Getting off the clock

If you are reading this now, you are probably trudging down the default path your parents or society has imposed since you were young.

And what is that default path?

We work for that paycheck, live for the weekend, and spend our money trying to soothe all the stress of it all.

Work Optional: Retire Early the Non-Penny-Pinching Way

I don’t mean to say that we should stop working altogether. No.

Because being under-challenged and underworked also poses the same concerns as being overworked and overloaded.

I can remember my mother’s sentiments about how our generation doesn’t know how to stop working. Perhaps, it’s mainly because of the work culture we are living in.

The culture in which too many of us wear our busyness and the bags under our eyes as status symbols. The culture that says you must hustle around the clock to be worhty. The culture that says our employers or clients own not just our work hours but every waking moment. We aren’t wired to handle that.

Work Optional: Retire Early the Non-Penny-Pinching Way

And the pandemic exposed the things we despised about our work culture, those that we already knew all along.

As we question how many aspects of our lives are connected to our jobs, we reevaluated our priorities.

Perhaps, taking a gap year made me realize that there’s more to just “working for money.” If you cared enough to invest in your career capital, you could find the kind of work that will put food for the table and give you a purpose of helping other people up.

And it’s work that’s more linked to autonomy.

Probably, all we wanted all along was to get off the clock.

That could paint a picture of what work probably would look like in the years to come.