwhile, the bit of worker empowerment which occurred during the shortage of talent in COVID times seems to have gone poof. Being an employee can be experienced as dog years.

Connect the dots in a fresh way.

Intuitive coaching for job search, earning income in semiretirement, professional transitions, and starting your own business. 12 years coaching experience. 5 years experience creating communications for human resources. Complimentary 5-minute reading. Sliding scale billing. Please text 203-468-8579 or email janegenova374@gmail.com for appointment. 

 

 

 

 

 


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