This month, news outlets are reporting on the record numbers of people leaving their jobs in the U.S. Each piece includes a variety of reasons for it, usually citing a mix of experts and the people who are doing the quitting. Andrea Hsu of NPR sums up my favorite reason, though, first quoting someone who chose to get a fully remote job rather than transitioning to three days at the office. "'I do need to pay bills, so I have to work,'" he says. But he now believes work has to accommodate life."
Last fall when I was still working at NPR, I asked the good people of the marginalized genders Slack room how they were planning to rest over the weekend. It's the sort of question that I tried to ask every once in a while to the group. When I ask folks this—and when my peers do the same—it serves as a sort of simultaneous permission giving and permission receiving.
One person's answer in particular caught my attention that time. She said that over the last months of the pandemic, she'd gotten good at listening to her body, and doing what served it best. While I had gotten much better at taking care of myself over the years, I wasn’t sure that I could say I was good at listening to what my body needs.
Working at organizations, I have sometimes participated in teams who flexed their productivity with the natural fluctuations of each member's mental health and availability. Other times, I have worked more or less on my own toward a distant deadline that allowed me to compact and expand productivity as needed.
But all of these experiences were limited to the duration of the project, which I knew would some day end and put me again subject to the whims of the powers that be. Even when I was in a work environment where I did well, it was all too close to the culture that equates worth with constant productivity.
Sometime in the last year, I happened upon the phrase "internalized capitalism." The concept resonated with me deeply. When we internalize capitalism, we take what it values in culture—productivity, or the ability to produce stuff—and we equate that value with the value of our own existence. We agree with capitalism and say, "Yes, I am only a worthwhile human being if I am creating something that can be sold."
Eschewing that perspective while surrounded by a company within an industry that followed it, I always felt just a bit guilty, my confidence so often tenuous.
After months (honestly, years) of introspection and prodded by the fraught nature of figuring out childcare during a pandemic, I remembered (again) that my husband's and my success in technology jobs, combined with our choice to live somewhere with a reasonable cost of living, gave us choices unavailable to others. I was in a position to thrive in capitalism while exploring something else: A way of working that can shift as my needs and my community's needs shift.
Writing this newsletter and caring for my tiny family, I can start the week planning to write about rest (as I did when I wrote the second, third, and fourth paragraphs of this issue), drop that topic to write about my grandmother's photo albums (as I did yesterday and this morning as I felt my enthusiasm shifting), and then drop that in turn to write about rest again (as I realized that the piece about the albums was getting too long for the newsletter, and yet too promising to edit shorter).
Writing this newsletter, my collaborators won't think less of me for shifting gears so quickly in a culture that prioritizes linearity. No one will have to rapidly shift their focus back and forth to support mine.
I've achieved this state through a combination of privilege and choices.
But I don't have to be one of the few who can live this way. The culture can change. The economy can change—if we choose to change it.
The folks quitting this month? We can't really know for sure why they’re all making their decision now. And the reasons will certainly vary from person to person. But these people leaving, they give me hope that change is happening.
Mentioned in this issue: "As The Pandemic Recedes, Millions Of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'" by Andrea Hsu for NPR.